Posted by Jeffry Pilcher, guest blogger
Here are nine questions you should ask to test and see if branding is part of your credit union's DNA.
- Can I articulate our brand’s essence in three words or less? Can our brand be distilled down to a short, distinct statement?
- Have we captured the core tenets of our brand in one simple document and presented it to everyone in our organization?
- Do we have a cross-departmental brand team? Is ”brand” on the agenda of our senior management meetings? Does senior management evaluate and discuss the health of the brand and branding initiatives regularly?
- Does our staff know what our brand is and how to live it out?
- Have we aligned HR functions like training, hiring and orientation with our brand? Are new employees screened according to the brand, and are they trained on brand standards and values?
- Do we deliver a consistent brand experience across all touchpoints? Is our look-and-feel consistent? Have we maintained a consistent brand voice for many years?
- Have we narrowly defined our target audience? Have we focused on a specific demographic, lifestyle, age, etc.?
- Have we established a budget specifically for building our brand (e.g., research) – a budget separate from marketing?
- Do we quantitatively monitor, measure, evaluate and assess the health of our brand? Such research things like name awareness, brand perceptions and competitive strengths/weaknesses?
If you answered “yes” to all nine questions, you are truly a branded organization.
6-8 “yes” answers is still pretty good. Your organization definitely “gets” branding, you just have a few more things to do.
3-5 “yes” answers means you’re on the branded path, but there may be some big discrepancies between your strategy and the experience you deliver.
0-2 “yes” answers suggests you have a lot of work to do on your brand, especially how it is managed internally.
Jeffry Pilcher is president of ICONiQ and the chief blogger for The Financial Brand blog.
