Take a moment to think about all the messages that are thrown in your face each day: commercials, product placement, spam, at the bottom of your friends' emails, ads on Facebook, billboards, street signs, bumper stickers, ads on the radio, and even on your Kindle.
Messages are everywhere. It is no longer the biggest corporations with the most money who can be in front of the public. This is a very positive movement forward for smaller organizations, but it also had its downsides. The more messages people are bombarded with, the more numb they become to actually hearing those messages. Just because you have more opportunities to get your message in front of the public doesn't mean the public is listening.
Organizations are constantly looking for the "next big idea" that will propel them in front of the public's eye ahead of their competitors. For example, some people have jumped hook, line, and sinker into the social media world. They developed flashy Facebook pages, got twitter accounts, started a blog without thinking about why they would do something like that, if they have time to keep up with the medium, or if it will even reach their audience. Jumping on the bandwagon of the "next big idea" will not necessarily propel you into good standing with your audience. If what you are doing does not reflect who you are, if you have no strategy or sustainable plan behind these moves, many times you will end up looking silly, hurting the impressions of the clients you already have and not gaining any new clientele. The reason this happens is because great brands are formed around who you are and not what you do. See 5 Truths of Branding. Let me summarize. It's not what you do, it's who you are that should be the foundation for every message you send.
Before you start any marketing messages, there are three very important steps you must take to understand your organizational culture. Using this as your foundation for your messaging will produce a brand completely unique from your competitors because it is uniquely you.
Study the strengths of your leadership
Many organizations fall into the trap of making decisions in a reactionary way instead of a proactive strategy. They watch every move their competition makes. If the competitor starts doing something new, you must also do it. You can't let them get too far ahead of you. The problem with this line of thinking is that you, as an organization or as a leader will never be your competitor. The positive aspect of this is that your competitor will never be you. Begin being proactive by understanding who you are as a leader. If there are many members in leadership at your organization, sit down together and discover the strengths each of you possess. Gallup has an amazing assessment of strengths that they have used in large businesses across the globe. It is called the Gallup Strengths Finder Assessment. I highly recommend each of your leadership team members take this online assessment. This assessment can help you see people for the talents they uniquely possess rather than the talents they do not possess. Your brand is in the mind of the public. Every experience they have with your organization is going to influence that brand. If you are honest about the talents and strengths you do possess as well as the talents you do not posses, you can start to send messages that are consistent with who you truly are. Influence your brand by being truthful about who you really are.
Understand how those strengths develop your unique culture
Once you understand your talents as a leader or leadership team, you can begin to see how these talents can be used to develop a unique culture in your organization. Obviously, an organization with a leadership talented in empathy is going to have a very different culture from a team who possesses analytical talents. Some people are naturally talented with people skills while others are uniquely gifted with executing skills. Your organization also has passions. What does your leadership team care about more than anything else in the world? If they care about money only, that will form your culture. If your leadership team is passionate about local economy, good fashion, at-risk children, the list is truly endless, those passion are going to play a major role in the culture of your organization. Don't try to segregate the passions of your life with the passions of your work; each of these elements of self-awareness help build a culture that is uniquely you.
Leverage your organizational culture to produce a consistent message of who you are and why you exist
Once you take the time to understand your talents and strengths as a leader and then begin to explore the unique culture that makes up your organization, you can begin to leverage those unique qualities in order to stand out from your competition. By being honest about who you are and why your organization exists, you can begin to send a consistent message to the public. The more consistent your message, the more clarity the public will have about what makes you different from all the rest.
You don't have to discover the next big way to advertise to the public. You don't have to shout louder or put down your competition in order to be heard. It's time to step out of the crowd where everyone is trying to say and do the same things. Instead, leverage your unique culture to be the reason people come together to talk. Find out how you are completely unique from any other company in the world and use that as the foundation for everything you say and do.
Comments (0)