By Jen Derks, Founder + Creative Director of Four Fin
Teams united by a clear brand have more fun and get more done.
Building a business is no easy feat. It can be a thrill at times, but it can also feel like skiing at the bottom of the run in spring. If you know, you know. That slushy snow grips your board and slows you down just when you thought you were crusin’.
So, what’s holding you back? Maybe you blame the sudden shift in the market, or the entitlement of the next generation. Maybe you wish your team would just “get it” or maybe you need better employees. The answer is often none of these things.
It might be your brand.
When your brand isn’t clear and inspiring, every bit of growth demands more effort. Brand misalignment acts like slush, draining your momentum and slowing your progress. When an early-stage founder is building their team and their company, they control a lot. They set the culture, the vision, the talking points to media, and the initiatives. But as a company grows the founder can’t be everywhere, making sure the activities and mindsets are aligned. They can’t hold the brand together on their own.
What’s slowing you down?
Successful companies with strong brand alignment have brand foundations that actually inspire people inside and outside of the company. That kind of inspired brand alignment drives marketing momentum, energizes leadership teams, and ensures every team member is focusing their efforts in the right direction.
Your brand should be resting on a good foundation, and headed toward a clear vision, and the leadership team and the rest of the team should all be moving in that direction. Something centered, and strong, like this:
You’ll notice leadership and team are equal in this picture. The team should be as connected as the leadership is to both your foundations and your vision if the company is going to achieve sustainable company growth and market leadership.
Through our work with clients and our own business, we’ve seen three common challenges companies face:
Your brand is clear and inspiring to no one – This is a foundational issue, and it usually means your brand was built on vague or outdated principles or wasn’t really defined at all.
Your brand is good, but few employees know or care about it – Oof. Why not? Maybe you thought sharing the deck with them once in an all-hands was all you had to do to get them excited about it. It’s not.
Your brand is good, employees love it, but your business is starting to outgrow the brand – This is a positioning problem and calls for a reassessment of how your brand can evolve to support your current and future goals.
Are you facing one of these scenarios? It’s common. You might have a brand structure that looks something more like these charts:
We love modern art, and art in general, but these scenarios don’t produce great results. If your Brand Foundations aren’t anchoring your team, or your company vision isn’t in harmony with the rest of the brand pyramid, no amount of new processes will solve the slush at the bottom of the hill.
Strengthening your brand alignment pyramid
If your company feels stuck or you feel slushy progress internally, there is good news. It could be fun to fix. Sure, you could rewrite a set of processes, host a happy hour, require everyone to come back to the office, rework your OKRs again or have an all-hands to review the numbers again.
That could help.
Or, you could light up your team and drive results in a more human, inspiring way. You might just need a bit of brand re-alignment and excitement about why you are here, how you are different and where you are headed. This isn’t “fluff.” It’s glue.
While no two companies are alike, some best practices apply when wanting to add glue to your organization in the form of inspiring brand truths that guide decisions.
1. Start with the Foundations
Revisiting your foundational brand work and alignment with the vision is where most companies need support. Fresh insights from customers, employees, and executives can surface key truths. Caution: it is almost impossible to do this work for yourself. Trust us, we have tried. A fresh perspective is almost always needed. Working with an external partner helps ensure objectivity and expertise that also comes without any internal politics causing bias. Let an expert guide your team, and build something meaningful.
If you are unsure what we mean by brand foundations, you can think of them as your truths. Brand strategy foundations are guiding statements like your positioning, your values, your vision, your brand promise or a core guiding concept. It can also encompass things like culture statements, personality and tone of voice if those are a big part of your distinction.
When you look at your current brand strategy foundations, answer honestly the following questions:
- Does this feel like it could describe any company in our space, or is it unique to us?
- Does this make it clear how we should act and what to prioritize?
- Is this inspiring, or corporate slog in a deck?
2. Build Buy-In
Achieving buy-in begins long before strategic brand foundations are set—involving your team from the start ensures that people feel connected to the outcome. But you can back into buy-in even without re-working your established brand pillars. Some ways you can go about that:
- Engage team leaders to show them how their roles—and their teams—already contribute to your company’s goals and vision.
- Celebrate their already aligned contributions in the language of your pillars.
- Set shared priorities that reflect the vision and are based on the brand foundations.
3. Maintain the Momentum
Once you’ve aligned foundations and achieved initial buy-in, the work doesn’t stop. Rallying the team around the vision and foundations must be an ongoing effort across departments. Regularly communicate with your full team—not just in kickoffs or all-hands meetings, but through day-to-day leadership. Ask, “What can we build on this foundation? How might we drive even closer to our vision?” This is not easy. It takes forming new habits, having diligence and focus. But it separates the short game opportunists from the long game players.
4. Reset When Needed
Even the strongest foundations need a reset eventually. If progress stalls or your company vision shifts, gather internal and external feedback to understand what pillars no longer resonate or what adjustments may be needed. Supportive external guidance can again be critical here, ensuring the right edits are made to move the company forward.
Don’t overlook the power of design
Foundations aren’t just about strategy—a brand should look the part too. Good design motivates teams, fosters pride, and provides clear visual cues that reinforce the brand pillars. Internally, better design makes training and communication around the brand easier. Externally, it lets you share the brand message with a unique tone, consistency and excitement.
Never underestimate how much clarity and momentum a strong visual identity can bring to your brand. Design evokes emotions and emotions help to create beliefs.
Take the first step toward alignment
If your brand and team aren’t perfectly aligned today, don’t worry—it’s very common. Look at it as an opportunity to inject a fresh energy into your company. The first step is taking a step outside of your day to day responsibilities and reflecting on what’s true.
Luckily, our upcoming event, The Alignment Advantage, is designed to guide you through this reflection. We’ll do actual work, as a small group to uncover some ahas, or pinpoint some sticking spots in your brand. If you are thinking that now might be a good time to realign your brand for better marketing, better leadership, and better business growth, join us. We promise we’ll keep it light and fun, yet impactful. Lectures inspire no one.
Our ultimate goal is business growth that is driven by the whole team, gliding smoothly like a run down the mountain with a freshly waxed board or skis.
Click here to register for The Alignment Advantage and spend an hour outside of the slush with us, so you can build more inspired and aligned teams.
If you need one on one support with brand alignment, reach out.
