MAD Perspectives Blog

This week we continue our Brand and Social Media series, with our colleagues at Taylor O'Brien, with a disucssuion about aligning your social efforts with your brand.

by Christina Brusendorff

Brands have become an integral part of business from both and external and internal business perspectives. We discussed how consistently delivered, relatable brands have an intrinsic link to business performance. Accessing this value is dependent on brand strategy being aligned with business strategy.

In broad terms this fundamental aspect of branding ensures that the brand promise is grounded in the strengths of a business, reflects the vision and the direction of it and supports business objectives.

A clear and aligned brand strategy clarifies, communicates and enforces the vision, key messages and identity externally as well as internally.  From a corporate branding perspective a truly aligned brand allows a business to more easily create a competitive employer brand, attracting not only the best talent but also the best suited candidates.  These brand strengths also allow a business to more easily engage its work force, build commitment and create brand advocates.  This in turn helps create a more consistent service and fell throughout the business that will help improve its performance and drive revenue.

The marketing mix through which a brand chooses to communicate and engage with their target audiences is diverse and continually fragmenting.  In such an environment brand strategy becomes increasingly important with brands needing to take an integrated approach to communication.  This involves employing diverse channels well aligned to the message, the audience and the brand.

From TV advertising to social media, serious thought needs to be given to the combination of platforms used, how these suite and complement each other, what is communicated, how consumers are engaged through these and, most importantly, what is the ROI (whether financial or attributed to some other value).

This applies to external B2B and B2C communication; Facebook deals, billboards, Twitter and to internal communications; emails, intranets, blogs, posters, events, induction programmes.  But all of them, whether online or offline communication, need to be integrated; cross-promoting and reiterating the core brand.

We believe that success is created by aligning brand business and communications strategy.

What is your perspective?

Christina is an Account Executive at Taylor O’Brien, a creative consultancy based in Manchester.  With a Masters in marketing and a passion for branding and business, Christina builds and inspires brands across a wide variety of industry sectors.