Business Article - "How Character Affects Your Business Brand Image" by Author Frank J Sherosky

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"How Character Affects Your Business Brand Image"
by Frank J. Sherosky
Author of "Perfecting Corporate Character"

Do you realize that there are two types of branding in every business, including internet ventures? One is yours, created and burned by you and those within your organization. The other is your customer’s; created by you, but burned ON the customer's mind and emotions.

Whether you are a bricks and mortar firm or a cyber business, the needs are the same. It centers on gaining market share and not losing ground. And that depends on more than your products or services, assuming they are robust. Your total business brand that you and your organization create determines your success. If that term doesn’t ring a bell, then maybe it’s time to distinguish your brand beyond the usual business-school paradigm.

Brand marketing and brand character are familiar terms. They are business-school jargon, nonetheless. All of these buzz words may sound great at board-rooom presentations and seminars, but mean something else to customers.

While the highly-paid marketing gurus tell you to concentrate on presenting your product or service imagery, they fail to warn you that it is your organizational brand that does the real imprinting. What’s most notable, though, is that the total character of your particular business imprints that brand on your customers’ emotions, a realm far beyond the typical business education. That’s why I believe you should expect every business consultant to posess that kind of perspective.

As every interaction with your public is a so-called “moment of truth” or, better yet, “moment of judgment”, the public knows when they’re being burned by a hot poker; and they judge accordingly. A form of business branding is, therefore, created by you and your organization at every turn. It’s both an active and passive. The customer merely views it, experiences its presence, engages his or her emotions, and then determines YOUR fate.

The point here is that the public buys far more than just your products, services and so-called image promotions. Whenever they interact with anyone or anything associated with your business, they are automatically branded emotionally, good or bad, by the totality of your business character.

Whether you are a small business or a large operation is immaterial. If that brand is found lacking at any time in the customer-relation scenario, a return to you as a future-paying customer will be highly unlikely, not to mention all of their word-of-mouth associations.

So, it’s time to become aware of the quality of your business trademark as much or more than your products and services. It’s the only way to really distinguish you or your organization from the crowded and competitive business arena!

Obviously every company promotes its products and services to gain market share for the purpose of profit. Without realizing it, though, a poor organizational brand quality can scuttle that endeavor when it is exposed as an integral part of the market-to-purchase-service process. You can’t hide it; emotional branding of your customers is especially created or dessecrated with every interaction at every level, whether that interaction is direct or indirect.

So, realization that business-branding occurs all the time is your first step, but a most-important one. While brand marketing of a product focuses mainly on product imagery, interacting with the public can force all of the expenses associated with marketing that imagery to crumble in a moment. Point: As your organizational character is reflected, so goes your future!

Dealing with the public especially exposes your organizational brand for what it really is. In total, every talk and every walk that your company engages in, regardless of size and business sector, refines or tarnishes your business-brand image. Here’s where the true corporate or business character, as displayed by your people in the form or disposition and attitudes, sets you up for profits or decline.

Lose the heart of the customer and all of that development, testing, marketing and expected profits can go literally up in smoke. The key here is learning how to recognize your business brand and keep it shining from within, not just on the surface.

Surprisingly, many highly educated organizations don’t realize WHY their brand is broken. Assuming it’s production or process related, know-it-all vanity seems to get in the way from seeing the simple truth.

In my 32 years of associating with various product development and product marketing programs, including 12 years with Saturn Corporation, I have personally witnessed just how brand-marketing strategies have caused many fine organizations to lose focus. How? They have been led to conform to the lopsided thinking that branding applies more to a form of product and service imagery that induces lust more than warm emotions. Smiles and free coffee mugs aren’t enough, because that’s not what customers want or need.

It’s true that some CEOs and managers realize the importance of appealing to emotion. The branding tool that they usually assume will do the job is their product or service itself. Well, there’s much more!

This causes them to TALK about the importance of people, but actually focus away from the people factors like character; and people define the totality of your business brand far more than any tool in your arsenal.

Character needs to be perfected at every turn; internally and externally. Assuming that values as touted in mission and philosophy statements are sufficient may be a dangerous assumption in today’s competitive arenas. Your programs may be late, not due to the inabilities of your people, but due to cutting politics, indecisions and a constant state of change induced as a form of rearranging deck chairs on a sinking ship.

A business focus on product, price, internal processes and marketing imagery is one thing. Directing all of it toward its customers’ lust to buy is simply another double-edged sword. For one, lust is the the wrong emotion to appeal. By its nature, lust is a sentiment that is never satisfied; but never enough to keep customers buying from you, because those who lust are also fickle. Eventually the truth about pricing, fair value, reliability, service and care cause YOU to be judged.

Another area of negative branding is when a company gouges the public with pricing so that managers can make their salaries and benefits beyond their true worth. I guess that’s supposed to be just too bad for the public. That’s capitalism. Gouging then becomes the business brand; and to save the business face, they donate to charities and politicians as some form of absolution. Some rebates kind of fit into that category, in my opiniion.

