Looking for a complete guide on brand pillars? This post will demonstrate brand pillars examples, answer the question – “what are brand pillars?” and help you establish and shape your brand.
The five brand pillars of your company: purpose, perception, personality, position, and promotion, are the foundation of your brand and the factors that inform every touchpoint and experience with your audience.
You have the ability to shape your brand identity by utilizing the 5 P’s to make it the most valuable asset your business owns.
Each pillar can be subdivided into the questions that must be answered. Once you’ve answered these questions, you’ll have the structure for your organization’s brand pillars.
Okay, let’s move on to the pillars.
01: PURPOSE
- Why does your brand exist in terms of the positive impact it has on the lives of your target audience?
- What assurances do you make to your target audience?
- Where did your purpose come from? (For example, does your company’s past play a role?)
- What drives your purpose? (For example, why do you get up every morning and continue on this path?)
Why is purpose important?
Your purpose is the reason you exist. The integrity of a purpose-driven company stems from your determination to remain true to your core values. Your purpose and promise guide every decision you make. Every experience your audience has with your ba should, in some way represent your purpose.
Furthermore, your purpose might act as a magnet for the kinds of people and personalities you want to hire. By 2025, millennials will make up 75% of the workforce.
Millennials want to be engaged in their work and feel like they are making a difference. They prefer transparency, and when evaluating employers, they prioritize purpose over profit.
According to a Cone Communications study, 9 out of 10 millennials would switch companies to support a specific cause, and 87 percent would buy a social or environmental benefit product.
Patagonia is an example.
Patagonia wants to make the best product, do no unnecessary harm, and use business to help the environment.
Our values reflect those of a business founded by a group of climbers and surfers and the minimalist aesthetic they supported.” Our approach to product design displays a preference for simplicity and practicality. “
“We are aware that our business activities, ranging from lighting stores to shirt dying, produce pollution as a byproduct.” As a result, we are working hard to limit the harm. Many of our garments are made from recycled polyester, and we only use organic cotton rather than pesticide-laden cotton. “
During our thirty-plus years in business, staying true to our basic values has helped us establish a company we’re happy to operate and work for. And our commitment to making the best products possible has resulted in commercial success. “
02: PERCEPTION
- What role do you play in your clients’ or audience’s hearts and minds?
- What words do they use to describe you?
- What do they think your worth is?
Why is perception important?
Perception is a pillar that your audience owns. Your audience thinks about your brand based on what they read, see, hear, and do. This includes messages, design, online reviews, advertising, first-hand experiences with your brand, and word-of-mouth.
Perception is a challenging pillar to master since we have a natural desire to portray how we believe our audience views us. The best approach to avoiding this is to directly ask your audience.
When your audience interacts with you, your perception is how you make them think and feel. Your job is to mold and utilize that perception by establishing first-hand experiences that lead to favorable associations after you’ve left.
Purchase intent is greatly influenced by perception. Marketing, design, customer service, and human resources, in particular, can significantly impact the perception of your brand. When attempting to grow or change how you are seen, it is critical that these teams are well-informed and aligned with your brand since they are your organization’s most important brand ambassadors.
Furthermore, personalized research and reviews should not be limited to your external audience. Taking your internal temperature via staff surveys can be a great tool to determine whether your exterior brand and internal culture are in conflict.
Misalignment between the two can have a negative impact on customer service and employee retention rates, so it’s important to make sure they’re in sync.
Examples:
L.L. Bean receives the Most Stable Brand Perception Award.
Functional certainty of stability and toughness. Throughout its 100-year history, you notice that L.L. Bean has been known for high-quality outdoor clothing and a no-nonsense customer service strategy that sets it apart from competitors. Do your boots have a ripped seam? Return them for a free repair and a boot shine. Is a field coat not fulfilling your requirements? Return it, and a customer service representative will personally contact you to find out how the coat may have served you better so that the next design can be improved.
L.L. Bean does not move swiftly enough to keep up with faddish consumer trends. Instead, it focused on its bread and butter products, gradually establishing a repertoire of high-quality goods that people appreciate enough to pay greater prices for.
Uber wins the award for the most improved brand perception.
Whether you like them or despise them, Uber has spent half a billion dollars to restore its tarnished brand perception. Due to an ego-maniacal CEO (now ex-CEO), corruption claims, and extensively published anecdotes about Uber’s poisonous workplace climate, Uber became a villainous brand with a fantastic product.
Through a plethora of targeted PR and ad initiatives, Uber has been getting better at presenting its tales—stories from both the driver’s and passenger’s perspectives—in order to emphasize Uber as a public service product once and for all.
Is Uber now a mission-driven business? Not at all. However, the example demonstrates how important perception is and how costly it may be to correct.
3: PERSONALITY
- What is the stance of your brand?
- How are you feeling?
- What tone of voice do you employ while speaking to your customers or audience?
- What are some of the essential words you use when speaking in front of an audience?
- What is the culture of your job like?
- What words do your employees use to characterize their workplace?
Why is personality important?
