Brand Voice-'Hear it loud and clear'

At Mass Inspire, we can't stop emphasizing on the importance of having a brand that is ‘attractive to the eye, and not distracting to the mind.’ That, having a brand that is second best, is simply insulting to the image of your company. You company is a legal entity, thus it has an identity to uphold-question is: What is your company's identity? Is it a brand that stands on its own two feet, and sells itself, or does it need crutches as a result of having weak knees? Talk of a strong brand, and many names come to mind: from global firms like Nokia and Coca-Cola, to local firms, like Safaricom and Tusker. Well, Mass Inspire is adding on its strength, and we want you to tag along.

1.      Your brand voice fundamentally defines your brand

It’s an expression of the values that shape your organization—it best delivers the messages you’re trying to send and shapes the perception of your brand not only through what you say but how you say it.

2.      Brand voice, like singing or speaking voice, has a range

Your brand voice should span several registers, from whisper to shout. Consistency is not the same as sameness, and in order to remain consistently compelling, brand voice must adapt to different scenarios—mood, medium, and audience—to say the right words the right way at the right time.

3.      Brand voice is more than word choice

It’s about syntax, structure, semantics, style. It’s about sending your messages in the most clear and efficient way by evoking a style that matches what you’re trying to say. That’s why your brand voice works best with messaging as a complete communications toolkit.

4.      Brand voice creates dialogue

Communication requires a response, and your brand voice brings value to that dialogue. It means you’re able to listen and respond in a way that brings your brand strategy to life.

5.      Brand voice is key to internal brand engagement

Internal brand engagement means everyone’s on the same page, which is easy to do when you’re all speaking in one voice with one shared point of view. Your brand voice helps you deliver on your brand promise from the inside out.

6.      A strong brand voice will evolve over time

Maintaining the consistency of your brand voice across the organization requires review, feedback and discussion: what’s working and what isn’t? By taking a descriptive view, and stopping to re-evaluate your verbal strategy from time to time, you’ll strengthen your linguistic approach across the board.

And a story well told is really a strategy. It’s a strategy for deploying words to create an effect. Good brands make an impact when they speak. A really good story can change people’s lives, and if enough people hear it, that story can change the world. Meaning your brand can change the world, in part, by telling a great story.

As thoughts of intent take your mind hostage, just rubber-stamp them with a fact: Mass Inspire is the ultimate link to ensuring that your brand sounds like an acapella that soothes the heart and puts your mind at ease. We strive to make you brand say, “WELL DONE!”

The Mass Inspire Journey

Our aim as a corporate communication company, is to strive and ensure that your brand is related to nothing but the best. As per our prior post, we highlighted the importance of refreshing your brand, if you think it is not speaking a language of success. We at Mass Inspire, aim to make your brand say: "WELL DONE".  
Therefore our journey is simple:

We want your brand  to be a pace-setter in your industry. An athlete who believes there is nothing as being second best. Therefore,

not only bring in a 2 dimension view, that is; to make your brand relate with clients from all walks of life- going deeper than the ocean, and wider than the horizon, BUT;

to ensure clarity through 3 Dimension. Making your customers not only see you as the light at the end of the tunnel..but as the only light, THROUGH the tunnel. Simply, make your brand something, they can't live without. Thus,

with this in mind....we shall make your brand..a delight to the eye, and never a distraction to the mind. Always guarantee, that whichever eye and mind, see it, they will be in  sheer consensus..marking you as: THE ULTIMATE CHOICE.

Brand Refreshing...

At Mass Inspire, we know and believe, that a brand is a promise made and a promise kept. We believe that a brand, being an 'image' speaks a thousand words. It is in this line, that we strive to make sure that your brand speaks positive words. That when your brand makes a speech, it lives its audience with nothing less than a standing ovation. Therefore, as this takes root in you, follow us in understanding the concept behind brand refreshing-giving your company a new face. A completely novice outlook.

Success Factors in Brand Refreshing

1: Anticipate and manage resistance

when embarking on a brand refresh, brands should be prepared for resistance, both internally and externally. From the inside, employees, volunteers and even the core management team, such as finance, are likely to challenge the initiative. The same it likely to occur externally with shareholders, the general public, and the media unless the benefits associated with the changes are clearly conveyed. If the internal and external parties are not managed carefully, such scrutiny can undermine the entire brand-building effort, reducing internal commitment to the cause and generating negative publicity that could threaten future donations and volunteer support.

