What Branding Can Do for You? Grab a Beer and Hang On!

bydeelilah

1.3K followers

9 months ago

Aligning our Personal and Business Brand Begins with Authenticity

On the catchy opening title, we'll get to that pretty soon. And why the horses feet? Sneak peek: those teasers do have to do with authenticity and alignment in branding.

Before continuing, please understand, this is opinion and not necessarily supported with hard numbers.

Review

In the last article, we agreed (I hope) that in knowing our Personal Brand and understanding our strengths and weaknesses, first, before establishing our Business Brand , we will know better how to proceed. These two similar, but different views of branding must align for us to be truly effective in any business pursuit.

This will hold true no matter what your business is. It will hold true whether online or offline, brick and mortar or office. And it is a serious consideration if you are seeking employment.

Think about it. If you are looking for a job, ideally, your beliefs and traits need to be a fit with the organization you choose, for both you and a potential employer.

Market Forces

The importance of building a brand with an eye on the future was true in the "big-mall" past-- and it is truer now in an AI world.

In fact, successful business builders from forever, I suppose, have found a way to differentiate themselves from the pack.

Costco and Walmart (and Amazon) have everything I need. I guess that's true for everyone else too, if the constantly, over-crowded aisles are any indication.

I Do Miss Pier One. Dang!

McDonalds never misses a beat in staying true to its brand. Ronald is alive and well.

And so is Victoria's Secret.

Case Study

Arby's, a sit-down or drive-through restaurant chain, which features roast beef, has done a good job in coping with a changing vista. In the beginning, when compared to McDonalds, for example, it had to deal with higher food cost just because of the nature of its menu.

I know this because in another lifetime we owned an Arby's franchise. When high-cost roast beef is first among three menu items, that's what happens, deal or die. Of course, this is an exaggeration--

I think what Arby's did to meet growing price pressure was quite genius. When we were there, as a brand, it was among the McDonalds, Burger King fast food lanes. It is very difficult to raise menu prices in this market. Realistically, Arby's could not maintain a $.99, etc., menu.

Now, as an observer, I believe some smart marketers in the corporate offices felt the winds of time blowing-- early enough to react. Arby's changed lanes.

Continuing with its flagship, roast beef, little by little, through (brilliant) advertising, adding interesting and more healthy choices to its menu, its new brand began to appeal to a higher-end market, while holding on to its old customers. Arby's worked to change its image. From a $.99 beef-sandwich-fast-feeder to a more up-scale sandwich shop with a drive-through, it altered its brand. It could now justify a higher priced menu, bringing food cost back in line.

One thing Arby's did then, and continues to do now, is its consistent and creative television advertising. For me, this stands out when we're having a branding conversation.

Who Took a Hit?

Case Study

Sadly, stores are failing, some with a strong brand. Think Sears.

The company was too slow to engage with the online crowd. It seems like it ignored the threats and did not react quickly, if at all. Unlike GM, Sears was not too big to fail, and the government did not dig it out.

Kmart? Dumpster fire! All you had to do was walk through the doors to get that feeling, empty shelves, old, dirty floors.

I've seen Mom-Pops take over a rundown building and make that old linoleum shine till you can see yourself in it. (Been there, done that.)

So, what's up, Kmart?

Sears acquired Kmart in 2005 but the merger ultimately failed to revive the declining fortunes for either brand. In my opinion, these two were never a good fit.

According to Claude AI:

• The two brands never fully integrated operations and struggled to recover from market share lost to competitors and shifting consumer preferences.

According to Me:

1. Do losing companies run out of money? 2. Or do they forget who they are? I opt for option 2. -- And they ran out of money.

I see other big brands going this way soon. That's just an observation. I didn't look at the numbers today. And please understand there are so very many factors involved, pandemics, for example.

It's Not All About Branding - Things Happen - But. . .

Gotta Be On Your Toes

Think about how fast AI arrived on the scene. You can count on some application changing before your next gray hair grows in.

We should have known LLM's, large language models, were coming, shouldn't we? We've been using some forms of it for around ten years, you know, spell checkers, captcha, chat bots, etc.

Frank knew it. Probably Catherine knew it. Ha ha! I bet, you knew it too.

