Brand Empowerment

To empower means to develop confidence in own capacity. This is powerful and liberating at the same time. A greater sense of drive, direction and purpose to achieve. To be Brand Empowered, the brand and its people behind it takes on a strong sense of purpose to deliver its promise to deliver a compelling brand experience. It is a catalyst of brand velocity and growth.

Today, branding activities actualize from the top but brand experience hardly filters down entirely to the entire body within the organization. A brand strategy takes care of the road map and action plan to make this happen. However, without the key ingredient of brand empowerment, the brand experience can waiver and become inconsistent by the time it reaches its customers.

Brand Empowerment should work on all levels. In a SME, it can be the boss who passes down a certain set of instructions to the staff. How to service clients and sell the brand. However, Brand Empowerment is more than that set of instructions. Here are the key aspects of Brand Empowerment.

Who owns the brand? Everyone does!
Everyone in a organization should be empowered to have brand ownership. This means all the staff are able to deliver the brand promise and effectively trained to do so. Think of them as different parts of a body (the brand) to move the body forward. 

Advertising and Brand Delivery, do they align?
What do you communicate and what do you deliver? Is there a gap? Are the customers trying to tell you something? Do you even ask through a simple survey. Customers evolve, why should a brand keep still? Ultimately, if your customers are empowered by your brand, you attained a whole new level of growth. Social media takes brand empowerment to a whole new level. Brand spreads if customers are empowered to do so. Consider a brand platform as a starting point.

Customer Service, a powerful competitive advantage.
In my previous post, I talked about Branded Customer Service. In its essence, it is taking the brand promise and delivering to its customers in an unique, branded way. This can be achieved only if staff are brand empowered in the first place. This transfer can be done through proper brand training at the service front.

Brand Cues
Are there enough cues or touch points which your staff are able to communicate to customers? Do you give enough customers to talk, gossip and spread around? Too often, great brands are let down by lack of the 'long tail'. The tail that allows you to curl up the customers and let them have a reason to come back again. Look at your brand cues, what are those left to marketing which you can refresh, rejuvenate and reengage.

I will leave you with this.

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