A branding enthusiast, entrepreneur, and businesswoman, she ignites action. For more than 20 years Karen has been developing solutions and implementing methods that make things happen. She started her first business at the age of 22, built two successful companies—an award-winning ad agency and a legal communication firm specializing in high-stakes litigation—and raised millions for a start-up that she’d like to forget.

Brand Moi™ Making your Mark for Success: Personal Branding for Professionals.
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By: Karen Post 

For any professional, a strong identity and a distinct market position are key factors in achieving optimum business success. They can supersede academic credentials, experience and even your skill sets as a competitive edge. The power of perception allows you to make a unique mark in the minds of your industry, peers, customers, and prospects.

Companies and organizations worldwide spend enormous resources on building their brand. They know that a sound brand adds value to their existence, secures customer and employee loyalty and enhances profits. For professionals, the same fundamental brand building principles apply. A personal brand can deliver significant professional benefits: command higher fees, earn more money, increase your market share and even enjoy a celebrity status.

Whether you are referring to a product, company, organization or an individual professional, a brand is a mental imprint, which conveys a personality, promise and unique position. Brands are visual, emotional, rational and cultural. Powerful brands start at the core of oneís existence and spread throughout every point of contact with their target audience.

When you see a Volvo, you think safety, when you fly Southwest Airlines, you think cheap fares and when you ship FedEx, you think overnight. Some brands are so strong that we as consumers actually replace the common noun with their brand name, like Xerox® photo copies, Jell-O® flavored gelatin and Kleenex® facial tissues. These established brands make selection easier and enhance the value and satisfaction from the experience. As consumers, we have a distinct mental image of these companies or products. When someone says your name, what

A Great Brand Means Nothing if No One Knows about It
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by: Karen Post

All right, you’ve spent time, money and resources on developing your brand. You clearly know who
you are, you’ve decided on your brand difference, you’ve found folks who want what you
have, you’ve mapped out the great experience you will deliver and now you must employ the
big brand bang—and resonate your message through every point of market contact.

This is where so many organizations “bust the brand, big time.” They lose focus, spend mega bucks on meaningless mayhem and forget the basics of clear, compelling and consistent communications.

I recommend all organizations have a brand plan and a Brand Bible™. The brand plan should include your brand goals, strategies and tactics for getting the word out. The Brand Bible™ is the internal book you train and empower your employees with so they become brand warriors. The Brand Bible™ should address the brand history, its purpose and how to protect the brand equity that it earned though graphic usage and language protocol.

Exaggerate, accentuate and eliminate.
When you are designing a communication program for your brand, you must remember that your audience is assaulted with thousands of brand messages daily and many of these messages are fragmented, convoluted and darn right confusing. So to make sure they “get it,” my simple rule of thumb is “Exaggerate; don’t be shy.” Accentuate, put the spotlight on the important stuff and finally eliminate all the wasteful, meaningless junk that does not significantly speak to your brand.

Run all your communication activities through the brand filter. If it connects with your brand’s purpose, personality and promise and screams the big brand, then it’s a keeper. If it doesn’t and it’s still a totally awesome promotional or communication tactic, then look at what you can change so it can work for your brand. If that becomes too much of a stretch, then just forget about it. There are always many other killer ways you can spread the good word on your brand.

Many folks think brands are built by advertising. Some are certainly fueled by it. Should you decide advertising is part of your branding mix, then make sure you adhere to these guidelines.

Risk.
There’s a road named Risk and it’s the most direct path to brand success. That’s right. Incredible advertising usually takes an untraveled path. It goes where its competitors are afraid to. It stands out from the crowd. It creates a memorable, distinct mark on the minds of its market. Does your advertising look and sound like ten of your closest competitors? How will the buyer know it’s you?

Reach.
Are you buying your ad space or time in the right target zone? How long will that impression last? What is every eyeball or ear costing you vs. another way to touch them? Does the math work when you add production and insertion costs?

Relevance.
A great advertisement should look, sound and feel like your brand persona and be a relevant value to the buying market. Tap into the whole brain of your buyer. Don’t just shove your product features down her throat. Most consumers don’t like the way that tastes anyway. Hit them where they live. Upset people. Make them think.
Challenge them. And remember brands are 70% emotional and 30% logical.

