Brand
Don’t confuse brand with reputation. They’re connected, but they aren’t interchangeable. Your brand is the unique promise your company makes. Your reputation is how you fulfill that promise.
Brand is developed from the inside out, reputation from the outside in.
Your brand can help enhance your reputation, but a poor reputation can infect a brand. How you manage and fulfill those previously mentioned drivers of reputation will eventually become a part of your brand – sometimes temporarily, sometimes permanently. You own your brand. You co-own your reputation with your stakeholders.
Brand Persona & Reputation
Your brand isn’t just logos, fonts, and color palettes (while those elements do affect how stakeholders experience your brand). To better understand your brand and how it impacts your reputation, we recommend taking a deeper look at your brand persona.
A brand persona is a collection of personality traits, attitudes, and values your brand expresses. Is it friendly and genuine? Is it creative or boring? Is it lazy and arrogant? Be honest and then reflect on brand expressiveness. Determine whether stakeholders report a consistent experience, whether the brand stands out from the crowd, and communicates regularly.
We cannot stress this enough: your audience cannot read minds. As you accomplish (or don’t accomplish) your goals — especially publicly stated goals and initiatives — update your audience or risk losing both their attention and favor. How you approach and communicate efforts reflects on your brand and reputation.
Questions to ask about your brand:
How do stakeholders evaluate your corporate brand?
How does your corporate brand compare against your competitors?
How well do you communicate regarding your corporate brand?
What brand personality traits the most associated with your corporate brand?
What brand personality traits make your organization unique?
Does your reputation reflect your brand? What will it take to align them?
Reptrak's quantitative evaluation tools can help answer these questions in an objective, measurable, and actionable manner, measuring and monitoring brand persona and expressiveness.
