Suzanne Tulien From Brand Ascension
In school, we learned that deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, makes every person unique. It’s something that is embedded in every cell of your being — your saliva, your hair, and even your sweat. It’s something that makes you UNIQUELY you.
What would happen if we apply the concept of DNA into your business. What do you get? Suzanne Tulien of Brand Ascension explains the concept of Brand DNA and how it is important in your elevating your business in this interview.
Listen to the interview here:
Stop Marketing! Start Branding! -SHOW NOTES
Brand DNA
- Brand DNA refers to the brand foundational values that businesses does business by. It includes your company’s core values, style attributes, authentic differentiators, standards of performance. Brand DNA is a brand promise and a brand platform.
- Brand DNA matters because it helps your business focus – to stay on track on what you say you are. It can be used to make decisions like hiring employees and marketing your business.
- Your brand DNA blueprint is your guide to making business decisions. It should be authentic and true to your company’s values.
- Brand hones on the perception of the brand. It is not the logo. A logo represents the brand.
- Brand DNA will help you elevate your brand.
Branding for solopreneurs and companies.
Brand DNA is different for a company and solo entrepreneurs.
- A company brand is a collective creation. To develop the brand, the members of the company should sit down together and go through a brand invention to define the core attributes of the company brand.
- A solo entrepreneur is the brand of the business. Your customer will interact with no one else but you. You are the brand.
Branding vs Marketing
- Branding is inventing what attributes you will withhold. It’s about defining the core values that will define your business and how you will make decisions.
- Marketing is the act of disseminating information about your brand. It’s about getting the word out about your brand.
Six Myths of Small Business Branding
Suzanne wrote a book called 6 Myths of Small Business Branding: Discover the Secrets and Learn the Truths to Exponentially Grow Your Bottom Line.
Here are some myths:
- My Logo is my brand. Logo is an iconic, graphic symbol that represents the brand. It is not the brand. The branding should come before the logo. You should tell your graphic designer “This is who I am. Develop something that matches that.”
- My brand appeals to everyone. –No brand is universal.
- My customers just want the best price. The truth is that 82% of customers are willing to pay more for better customer relationship.
- The size of my marketing budget determines my brand success. Understand that branding and marketing is different. You should define your brand. Your marketing dollars will not work if you don’t have a consistent branding.
Pricing
- The Internet has created a “FREE industry.” Decide what tier of your products and services are you going to offer for FREE.
- You do not have to discount your products and services in order to get customers. Focus on elevating your service in the customer level. When you level up your relationship with your customers, they will feel more valued and be willing to pay more. For example, Starbucks can charge $5 for a cup coffee. Why? People go there for the experience, rather than the coffee.
Cultural Creative Focus
You may have a lot of interest but it all boils down to your core attributes. Help your employees understand the DNA of the brand. It has to get to the mind of the employees for your brand and your business to be a success.
Suzanne Tulien, Co-founder and Principal of The Brand Ascension Group® is committed to organizations who want to achieve transformational and sustainable brand success through strategic, internal branding practices. As co-pioneer of The Brand DNA System(SM), she helps small to medium sized clients define their internal brand core. Then, guides them to integrate it within their leadership, culture, and processes to produce experiences that inspire, motivate and engage employees to deliver memorable customer experiences consistently.
For 23 years, Suzanne has been passionately serving clients by creating corporate identity design solutions packaged with powerful strategic branding consulting and training. Working with a dynamic marketing and training firm, she helped design and facilitate marketing training workshops across the U.S. Then, as creative project manager for the global consulting firm, Navigant Consulting, Inc., she helped manage the internal and external brand acquisitioning of 13 different firms and the acculturation processes to be merged under one corporate entity.
Find out more about Susanne and Brand Ascension
How are you branding yourself? Do you brand? What is your brand? What is your idea of small business branding? Leave a comment below with your brand and a link back to your site so we can see it!
Thanks Michelle
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
Argh. I can’t tell you how many of my startup clients want to believe “#2 My brand appeals to everyone.” Although your product or service may have broad appeal, your brand has to have a core demographic…it’s the only way to develop effective marketing. Yes, ultimately people outside that demo might like/use/even love your product, but if you can’t define who your core audience is, you can’t properly develop your brand. If you try to appeal to everyone, you’ll appeal to no one.
Nice post!
K
Focus focus focus and really hone in to your clients… I agree it the hardest piece.
Excellent stuff. One of the best things I’ve read on the topic. Making sense 100%. Knowing you didn’t do this interview just for me, kind of comforted in knowing I’m not the only one finding it a hard piece to master. But one step a time, starting with the Branding, following your roadmap, gets you there. Solo, we’re in the business of helping our customers transform into the people they want to become. Hard to do without a brand. The million dollar question: why do so many try, anyway? :-] ~Beat
Hey Beat. I’m re-branding TalkingPurpose, and the first thing I want to do is the logo! LOL. It’s a challenge even for those of us who ‘should’ know better.
Branding is a moving puzzle. A company has to 1. decide who/what they want to be when they ‘grow up’, take responsibility for developing that lasting impression on their clientele, be prepared to keep at it. The branding that a business does deliberately is not nearly as difficult as not identifying their identity and just letting their branding happen. That sort of organic growth in business is not fun!
Good Judy. Good.. Seeing into the future to the bigger self and starting there now. I like it!
I really like this and nice interview Michelle. I can see where the Brand DNA comes in. if you want others to trust you you have to be who you are, not what you think you should be.
By being the true you the trust is going to build to build your business.
I like your new logo too Michelle.
Blessing to you and thanks for giving me a new view of building a business.
Debbie
Hi Debbie,
Thanks for noticing the new logo – really the same logo but a new tagline.. I really want to get my own branding under control and be focused – the one thing I always tell my clients! thanks for coming over.
You are welcome Michelle. I am very glad that I did come over. Would you like to serve some coffee next time? LOL
Wow! Some great insights and comments! It was great being interviewed for this piece and I am always excited by the thoughts and energy that comes out of it.
The act of ‘Brand-ing’ has always seemed a bit ethereal and hard to grasp. But when you understand that all a brand is is a PERCEPTION, and that we, as humans are machines that literally have to function through a process of perception (making judgements and decisions everyday), you, the business owner, begins to realize that you need to get a handle on what that perception actually is (or should/will be) and become it consistently. This decision is a process I call Brand DNA, where the business brand puts a ‘stake in the ground’ and makes a decision on it’s position (Identifies and defines it) then becomes it by making it TANGIBLE through your actions and behaviors. It isn’t hard, but it does take focus as Michelle mentions, and a commitment to do the ‘due diligence’ to make it so. It can be super fun, enlightening, and transformational in the process, but totally well worth it! Those who do commitment increase their success percentages 10-fold.
I have to also mention that one of the biggest mistakes is to get a new logo without doing the ‘due diligence’….it is the same as putting new lipstick on the same pig (so to speak).
Think about your brand starting at the internal level — not the customer (external) level. It has to start at the core, the DNA of the organization, then lived through your actions and behaviors, and experienced by your customers!
My book, Brand DNA has the entire process in it. Check it out. IUniverse.com, Amazon.com
Great point about the difference between brand and marketing and YES! while they are related, they are actually different.
Thanks for stopping by Raymond.