Repetition.
And whatever you do, without frequency you are hosed. Let me repeat. Without frequency you are hosed. In most cases, the average human needs to be exposed to a message at least seven times before it makes a tiny dent in the brain. So if you are buying a sixteenth of a page, black and white ad in a daily journal and running it one time, the sales or awareness generated from that single insertion may be your home run for that quarter. You must repeat your message over a period of time for it really to sink in. Advertising is important, but not always the single answer to getting the word out on a brand. Many successful brands grow and prosper without traditional media spending. These super brands become super stars because they take advantage of all points of contact, both internal and external communication avenues. Consider your employee training programs, the manuals, videos and events. These are all strong routes for your brand message. Signage, uniforms, delivery trucks, visual merchandising, point of purchase materials, your Web presence and your operation’s environment should not be dismissed as they are also vital communication
channels.

Understand the intense power of style, graphics, type and language in all your communications. They all aid in telling your brand story and contribute to the solid brand imprint you place in the minds of your market.

In a Sea of Sameness Brands Must Stand Out
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by: Karen Post

Just like a cattle brand, a commercial brand denotes a difference. Management guru Tom Peters says, “Be distinct
or be extinct.” Marketing veteran Jack Trout proclaims, “Differentiate or die” to survive in our era of killer competition. I say, “Run like the rest and you too will be road kill.“

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Want to Land your Your Brand? Great Brands Are About Relationships, Not Transactions Experience.. 
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by: Karen Post

How does Starbucks get away with chargeing $3.50 for a cup of coffee, when there is plenty of good coffee for a lot less all over town? Yes, their product is good, but the driver in their brand success is about delivering a consistent experience that the market values and will pay for.

It is human nature to bond emotionally with someone with whom you have a strong relationship, like your best friend. In most cases these special friendships are earned over time and are based on a pattern of behavior and some common values. Building a successful brand follows this same thinking and is a similar process. The more you understand about how your buyers and prospects tick, the more likely you are to plant the desired brand in their minds and create a lasting loyalty. Your brand or any brand for that matter is the sum of all you do. It is something you earn over time, by how you behave and treat your market or customers. Your brand is the mental imprint that you plant in your consumers heads. Like a brain tattoo, it is what your market thinks when they see one of your ads, it is how they feel when they hear your name and it is what they expect when they select you over one of your competitors.

So many organizations miss the branding boat. They think the brand starts and stops with the product or service they offer. Those are important factors, but many buyers quickly loose sight of product features and instead deeply store the memories of the experience you deliver.

A brand experience is the journey, the adventure, the trip you send your customers on when they decide to check you out and or do business with you. And it also includes the experience after they buy.

There are so many branding opportunities that you can leverage to land your brand. Start by mapping out all the points of contact your buyers have with your brand. If your brand focus is your company, then ask yourself what activities happen when customers do business with you? Do they call you? Visit you? Do you visit them? Do they meet you at a trade show? If so, then the following should be explored: your customer service center, phone contact, your office environment, your presentation and your trade show presence. If you have a product brand, take a look at your distribution points of contact. Are they retail, Internet? Or direct sales? What ever your path of contact is, put yourself in those shoes. How does it feel? Good? Or like a nightmare?

Does the experience tap into all the senses of the buyer? Does it resonate through by touch, scent, sight, feel and sound?

Think about Starbucks again. The experience they offer includes a very cool, hip environment, comfortable cozy chairs, great jazz tunes, the smell of robust coffee, the choice of several intellectual periodicals, informative literature about their product, buyer-friendly merchandise displays and a friendly, well-informed staff.

Your brand personality, purpose and market position should direct the experience you offer. And remember the brand is not only about impacting the buyer of your offering, it is about your employees, who are your brand champions, the media (who can be brand cheerleaders) and the stakeholders, who need confidence to keep the resources coming.

Consider your environment. Is it consistent with your brand? Are you selling high-tech innovation and your retail store looks like 1960 stopped in time? Is your brand about hip fashion and is your staff dressed in dated garb?

Think about your customer contact. Does it say you truly care and are a friendly company? Or is your phone system obnoxiously annoying, and is your receptionist rude and mumbles all the time?

Most businesses have three stages of contact to infuse a great experience: before customers buy, while they are buying and after they buy. What can you do to make the experience great?

Here are a few ideas to consider:

• Bring the brand to your employees; enlist their ideas on adding experience.
• What ever you decide, train and communicate to the troops and offer incentives to them to deliver it.
• Develop things that you can give your customers that are about giving value, not selling.
• Breathe brand in your behind the scenes operation areas. Employees who get it, will deliver it.
• Think about all the senses and how you can tap into them.
• Be the customer for a day and go through your buying experience.
• Talk to your customers even when they are not buying. Send thank you notes and birthday cards. Know their names and what they value.

In our competitive business world, there are so many good companies vying for the same customers, singing the same song and pitching the same products. Deliver a memorable experience that solidifies your brand and customers will pay more for your offering and stick with you for a life time.