A more sinister brand occurs when business allows itself to use manipulatable accounting practices like RONA (return on net assets) as the main benchmark for management bonuses. First, it allows accounting trickery through postponing of programs and reducing of head count to fake its financial health so that bonuses can kick in. That makes the company books manipulatable at the expense of the customers, the stock holders as well as their employees.

Well, the public is not stupid. They have a long memory when it comes to someone taking their money and delivering poor value, being disrespected at the time of purchase or service, or basically routing your employees. And they know when they’re being gouged or manipulated just to sustain a business’ plan that is intended to win at all costs, namely theirs.

How many times have you paid full price for a quality product, but it still failed? How many times have you paid a high price while the company cut its employees to shreds with downsizing everything except upper management’s perks? That brands you as a nasty hot poker, because they know they’re paying for those perks.

Like I said, they’re not stupid. As a result of their awareness, the public now expects quality products, quality services, and quality in their total buying experience; and that now includes quality pricing. After all, they KNOW they’re overpaying for literally everything.

Failure to comply to customer expectations in any way brands you as an abuser, but brands them as disrespected and undignified. Talk about negative emotion!

This concept of business or organizational branding is an image niche untouched by many business books. Now, don’t get me wrong. Plenty of training is going on, but not about total business branding, especially ethics and fairness in pricing for value rendered.

Yes, we have mission statements, philosophy statements and just a touch of team-oriented, feel-good training sessions. Yet, many businesses still seem to miss the mark, maybe not in every corner, but enough to make many CEOs cringe at earnings-reporting time; which only proves that customers have the last say, and that higher education does not guarantee business success.

Few managers and business owners really take the TOTALITY of their business brand to heart, including personal communications and relations. Emphasis is so heavy on trying to make a profit that they overlook the one formula that might assure that profit.

As products, processes and quality increasingly take the center stage, though, more and more companies will be oblivious as to why they are losing market share, and will risk being blown out of business entirely.

Remember always that there is a cause for every effect. Don’t let the negative-branding syndrome happen to your business or your company, even if you just work there. Make a commitment to improve the business brand. Don’t forget that every internal issue will come to light in some way that you may not now even imagine.

You can help yourself and your business by first paying attention. Accept the reality that the public fully recognizes when another product or service is better, and that they always vote with their pocket books. It is their right as much as it is their duty for economic self preservation. Your product may be innovative, but a greedy price mark-up, for example, can dry out their emotions quite readily. That is just as much a brand failure as a recalled tire.

Yes, a failure to keep the customers’ emotions positive can be deadly to your bottom line. So, the time to be more alert is now!

And speaking of emotion, why do some products fail to sell, while others prosper? Simple: Contrary to today’s business doctrines, quality is no longer enough! Content is no longer enough. The only way you can segregate yourself from your competition in this new century is to better the totality of your total business brand; exhibit that brand and appeal to your customer’s’ hearts where their emotions originate.

A business MUST appeal to customer emotions and keep it positive with EVERY interaction. Witness the PT Cruiser. Great, classy style. Quality is OK, but not the best in ranking. Content isn’t earth shattering either. And service? Hey, it’s a dealer. Nevertheless, the emotion to own and keep one far exceeds the production expectations. And all of this is happening while the Camaro and Firebird are being discontinued for lack of sales.

Don’t be overly attentive to product quality at the expense of your service and internal processing quality. Quality is far more than job 1 or job 10,001. It’s not guaranteed to create customer enthusiasm either; it can only enhance it.

Quality in EVERY aspect of your business is a customer expectation. Value must be provided in a way that speaks to your customer’s bottom line, their pocketbooks.

Even when the job, product or service is old and weary, your branding isn’t done. If not solidified when the customer has to interact with the company, there will be no enthusiasm to ever cause them to return.

In reality, it is the few who REALLY believe and actually PRACTICE a sound business-brand doctrine. The first symptom is usually the denial of the importance that the power of individual character plays in scuttling team efficiencies and diminishing sorely-needed profits. It festers internally first. Then it spreads throughout until it’s noticeable at the customer level.

Well, there is a way to get ahead of your competition. It involves educating your work force, including management and those represented, with a set of knowledge skills that creates a paradigm (mindset), one cut above your competitors. That mindset alone will create and polish your own business brand.

This is an area that processes and products cannot venture. Why? Because the elements that I have just revealed to you do NOT reside in your processes or in your MBA biz plans. You see, it is the mindset of the people within organizations that truly empower the processes toward creating an atmosphere of business branding and profit-mindedness.

So, the next time some market guru challenges you to brand market your products and services, make sure to include your total business brand. And make darn sure it isn’t just any old hot iron.

"Perfecting Corporate Character" ISBN 1890170003 by Frank J. Sherosky is available as a quality-bound, hard-cover edition.

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