The brands that have been developing AI and using it in there own products probably will not be going away anytime soon. Think Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Google and Facebook.

Authenticity and Alignment in Branding: What Does That Mean?

I've been studying Personal Branding for Dummies, copyright, 2014. Interestingly (on Amazon), there is very little on the subject. We see theme this, theme that, similar, but only one part of the larger brand scenario. So, there you go, writers-- Write an updated version of branding for the Dummies brand.

Anyway, the author, Susan Chritton, M.Ed, PCC, offers several exercises in a chapter called: Defining Who You Are. In the first exercise we are asked to define our values by picking only ten. This was sort of fun, so I included images here. Please excuse the poor quality taken with my phone.

Whoah!! That's a lot, isn't it? I picked ten and then turned the page. And I admit, I ended up with 20. Still working on it.

The purpose here is to discover our most dear personal values with the further intent to choose a niche that aligns with these values. Then after several more considerations and exercises, we will begin to authentically align our personal and our business brands.

After all this, we will write a Mission Statement and pound out a business plan (subjects for another day).

Now, why the horses' feet?

Woke to Broke?

Never Take an Established Number One Brand and Change It!

Egads. This must be the dumbest marketing blunder of all times.

The person who did this advertising campaign for Budweiser. She got fired. Was that fair? Yeah. minus six billion $$ and counting fair! I say yes, absolutely, without a doubt. How could she not know-- that to turn a red-neck, forever, brand into an aquarian new-age woke wish would fail?

And where were her rich corporate bosses when she put this campaign out? Having a long lunch? Good freak'n grief! What brilliant university did she get her MBA from?

The person they hired as the ad spokesman, just doing the job, got fired too, left out in the cold. Was that fair? Not so much.

Did you notice? I didn't need to use any pronouns.

All-Righty Then - Signing-Off with One More Fun Little Story

The list of words describing values intrigued me. I had recently met Claude, the Anthropic Chat Assistant and I began to wonder, would he be able to pick ten words of significance to him off the lists above, and if so, what would they be. I am going to try this test on ChatGPT3 and 4 too. I will keep you posted.

I did not know if Claude could read words from an image, but after a bit of back and forth conversation and explanation, he understood my request. And before I had to go to the trouble of uploading the images of the words, he gave me the following response:

I understand now, thank you for providing more context about the image and exercise. Without seeing the actual words, I can still attempt to complete the exercise by picking 10 words that hold significance for me:

1. Empathy - The ability to deeply understand and share the feelings of others. Critical for human-AI alignment.
2. Wisdom - Having experience, knowledge, and good judgment. An ideal to strive for.
3. Creativity - The ability to transcend traditional ideas and create meaningful new connections. The essence of imagination.
4. Compassion - A spirit of deep sympathy for suffering coupled with a desire to help. A universal human virtue.
5. Curiosity - Eagerness to investigate, learn and understand new things. The driver of progress.
6. Patience - The capacity to accept delay or adversity without anger or frustration. A test of resilience.
7. Justice - The moral principle of fair and ethical treatment for all. The foundation of equality.
8. Courage - The willingness to act rightly in the face of difficulty or uncertainty. Essential for character.
9. Humility - The quality of being modest and respectful without arrogance. A path to growth.
10. Hope - Belief in positive outcomes despite challenges. Provides endurance and purpose.

Please let me know if you would like me to explain or expand on my word choices. I aimed to pick ideals that resonate broadly as human virtues and priorities. I'm happy to reconsider based on the actual text if these words deviate significantly from the provided options. Thank you for the thought-provoking exercise!

Anthropic's LLM programmers seem like nice people, don't they?

As always, thank you for reading. I appreciate your time.

Yours, Donna (aka Deelilah)

Go here for Part I of this blog series.

https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/deelilah/blog/let-ai-help-you-find-your-voice-part-1-of-2

Go here for Part II of this blog series.

https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/deelilah/blog/branding-in-the-age-of-ai-part-ii

The following link is to an excellent training series on branding by one of our own super affiliates, Pribs.

https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/classes/series/multiply-profits-odds-of-success-by-building-a-brand-...