How Would You Score Your Brand?

World Cup fever has begun in earnest. With less than 100 days to go now until the first kick off, all the teams are gearing up to win. There will be matches to be won or lost between now and then as we warm up for the tournament but the real battle facing the England team is the battle to win the confidence of the nation.  While Paralympics GB is doing well at the games and exceeding expectations, the England football team seems doomed to eternal failure before the players get anywhere near the pitch.

The football pundits will debate for hours on whether the problem lies with the players, the manager or the English league system and they’re probably all right to a degree.  But there is another problem. Central to the England team’s winning potential is its brand issue – the team has lost credibility as a World Cup contender a lack of genuine belief from supporters translates to a lack of performance on the pitch.

It’s a high profile example of just how important a brand can be in a company’s success. The brand is much more than the company’s logo; it is the customer’s compelling reason to buy and they will not feel compelled by a brand they cannot believe in.

So what makes a compelling brand?

Here are our five golden rules:

1. It has to be distinctive, which means that it has to own its own space in the competitive marketplace
2. It needs to be engaging – there needs to be a reason why it attracts customers and keeps them coming back to it
3. It needs to be trustworthy – whether customers are attracted to you brand for quality of service, calibre of product or cost-effectiveness of price your proposition needs to be consistent so that customers trust you to deliver on its promises
4. It has to be recognisable, which means connecting the core proposition to a visual style and consistent marketing vocabulary
5. It needs to be adaptable to embrace developments in market conditions, new products or a change of business strategy

Across the world, fortunes are spent on building and protecting brands but applying brand best practice on a smaller scale doesn’t need to cost a fortune.  Creating a brand that customers will believe in is a matter of (consistently) playing to win.