Building Impressions=Building your Brand: The Five Key Components to Building Your Impressions

We all want our brands to be successful. We are brand-builders. Building impressions is a success principle that takes the rules of branding beyond a name and logo and applies them to five key components. Herein lies the secret to building a more successful brand.

As you build your impressions, it is a win-win-win for you, your brand and your organization. To help you with that process, here are the five "Building Blocks for Building Your Impressions."

Block 1 — A Higher Calling

The higher calling is the ultimate statement to describe or summarize the reasons for doing what you do. A higher calling embodies the entire brand. Your higher calling connects your brand better to your targeted customer.

Nike knows this. Selling shoes and apparel is the business, but selling lifestyle is the higher calling. The higher calling of Zappos is "Delivering Happiness" as well as shoes.

Block 2 — At the Core

In branding, there is a “rule of seven” that states that at least every seven years a brand should be re-evaluated to determine if it is still relevant, resonating well with customers, becoming stale or just needs a change. This evaluation includes a review of your core traits. If something must change, branding plays a big part in communicating those changes, but the changes should still involve and reflect the core elements of the brand.

Keds started in 1916 and grew to be a great brand until getting away from its core. To fix that, it landed Taylor Swift to become its spokesperson for a new campaign called "Ladies First Since 1916," and returned to its core roots to serve and honour women. That brought the brand back.

Block 3 — Your Goals

One of the primary functions of branding is to align it with your goals. Branding brings your goals to life. If the goal is to have happy recurring customers, you have to intentionally build happy impressions with your customers.

Horizon Transport transports trailers. But it also created its “eight essentials for service” to help guide the organization in meeting its goals. Branding its goals helps it accomplish its goals, and those branded goals are part of its brand.

Block 4 — On the Inside

You do not get much more inside of an organization or brand than the culture.

The best brands in the world pay as much attention to their cultures as they do to their customers, products and services. They understand that building a brand that builds impressions starts on the inside, then goes to the outside as reflected in their visual branding and branded environments.

Block 5 — Taking the Stage

Taking the stage simply means making it visible, real, tangible, understood and experienced. It is where the goals, core attributes and higher calling come to life on the outside, after starting on the inside by putting them on a stage to start building your impressions. Your stages are the places where you build your impressions—at home, at work, in the office and in your branded environments.

Branding is what you say about your company and your brand. What others actually say about you determines how your brand is seen. And what they say is highly determined by their experience with your brand.

Experiences build a brand. As you build your brands, consider that a higher calling—your core attributes, your goals and your culture—all play a part on the stage of building your impressions.

And remember, anyone can make an impression, but building them is the key to success.