Practical suggestions for managing resistance:

Have a compelling story: First and foremost, there needs to be a clear and consistent logic behind the branding activity. What are the main drivers behind the change? What is at risk if you do not review your brand? What will the main benefits to the organization be in the medium-term and long-term? What will be different? Be specific and use tangible examples. The strategic rationale should be simply articulated and disseminated internally and externally to all stakeholders prior to launch.

Tailor your message: Naturally, each stakeholder group will have different questions and concerns, all of which should be anticipated and considered in advance. Shareholders, for example, will want to know how much of their money is being consumed by the brand-building activity. The re-branding should factor in the organization’s future focus and activities. Each audience should receive targeted communications and support material throughout the launch period.

Be flexible and available: One-on-one meetings, seminars, workshops, conferences and online channels are all valid mechanisms for communicating the story and rationale behind the brand refresh. Each has its pros and cons. It is important to choose a mix of channels that provide full coverage of all target groups and serve to maximize engagement with the brand most effectively.

Listen and respond: To cope with the plethora of questions that will surface both prior to launch and post-launch, a process should be established to map, consider and respond in a timely and professional manner. Some questions can be addressed with a generic response, but others will need tailored answers. Managing consistency and quality of response is critical, so is ensuring there’s a cross-functional team ready to anticipate and answer questions across HR, Marketing and Operations .

2: Keep loyalists on your side

Organizations rely on strong emotional commitment to the cause from a range of stakeholders. Frequently, trustees, employees, volunteers and donors provide their time, energy and commitment because they feel a genuine, close emotional attachment to the vision and mission of the organization. The brand encapsulates all of these attributes, which is why it is critical that any change is managed in a way that maintains the loyalty and support of those key stakeholders. Stakeholders should be able to see in the refreshed brand more of the things that they always wanted and liked and less of the things that they didn’t want or like.

Practical suggestions to keep loyalists on your side:

Build on existing truths: It is imperative to have a clear view of what your stakeholders value and to demonstrate how these aspects will continue to feature (and be reinforced) in the future. Communications activities should reassure all parties that any change is born out of a genuine desire to better deliver on what stakeholders want and need. Whereas the brand refresh implies a shift in emphasis to new ideals, values or ways of working, a plan should be implemented to explain the reasons in clear terms.

Keep an open dialogue: Internally, all stakeholders need to feel as though they are part of the new organization; that they are actively shaping it, rather than it being imposed on them. Having in place feedback mechanisms, either online, through seminars, or even via an internal help-desk will provide them with an outlet to voice any concerns they may have and more importantly, to collect valuable insight into how the brand positioning should be implemented in a way that maximizes their commitment. In fact, brand loyalists should even be encouraged (and rewarded) to blog on social networking sites on behalf of the organization to express the great work being done. This is a much more honest and convincing way to build brand advocacy.

3: Maintain momentum post-launch

Defining the organization’s brand is the first step in the process. The real change comes post-launch with the introduction of new initiatives, activities and ways of working that serve to create substance in the brand’s positioning. The challenge is to maintain sufficient momentum to bring the brand promise to life. Internally and externally it needs to be seen as more than just a visual identity change. The risk of failing to build momentum after launch is that the organization is also likely to fail to live up to its new ideals and instead fall back into old, established working patterns. Launch day is not the end of the brand refresh process, but in fact day one of the effort.

Practical suggestions for maintaining momentum post-launch

Develop hallmarks: A hallmark is a proof-point or hook that captures the essence of the brand idea. By establishing hallmarks that cut to the very core of the brand, be they activities, campaigns or events, you will help stakeholders to understand what the change is really all about, signalling a shift from the past and building a positive momentum for further change going forward.

Engage and empower: To win the support and buy-in to the brand refresh effort internally, it is important to engage employees and volunteers in its development. Co-creating initiatives, activities and ways of working that reinforce the brand idea will help to cement the shift. Greater ownership will not only overcome any initial resistance to the change, it will create momentum of its own. This is particularly important for volunteer and part-time workers working in remote locations, who may otherwise feel removed from the process.

