1. How to navigate your
BRAND through change
©2013 by Grownman Brand

2. “It’s like a big blender. Brand is
the sum of the good, the bad, the
ugly. It’s defined by your best
product as well your worst
product. It’s defined by your
award-winning ads as well as
the god-awful things that
slipped through the cracks. It’s
defined by the accomplishments
of your best employees – the
shining stars who could do no
wrong - as well as the mishaps
of the worst hire you’ve ever
made. It’s also consumer
comments overheard in the
hallway or in a chat room on the
Internet.”
-Scott Bedbury from A New BrandWorld
What is Brand?

3. Brand is NOT a logo, an
ad, a color or a slogan. Stated in a Zen
like way, brand is. It’s simply what
your customers believe about you. It’s
their collective impression of how well
you fill a need or solve a problem in
their lives. Brand can’t be bought or
sold, it can only be nurtured and slowly
shifted.
In fact, those who love you and those
who don’t aren't shy about telling you
what they think. If you’re really good,
your customers will love and respect
you.This is important because respect
doesn’t often come with forgiveness
like love does. It’s all but guaranteed
that you will make mistakes. Make
becoming loved one of your goals.
Brand is what THEY
believe about you.

4. What can YOU control?
YOU can control the quality of the
“job” you fulfill in every channel in
which you interact with customers.
You cannot fake it.
The relevancy of a communication,
the sweetness of a personal
interaction or the aroma customers
experience as they enter one of
your locations are all elements that
are under your control.
You can control the experience.
But, to be able to control the
experience you have to be able to
listen.You have to know how to
solve people’s problems.They have
to need you.
Solve Problems in your
customers lives

5. It’s all about the
EXPERIENCE[CX].
Working to improve customer
experience is the most important
work your company can do.
A location facelift, a wonderful ad or
a beautiful new logo are all
worthless if the customers’
experience is poor. Customer
service is often confused with
customer experience.
The quality of your customer
service is only a part of the
customer’s experience. Many
companies focus solely on great face
to face personal service but fall
short when it comes to easy to use,
well designed experiences in the
digital space or on the telephone.
Customer service is only
part of [CX]

6. Great [CX] is delivering on
your value proposition.
A clear and easy way to
understand value proposition is
to think of it as your promise to
your customers. It helps
customers decide whether or
not you can make their lives
better.
Not being relevant with your
marketing efforts will drive down
the quality of your customer
experience.When customers are
served marketing messages
asking them to buy something
they already have or don’t need,
they feel like you don’t know
them. If they believe you don’t
know them... how can they trust
you? Great customer experience
is built on a foundation of trust.
Deliver what you
promise

7. What exactly is the act of
BRANDING?
The work of Branding is
shifting perception
Successful branding is executed by
listening and gaining an understanding
of what your customers need.To do
this you have to continuously ask your
customers if they are happy and if
they’re not what could you change to
make them happy? Make the changes
and tell your customers about it.
Net Promoter Score (NPS) is far and
away the simplest way to begin
measuring customer experience. It’s
not just the overall score that’s
important, the comments in
association with the “would you
recommend?” question can provide
very valuable feedback. When you
record, track and classify the
comments of an NPS survey, you get a
much more informed picture of what
you can do to provide a better
customer experience.

8. Survey, Survey, Survey
A few slides back we stated that
brand is not a logo, a slogan or a
color. These things are very
important but they are not the
predominant factors in defining your
brand experience in the minds of
customers. We don’t mean that it’s
ok to have a poor physical
appearance or a hard to recognize
logo.
But, we would argue that if you’ve
been successful in business for some
time with what you yourself
consider a less then perfect facility
or a logo you’re no longer fond of,
these elements are not highly
significant contributors to the
quality of the overall customer
experience.
(then survey some more)

9. What do you DESIRE
to become?
Every company has a business plan.
These plans are often created from
a combination of knowing what your
customers want and what you
desire to become.
In addition to your metrics-driven
strategies, your business has a vision
for its future.We like to call this the
“what you want to be when you
grow up” strategy. It’s very
important and often the part of a
business plan that drives your
culture toward a common goal.
Done well, desire can be a culture-
building, unifying force.You can
evolve by building on your past
brand “credits” or polish a severely
tarnished image by starting over
with a new name and improved
offerings.
Make plans, then revise.

10. DESIRE is manifested as ART.
“It’s really hard to design
products by focus groups. A
lot of times, people don’t
know what they want until
you show it to them… That
doesn’t mean we don’t listen
to customers, but it’s hard for
them to tell you what they
want when they’ve never seen
anything remotely like it.”
Steve Jobs

11. There is no roadmap for ART.
To be successful in manifesting
desire, you have to strive to make
art.This is the practice of testing
ideas and combining things that
have never been combined
before.You have to be brave
when you do this because you
will often fail, but that goes with
the territory when you’re on the
path to doing something great.
Having people inside your
company dedicated to
discovering what’s next is as
important as managing the day to
day operations. If these two
activities run parallel to each
other your chances of becoming
what you desire to become are
greatly enhanced.
(that’s why it’s called art)

12. Creationism or
Evolution?
The question is, what needs to
change and how much do you want
to change? Do you want to become
something new or do you want to
evolve?
Evolving your brand is the act of
altering the formula for your
customers’ experience in a way that is
perceived by your customers as real,
positive change while not straying too
far from your roots.The art of great
evolution involves changing the right
combination of elements that impact
customer experience.
Creationism, by contrast, is believing
that you need to leave your past
behind and start over. Embracing
creationism means that you consider
your brand to be damaged beyond
repair and your only course to remedy
this is to hit restart.

13. Have a little
DISRUPTIVE
in your future?
In school you get in trouble for
being disruptive. In business, being
disruptive can really pay off.
A new logo, some paint and new
furniture are important but these
are things that have only a minor
effect on improving customer
experience.
To separate your company from the
pack you have to be disruptive.
To be disruptive you have to be
creative.
To be creative you have to combine
things that have never been
combined before.
One of these things
is not like the other

14. How to navigate your
BRAND through change
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