What (or who) makes a great brand?

What comes to mind when you think of a great brand?

Is it a powerful and enduring logo, a perfect name or a tagline that’s rattled around in your head for much of your life? I’d say these certainly help in that they’re part of what we might quickly associate with the company or organization behind the message. Or, maybe it’s a feeling resulting from a direct interaction you’ve had with that brand, for example, like the countless stories people used to have from shopping at Nordstrom stores and the customer service they were legendary for (my own favorite: I brought in a one-year old leather wallet, no receipt of course, that had begun to fray on the stitching to see if it could be repaired. They took a quick look at it, said, “yeah, that’s not right,” and gave me a new one, same brand and model, plus a $5 dollar bill because the wallet had gone up in price during that year…wow).

I would suggest that the power of a great brand is more than just what’s seen or experienced on the outside. The true power of a brand lies deep within. In a 2020 piece, the Harvard Business Review listed top traits for leading brands, including delivering benefits that customers truly desire, staying relevant, being properly positioned, being consistent, and utilizing a full repertoire of activities to build equity and trust over time.

Great brands are, in fact, built upon strong and inspired values which have been defined as the foundational beliefs that an organization stands for, and the ideals that guide its action. When it works well, these values permeate the entirety of the organization.

When building brand strategies, we challenge our clients to name their organization’s deepest core values…those that run “from the line to the corner office.” Southwest, historically a beacon of powerful branding in an industry rife with constant brand challenge (their current brand challenges a case-in-point), is known to paint two hearts on each aircraft, one next to the main entry for the flight crew and one on the belly of the plane for the ground crew. Only they see it at ground level, where they go to work each day. The core values of love, and servant’s heart, run deeply through their brand as a reflection of the organization, and in this case, its founder.

How about you, though? What is your core brand?

No, I don’t mean your headshot, how many recent posts you’ve made on LinkedIn (like this one) or your number of Instagram followers. Those are fine and an important part of how you present yourself to the professional world. Rather, think about the very person you are, built atop your own values which you hold precious and close.

What are your deepest values and how do they inform how you show up in the world and workplace?

On a day-to-day basis, think for a moment, about how you can ensure that those values of yours come to light in ways which make you live and work at more inspired, more fulfilled levels.

The goal should be to harness these true values and ensure that you stay true to them. It could be by making sure that your boss or organization knows how you need to work in service of them, and what you require in the workplace. Or, it could mean aligning yourself with a different employer who more naturally recognizes and welcomes your values in their culture as a reflection of, or compliment, to it.

In the end, we all want to be utilizing our greatest strengths and focusing on what’s most important to us. The product of these two is a fulfilled sense of purpose, as least it is for me, and for Feldenkris Leadership.

I’d love to know what’s core to your brand.

The Plug:

Feldenkris Leadership exists to help create and support resonant brands.

For the organization brand, we do this by drawing on decades of experience developing insights, brand strategy, positioning and brand identity solutions for global, mission driven organizations.

For the individual brand, we bring our deep experience in leadership and management, and experience as a leadership coach certified by the Georgetown Institute of Transformational Leadership. We help people tap into their greatest strengths, find focus and engage in more productive and more fulfilling careers and lives.