Your Batting Average is Your Brand
Did you know your social enterprise’s name is not its brand? Did you know its cleverly designed logo isn’t its brand either? But your company’s brand is defined by SOMETHING, right?! Sure it is. To understand what, swap the word “brand” for “reputation.”
Hmm. Now you’re onto something.
Bestselling brand author, Marty Neumeier defines brand as “A person’s perception of a product, service, experience, or organization.” Put another way, your social enterprise’s brand is actually what people believe, say and share about your company. It’s a reputation formed by the perceptions of those who engage your business.
So if your brand is a reputation defined by the people who interact with it, how can you influence the shape it takes?
A Good Batting Average Makes a Great Brand
Admittedly, I don’t know much about baseball, but the calculation of batting averages might help illustrate brand as reputation. A player’s batting average is essentially found by dividing the number of hits by the number of times she was officially at bat. You can think of your impact business’s reputation in the same way.
Your reputation is a record of stated, kept and broken promises. Your ‘at bats’ are every instance a person interacts with your business. Your ‘hits’ are the resulting encounters where that person went away feeling like you kept your promise—elevating your reputation. Miss more promises than you hit, and your reputation plummets.
In short, your social enterprise’s brand is emotionally defined by its average of kept promises. As customers interact with your business, they mentally note and socially share emotional assessments of how well each interaction lined up with the promises you made that motivated them to engage.
Though, like calculating a batting average, defining your brand is a bit more complicated than this. Promises have to be thoughtfully formed and effectively executed. Types of hits are to be considered, too with a customer’s resulting “Wow!” weighing more than their “Meh.” Essentially, however, that average of kept promises informs a person’s decision to call on your social enterprise for a reliable home run hit, or leave you in the dugout.
If You Build It…
Now that you know what your social enterprise’s brand is, want some help building it? Influencing the shape your reputation takes is a brand-building process we at Thinkory break down into three focus areas: Brand Strategy, Brand Naming and Brand Identity Design. Each are up for grabs in our Social Enterprise Branding Giveaway.
Read last week’s article about our honest motivations behind running the giveaway and enter your impact business today.