k0834285I was a guest on the Afternoon Drive show on Eko FM yesterday, and I started with a quote “If its lazy, the perception will be hazy” in breaking this down for the purpose of this post, it means ; if your brand is Lazy, the perception will be hazy.
When you are building a brand, whether (Personal or Corporate), its important to be vigilant and ensure you know the state of your brand constantly, this will help you discern when your brand is becoming lazy. Here are some signs that you need to watch-out for.
• LACK OF CLARITY AND FOCUS: This point among many others is a sign that one must watch out for . Lack of clarity of a essence of your brand is likely to happen on two levels; first, in the mind of the source of the brand, and then consequently in the mind of the target. For instance in the case of a personal Brand, if the source can no longer articulate what the brand stands for , or if what the brand stands for keeps changing every now and then. The implication of this is that your brand has become lazy, in the sense that it is not working hard enough to maintain a focus. It takes hard work to be focused.
• LACK OF CONSISTENCY: This is almost a natural consequence of the above point, and the unfortunate thing is that the source of the brand might not even notice early enough to make the necessary corrections; however, long before the source gets a wind of it, the target would have noticed and would have started forming impressions about the brand. Since there is an evident display of a lack of focus and clarity about the brand, the only consistency the brand will display will be in the fact that it is inconsistent in demonstrating clarity and focus. This kind of consistency is a negative and it further buttresses the fact that such a brand has become lazy. Such a sign, if not promptly and properly dealt with could even end up becoming a brand attribute, and if this happens, the brand progresses from being lazy to becoming sleepy, and might eventually lapse into a coma.
Consistency is a critical success factor, a necessary ingredient in branding, if it is not present in the mix, it is not branding.
• INABILITY TO ENGAGE AUDIENCE: If by way of feedback, it is discovered that your brand is no longer engaging the attention of its audience, at that point, you have an emergency on you hands; the implication is that your brand had at some point been lazy, then became sleepy, and is now comatose. This means that your brand has lost its brand equity, the position it held formally in the minds audience has been taken by another.
When a brand gets lazy, it loses the influence it used to have.
• LOSS OF ABILITY TO KEEP ITS PROMISE: According to Peter Montoya, “A brand is a promise”. What this implies is that a brand tells its prospects what they can expect when dealing with it. At the point where your brand is deemed as unable to meet the expectations it created in the minds of its audience, it has become a lazy brand.