Have You Tried Using a Brand Key for Brand Building?

The marketing, branding and general advertising industry has plenty of clichés and cheesy one liners. It’s well worth nothing though that sometimes, some of the old school methods do work and they are tools which are often overlooked by the new generations of would-be entrepreneurs.

The brand key is a great example and something that while many new age marketers will find prehistoric to a degree, can be very useful for helping you shape the overall look and proposition of your brand before you start dishing out loose elevator pitches left, right and centre to anyone who will listen. Or is genuinely stuck in an elevator with you.

So, the typical brand key looks like this:

It’s a diagram with nine differing elements of brand structure. The breakdown of the nine elements is important. If you think you have a solid brand/business idea, consider running it through the following exercise and producing your own brand key. The chances are it will throw up some holes or gaps in your thinking which you can in turn plug and strengthen your approach.

1.Root Strengths – What is the most compelling reason for a consumer to use or buy from you. What’s the big deal?

2.Competitive Environment – Self explanatory in most cases. Based on your root strengths who are your closest existing competitors in a similar space and what are their strengths?

3.Target – Who is your target audience and what is their need that you fill. If you want to go further start to think about the scale of this target.

4.Insight – What research, data or other insights do you have about your target audience and their needs or relationship to your provided service or product? What do you know that will help your business succeed or gain the edge over the competition?

5.Benefits - What are the benefits of your brand? What is a consumer or partner going to get from using your brand? What is the end benefit to them?

6.Values, Beliefs, Personality – You know your strengths and what you offer. But how do you feel about it? What does your brand represent or stand for? You need to have a stance, a personality, you could even call it morals. When you’ve created this, consider if it’s unique to you.

7.Reasons to Believe – Can you back up your claims vs the benefits of your product or service? What can you show consumers to prove that you can deliver and that you can make a difference? In simple terms, how can you prove your product does what you say it can do?

8.Discriminator – This is your USP. What is the single most compelling reason for a consumer to choose you over other comparable products and services? Do you have more than one?

9.Essence - Take all you’ve already completed and distil it and compact it down into one all encompassing message. This is the really tough bit!

Try this and see if you can do it. Let us know if you found it surprisingly difficult or perhaps if it was a breeze and you really are just that good!