At MassInspire...we can make this happen. As we strive to make your brand say..WELL DONE!!

Lessons from the best:

A wise man once said, Harvey Ullman to be precise,"Anyone who stops learning is old; whether this happens at 80 or 20". As creatives, we have a lot to learn in our daily runnings. All in all, we have to understand that what we are doing is not a hobby but a business, thus professionalism must be duly upheld. It is in this regard that we seek to borrow business wit from Dale Murray....I know its not Kenyan based...thus I challenge to you I pose. Do share with me your story, and I will put on the international platform known as the internet.

An experienced entrepreneur in her own right, Dale Murray graduated from London Business School in 2000 and is now a business angel. She was founder of the mobile business Omega Logic and is a non-executive director of Cupcake Mum and Specle.
 
Shuffle board: I moved into finance very early on because I was good at maths and so you get shuffled into a career path you don’t really give too much thought to. Looking back I would like to say that I did it because financial skills underpin so much of modern business, but I don’t think I had that in my mind when I started out as an undergraduate at Price Waterhouse at the age of 17.

Skill shortages: You have to be the visionary, you have to be the motivator, you have to be a good staff manager, you have to keep a lid on costs, you have to manage your investors, you have to look out for the competition and ultimately you have to deliver a product and service that somebody wants to buy. We are not all perfectly formed in our skills base. I think good entrepreneurs surround themselves with good people.
   
Starting points: I think it was just naked ambition which got me going along an entrepreneurial route!
In my mid-twenties I’d progressed quite quickly through a more traditional career path in chartered accountancy and then moved from the professional to commercial world, becoming a financial controller and running my own team. I remember thinking I really have to build my own business one day. It’s a control freak thing to be honest and I do think this is more nature than nurture.

Desire: Some people have an absolute determination and stubbornness to be entrepreneurial whatever that means. They just really want to run their own business and I don’t know why that is but you do have to have that as an entrepreneur. You have to really, really, really want it because once you start on that path of building an entrepreneurial business everything else goes by the wayside.

Profit and loss: One of the things I see with businesses is that they grow to the point where they have some revenue but they’re not at the point of profitability. That’s a very, very risky point in a business’s life-cycle. That’s when control is necessary. Entrepreneurs, at that point, often don’t fully understand their own businesses. They lose control of their costs, they lose control of product quality, they forget to keep an eye on the competitor or there’s some fatal flaw which ultimately deals a blow to them. Another point of potential business failure is where you have entrepreneurs who can’t let go.

Board talk: As a non-executive on a board, the biggest role is to act as a sounding board, coach or mentor whatever you want to call it. Typically, I come in once a month for board meetings and a couple of times during the month to speak to the founder to help build the business and spot the risks. Having been through it myself, being the founder or the entrepreneur myself and in other businesses being the non-executive director, I see that regardless of sector all businesses go through the same broad things. Obviously you do get challenges that pertain to particular industries but typically the market moves around you and you have to respond to that. You run out of cash, a key staff member goes AWOL, these management problems crop up again and again in business. My role is really to help the CEO, guide them, making sure they’re on the path towards the business objectives but also try and lift their head a little bit above the day-to-day and look at these more strategic issues. 

Green fingers: Money is a motivation. People say, I put five years of my life into this and I really want to be able to get to a certain figure. All entrepreneurs seem to have a figure in their mind. It might be £1 million or £5 million but it is a figure which would make it all worthwhile for them. Many rivers to cross: If you have a good idea and you have customers that say it’s a good idea then okay your business model might not be quite right or maybe the staff that you’ve got aren’t the best or the technology needs tweaking, but you just keep reshaping and remodelling things until you get it right. Good entrepreneurs are incredibly resourceful.

Angel seeks entrepreneur: I look for businesses that are unique and address a need. The second thing is really about the entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs have to pass the Australia test. If you’re at Heathrow sitting happily in your seat waiting to take off for Australia and someone walks down the aisle and sits next to you and introduces themselves what’s your immediate reaction? Do you think, ‘I’ve got 23 hours with this person’ or do you think, ‘They sound interesting, I’m interested to learn more about her or him.’? We all go through ups and downs with our entrepreneurs and so if the entrepreneur passes the Australia test then you’re pretty sure you can live the next six to eight years with them.

