Stand by Your Brand

A business experiencing hard times may need to pay particular attention to brand defense, particularly if company troubles are public knowledge. “Sometimes when people are having some difficulties or stress, they may try to cut some corners,” Karwoski says. He tells the story of a local bank that, fifteen years ago, tried to cut costs by reducing the number of tellers. “If you had a question that wasn’t related to the current transaction, they referred you to a phone in the lobby,” he says. “You would not believe how people felt about that.”

If hard times have hit an entire industry, a company that can find the resources may benefit from extra branding attention. “If you can invest during a down market, you can build your brand—a lot of times at the expense of others in your category,” Karwoski says.

Brand Defense: The Basics

Your biggest brand concern should be the quality of your product. “You can talk until you’re blue in the face about your great quality, but if you can’t put your money where your mouth is, it’s worthless,” says Mike Kretsinger, a partner at M. J. Kretsinger Advertising and Marketing in Minneapolis. “There’s no greater promotion than your clients saying how much they appreciate your products or services.”

At the very least, employees must stand behind your product; in a service business, employees essentially are your product. As such, they should appropriately represent the brand you’ve envisioned. “Your brand is nothing if your employees aren’t behind it,” says Paul Lilienthal, president and owner of Golden Valley– based Pictura Graphics, a large format digital imaging and printing company.

“Ninety percent of what clients see are people,” Kretsinger agrees. “If one of those individuals is negative, that can hurt client perception, even if we’re still delivering a superior product.”

It also means finding employees who look and act the part. “A local BMW dealership shouldn’t have an employee with piercings and a plaid suit,” says Jim Bendt, president of Gabriel deGrood Bendt, a Minneapolis-based advertising and public relations agency. That person might know a lot about cars, but still won’t offer the experience clients expect.

In general, it’s easier to hire employees who match your image and expectations than to impose change on those who don’t. “In the hiring process, we spend a lot of time and energy being clear about who we are and what we do, and looking for employees who align and want to be in concert with that,” says Monica Little, CEO of Little & Company, a brand-building firm that’s based in Minneapolis.