Once you’ve determined your brand’s personality, you can define your voice and tone, or how you communicate with your audience across numerous channels. In a congested marketplace, your personality may set you apart from your competitors and make you clearly identifiable. Customers become repeat customers when they know what to expect from you.
Internally, your brand’s personality communicates to employees and applicants about your workplace culture and how they should act.
It can be beneficial to play “this but not that” to understand the intricacies of your values.
Mailchimp is an example.
Our sense of humour is dry. Our style of humor is direct, nuanced, and a little weird. We’re odd yet not offensive, educated but not snooty. “
4 POSITION:
- Who are you aiming to reach out to, and why are you doing so?
- What kind of people are you currently attracting? Is this different from the people you want to attract?
- In which category does your brand compete?
- Where do you now stand with regard to your competitors in the market?
- Where do you want to be with regard to your competition in the market?
- It’s important to think about what your brand can do for your customers that your competitors can’t.
- What is the most convincing proof that your brand delivers on its brand promise?
- Future positioning objective: What is your company’s long-term vision? What are you aiming for?
- Fill-in-the-blank: Because [your company/organization name] is the only [evidence] and [your company/organization name] is the [market definition] that delivers [brand promise] to [target customers].
Why is positioning important?
A position is about defining your own limits as much as it is about advancement. Your brand needs to be realistic about what it can do for your customers now and think about how your business will change in the future.
By implementing a brand strategy, how do you prepare for business growth while keeping your customers informed? by implementing a brand strategy.
Here’s one approach to evolving your brand strategy without jeopardizing your core brand:
Amazon is a good example (it was founded in 2001).
Amazon.com is a retail bookseller that provides rapid access to over 1.1 million books for World Wide Web customers who appreciate books. Amazon.com is different from traditional bookstores because it is easy to get to, has low prices, and has a wide variety of books.
Amazon’s online market position as a destination of amazing ease, low costs, and vast selection has been consistent for nearly 20 years. By adhering to these key values, Amazon has broadened the types of products it ships (not only books) and grew into the juggernaut it is today without confusing or alienating its customers.
5. PROMOTION
- Where do your customers or target audience anticipate finding you?
- Where might the presence of your brand feel out of place?
- What is the elevator pitch for your company?
- Who are your most effective brand ambassadors?
- Who is in charge of your brand’s standards?
- How does your brand manage the situation when a client or customer issue arises?
Why is promotion important?
Before we get started, let me clarify that sales promotion and brand promotion are not the same. Short-term sales promotions, such as limited-time deals, discount codes, donation matching, and freebies, are all about making a sale or transaction right away. Brand promotion aims to build loyalty by winning the hearts and minds of your target audience so that your product or service is the first thing they think of when they need or want to buy something.
It is important to “walk the walk” when it comes to brand promotion.
Here are a few things to keep in mind when promoting your brand:
Appearances are important:
Email and social media voice and tone, logo use, writing and content style requirements, customer service scripts, sales and marketing are messaging all need to be consistent with your brand.
When your audience visits your website and then follows you on Twitter, they should feel as if you’re still having the same discussion with them; the only difference is the channel.
Every employee should have access to a brand voice and style guide as one way to foster brand consistency.
Understand your elevator pitch:
Everyone in your business, from the front desk to the CEO, should be able to describe your company, talk about your value proposition, and demonstrate your values. While each employee must be involved to varying degrees, employee buy-in must begin at the top. If your CEO rolls his or her eyes whenever your company’s purpose is mentioned, it sends a clear message that there is a lack of confidence in the company, which hurts the people who work for, advertise, and sell your company.
Employees need to know your company’s elevator pitch and brand values when they start working for you. But also, your leadership team should be open about your values in inter-company communications and link those values to business decisions.
Externally, the simplest and most successful method of informing your audience who you are and why they should care is to link your messaging with your business goals.
As an example:
My name is Courtney Fanning, and I’m the founder of Big Picture Branding, a consulting firm specializing in brand planning for purpose-driven enterprises. “I often work with people and businesses who are about to make their next big move and need help setting up their brand identity so that their messaging and the best branding agencies align with their bigger goal.”
Be enthusiastic.
Make a fool of yourself! Company awards, staff successes, and customer success stories aren’t simply events to help your brand stand out from the crowd; they’re also a wonderful way to recognize your personnel’s hard work and high caliber. When employees feel valued, workplace satisfaction rises, which is felt by clients and customers as well.
Employees are your most powerful brand ambassadors. Making a point to recognize small and big achievements can impact your brand promotion efforts.
Prepare an S.O.S. plan:
Even the world’s most powerful brands make blunders. An agreed-upon message or customer service script helps you tell your audience what to do in the event of a problem:
- You are aware of the issue.
- Steps are being taken to address the issue.
- You express regret over the issue.
- You will take the appropriate precautions to ensure that it does not happen again.
- Your target audience is extremely significant to you.
- You will go to any length to regain their faith.
Whether your website crashed, you ran out of a product, you have a dissatisfied customer, or you have a public relations blunder, always put on your best face and be sincere.
With a mapped-out brand overview that feels planned and straightforward to follow, you can make writing text and choosing your brand visuals easier.