Exiting: People used to say three to four years to exit but it’s more like six to eight years before exit. The worst piece of advice I got was from a business angel who invested in my business. When we hit profitability, he advised us to sell the business quickly and go on to start our next business. And my co-founder, who was burned out at the time, thought ‘Oh yes, that’s a great idea, we’ll do that’ and that became the focus. I went with it but your ambition to build a business again quickly becomes very, very muted.

My motivation: I just love business. I am most comfortable in a meeting room or a board room just talking to other people and thrashing out ideas and talking about the mechanics of the business model and how are we going to commercialize something. That’s where I love to be and that’s what gets me out of bed.

With lessons, and many more to come...make sure you do not hesitate to share your comments and insight with regards to issues in business.

The Age of the Entreprenuer

As creatives, we stand to be the only warriors with the armoury to battle for our destiny. As days nurture months into becoming years, we are meant to take each aspect of our business to greater heights. At Mass Inspire, we yearn to make you realize that by making your brand a golden ticket to success. We believe that a brand is promise made, and a promise kept. Therefore, knowing that your brand is the face of your business, we do not hesitate to try to put you on level terms with the greatest.

Here are tips borrowed from Richard Down, that can and should guide you in your business as you seek your ultimate goal.

Richard Downs is founder and chief executive of the ski, cruise and family holiday company, Iglu.com. Richard graduated from London Business School in 1998.

Small is bountiful: I had the idea for Iglu back in 1998. We have been in existence for over a decade and have grown but we are still small and nimble in the way we think. By nature we are very anti-corporate. We are still nonbureaucratic and not meeting oriented even though we now have 120 people.

Have faith: For an entrepreneur, belief is seven-tenths of the job.

Additional funding: At the end of 2009 Matrix Private Equity Partners invested £4.3 million in Iglu.com. This bought them a 35 per cent stake. This enabled us to buy out two of the initial institutional investors and gave us a much clearer run into the future. Now we are entirely debt free.

Patience: It has taken much longer than I ever thought it would to reach this stage. But, in other ways we totally under-estimated where we would be in 2011. After all, when we started out there was no Google or Facebook. The world has changed. Now online commerce is bigger than the UK construction industry. Even the government now appreciates the importance of online commerce as a sector.

The glass?: Entrepreneurs are optimistic by nature. They want to change things. An education: My previous experience was all about finance. What I have learned is the importance of people. You have to get the right people and then keep them motivated. It can be highly destructive if you get it wrong. You really need a complementary combination of skills. It was one thing we took for granted early on in the businesses’ development.

Toddling: The other lesson I have learned is not to run before you can walk. We expanded into France and elsewhere without having the right people.

Growing up: Businesses and entrepreneurs grow up. Your working style and the balance of what you and the business do evolves. The first two or three years are totally full on. But that’s not sustainable. You can only ignore your friends and family for so long! You eventually need to get things in balance so you can recognise when you’re near the edge and then do something about it. I found that taking a holiday can allow other people to grow.

Recharging: You can also tap into energy from other people — whether they are non-executive directors or others. You need to reflect on what you have achieved and what needs to happen. You look for energy and enthusiasm wherever you can get it.

Growing into the future: When I encounter someone with a business plan, I realise how far we have come. There is a lot more for us to do. We started off in skiing; then we entered the cruise market and that is now bigger than our ski business. We took our knowledge and were able to apply it to this new sector. We are the largest ski retailer in the UK and the largest online retailer in cruises. There is still a lot more potential and opportunities in Europe to develop.

VCs: You have to remember that VCs are separate organisations with their own objectives. If their goals change you have to be aware of the implications. VCs aren’t all the same. You have to do your homework.

Making money: We became profitable in year four and have made a profit ever since, apart from one year. When you’re not making money you don’t have control and that’s when you are vulnerable.

Motivation: I always wanted to start my own company. I felt passionate about the technology, I was a keen skier and I wanted to change the industry. That desire for change is an especially important element in our story and for entrepreneurs more generally.

You have it all from an expert.

Hope you take the tips and surge on to greatness. Remember, "If you can find a path with no obstacles, then it probably leads Nowhere"