Involved with more than one venture? I feel your pain. Especially when it comes to developing and managing your brand message… especially when that brand is simply too big. Here’s the advice I recently gave a fellow Realtor.
First a quick video clip to explain the Trifecta I recently talked about here on AG.
Now, I received a great question in response:
How do you manage the message when you’re involved in other ventures? e.g. I’m a Realtor, I have a non-profit organization, and I also sell retail products.
If you’re trying to fit all these very different ventures under one brand then you’re going to do more harm than good. You’re simply too big for your brand britches.
Look at Coca-Cola. They sell a soft drink, maybe you’ve heard of it. They also sell Dasani water which has it’s own brand. One company, two products, two brands… and two audiences.
If you have multiple things going on, you’ll want to do the same. Take a step back and instead of trying to brand Gary Gogetter who does 3 different things, brand 3 different things that Gary Gogetter is involved with.
So, you’d create the brand message for Gary Gogetter the Realtor, one for the non-profit company, and one for the retail business. Each one serves different needs for different audiences and, well, they don’t play well together under one brand message.
Each message, each brand, should be singular in focus so they’re easy to remember, to spread, and to live up to.
What advice would you give to someone who is involved with different ventures but wants to create a branding message?
Ken Montville - The MD Suburbs of DC
March 17, 2009 at 8:58 am
Congruence. I like it.
Russell Shaw
March 18, 2009 at 11:21 am
Mark,
Your message is spot on! There is no faster way to convince people you don’t really do anything very well than to attempt to convince them you do everything well.
Gary, the Realtor would do well to keep his messages specific for each of his different publics. There is an “S” at the end of the last word in the previous sentence. There isn’t “A” public. There are publics.
On a completely different note; I am so impressed with the quality of your video. I would love to learn what it is – exactly – that you do to achieve such quality.
Mark Eckenrode
March 18, 2009 at 2:25 pm
@kent: “congruence.” simple and spot on.
@russell: right. for brain surgery, i want the brain surgeon not the general practitioner.
as for the video, it was me and my flip camera. i’ve recently purchased a Gorillapod stand for it, but in this video i actually used a pair of rubberbands to strap it to a lamp pole 🙂