Your company’s brand is more than just a cool logo, some unique colors, or a catchy tagline – those are just the “clothes” it wears.
Your brand, like a real person, is the combination of its values, personality, and the uniqueness that sets it apart from similar brands in the same category.
A strong and consistent brand can affect everything from customer loyalty to your company’s ability to sustain success. But, in times of crisis, it’s important to be authentic, to stay true to why you do what you do – to come back to your company’s roots.
Your ice cream shop, for example, can’t solve the world’s problems. But you can do what you set out to do when you started your business: make people happy! And, we could all use an ice cream cone right now!
Recently, Aaron Tovi from Vigor Branding, a restaurant branding agency in Atlanta, GA, wrote a blog post discussing the importance of branding and how restaurants can survive the Covid-19 crisis and beyond.
“How you get through this [crisis] will determine how your brand recovers post-pandemic. I’m not talking about marketing tactics and deals/promotions. I’m talking about the actions your brand will take and the manner in which you take them…It’s time to leverage your values to fuel customer engagement, innovation, and opportunity not only to survive COVID-19, but to come out of it with more momentum behind your brand than it’s ever had before. How is that possible? The simple, yet difficult answer is this: dig into your values and turn them into action. Live your “why,” your brand’s purpose, in your circle of influence and the world around you.”
“If that sounds a little woo, or even detached from the harsh realities of slumping sales and the need to conserve as much cash as possible, let me propose that living your brand values is the most practical thing to do not only in a crisis but at any time. After all, what you do during a crisis very much dictates the believability of your claims during good times.”
Aaron Tovi, Vigor Branding
To demonstrate how a brand’s values result in actions, I’ve used the core values of our agency to illustrate what actions we’ve taken during the shutdown:
Core Value: Generosity
Action: As soon as the shutdown occurred, we reached out to both past and present clients, as well as the local business community at large, offering free brainstorming sessions to help them think creatively and pivot with purpose during this fast-moving situation. We are still offering this free consultation as we move through the phases of re-opening, because we feel it is important to continue to share our knowledge and creativity with those who could benefit from it most.
Core Value: Teamwork
Action: Fortunately, we’ve been able to keep our team employed during this time, even though our workload had markedly decreased. We developed new ways to work together to improve skills through online training videos, continuing to work on our agency’s new website, and other marketing initiatives to fill some of the downtime. Also, by remaining operational, terrific opportunities came to us that if we were closed, we would not have been able to accept.
Core Value: Responsiveness
Action: We all made sure we were set up remotely to function exactly as if we were still in the office. We remained available, often keeping irregular business hours on evenings and weekends, to serve our client’s needs and meet important deadlines.
Core Value: Creativity
Action: We created an initiative called “Isolation Inspiration”, and via social media, asked for people to send us their favorite quotes so we could design them into free posters they could print and/or share on their social media. It was our small way of contributing creatively and to share a little inspiration with everyone in isolation. So far, we have reached 5 states in the US, and 5 foreign countries!
Were you able to recognize how your brand’s values can directly dictate the actions you take? As we move through the phases of re-opening due to Covid-19, and simultaneously during this crisis of civil unrest, how will people recognize your brand when this is over? Hopefully, as a company that is true to its core values and delivers on its promises!
Can you identify your brand’s values? Do you know what sets you apart from the competition to reach your ideal customer? If not, we can.