Powerful brands don’t look to consumers to define them, they do what they believe and customers follow.
Customers can see what’s real and what’s not and they aren’t afraid to let you know! They recognise when businesses fail to keep their promises and when they are being disingenuous.
But who can blame these brands? They have been doing this type of thing for decades. Looking to the consumer to dictate what they should stand for. They’ve even gone so far as to pay consumers to tell them what their brand’s core values should be. Once they find what works, they market the heck out of it and try to get people to buy into the idea.
But that approach comes across as fake. Brands pretending to be something that they’re not just to please the masses. It just doesn’t work, and customers have been outright rejecting it!
Authentic brand beliefs
On the other hand, when businesses choose to adopt authentic brand beliefs, it puts them in a positive light! And customers notice that too. When brands choose this route, it alters their negative perception and even helps to create trust.
If a brand’s beliefs happen to align with customers’ beliefs, they become loyalists. Why? Because people buy into belief, not pandering.
Let’s take a vacuum cleaner brand that authentically believes in brave design, combined with constant improvement and innovative engineering as an example. They clearly state their beliefs for all customers to see and in addition, they mention that they will stick to their promise.
This brand doesn’t have to spin anything for people to trust them, it just has to stick to its promise for people to come on board. And they do! They even pay large sums of money for the product that does what it claims. And while it’s true that customers are buying a well-made vacuum cleaner, they are also buying into the brand and what it stands for.
This strong unwavering belief is what builds an incredibly successful brand, not only in terms of making money but in terms of innovation, industry disruption and influence as well.
The vacuum cleaner company doesn’t waver in its commitment to its belief and that’s what will create a fiercely loyal customer base. A customer base that would even be willing to follow that brand’s belief to the ends of the earth!
If you want your brand to be powerful, you must be authentic
Customers today demand authenticity because it really matters to them. They look for the kind of authenticity that lives firmly at a brand’s core, not some mass swayed nonsense pulled out of thin air. They also look at what a brand does and the reason the product or service exists. If the brand has a genuine core belief that people resonate with, they are more likely to become loyalists.
That’s why it’s essential that every brand uncovers or rediscovers its core belief. It’s essential that as a brand you dig deep and look inside, not outside to find out exactly what it is.
This kind of authentic belief will form the foundation of your brand and must stem from the principles of your business. Principles are carved in stone and are unchanging. Not to be confused with practices that are fluid and constantly changing.
Authenticity must be a part of your company culture
If a brand can’t instil its beliefs into its company culture, it will run into problems. Every business needs to fully commit to its beliefs. A brand’s beliefs must be obvious to everyone and a part of everything that goes on within the company. They need to be executed with conviction and should be part of the company’s DNA.
These beliefs must go beyond marketing, they must form the core principles of what your business stands for. They should be your mission and the reason why you get out of bed every morning. Why? Because consumers are not the only ones who will buy into your brand’s beliefs, employees and stakeholders will too!
Your brand’s internal culture should reflect the brand itself and if that’s contrary to your brand’s core belief system, you need to correct it and make sure that everyone is on the same page. Doing this can be understandably challenging due to constant factors that conspire to take a brand’s beliefs off course. So to instil and maintain authenticity, you need great execution, creativity and a lot of persistence.
You don’t just simply cross your fingers and hope that employees get on board. You need to make it happen through an employee handbook for example that clearly states your brand’s core beliefs so that there can be no room for misinterpretation.
Conclusion
Branding begins on the inside, with an internal culture first. So if your employee’s behaviour doesn’t line up with your brand’s beliefs, your business is doomed from the start and will likely be seen as just another disingenuous company’s attempt to reel customers in, no matter what the cost.
Unfortunately, there is not a one size fits all blueprint for establishing a company’s core beliefs. But once you manage to crack it, you’ll see a whole lot of success when done right!
