Are you selling a commodity like your competitors, or do you have a sturdy brand?
I used to be the marketing director in a well-known construction company and one day I remember someone (a board director, I might as well say it) told me that construction was a commodity. As in, there was no discernible difference between our product and that of our competitors.
Well.
If that wasn’t a red rag to a bull.
So I spent 7 years building a brand. A brand that stood sturdily on its own, carrying its own value; packed with intangible equity. A storybrand that comprised villains and heroes, protagonists, antagonists, beginnings, middles and endings. A brand with a personality that encompassed confidence, craic and controversy. A logo that incited an emotional response; a story that potential clients, staff and hires wanted to hear over and over again.
Selling the difference
My team and I work with companies who offer a rich, valuable skillset – engineering, project management – companies who design, build and deliver real estate. Their people are absolutely brilliant at this stuff. Second to none. The challenge for them, when it comes to imbuing the brand with equity, is to identify their unique difference, their own distinctive character – their story.
Yes, you could argue they kind of all do the same thing. You could argue that what they sell is a commodity. That there is no discernible difference between them and their competitors.
But you’d be wrong.
So we’ve a client who’s a specialist fit-out contractor.
Their story is that they triumph over challenges that would have other contractors at a loss. They work in busy, live environments where there’s no room for delays, waste, rework or interruption to programmes. The villain is the occupied building; the hero is our client. Every little bit of content we make for them is, in some direct or indirect way, telling this story. We do it by showing off the people, their unique approach, and the successful projects. Using videos, blogs, newsletters, posts, websites and events, we tell the story, over and over again. This brand is building its own equity. It will stand against adversity where others will fail. It is resilient.
We’ve another one who’s an M+E contractor. Pipes and wires, you say. Commodity! I hear you shout.
For this client, we are constructing a sturdy brand that will stand resolutely when others falter. The villain in their story is climate change. The heroes are MMC, sustainable building, offsite manufacturing and digital technologies. The story begins and ends with the planet. When people see this logo, they think ‘sound lads who are saving the planet’. (Maybe I’m oversimplifying, but kinda not really.)
Have you built resilience?
As you read this you’ll probably realise that you’ve never strategically invested in building a sturdy brand, a resilient brand - a brand whose strength will triumph over negative feedback, or a downturn in the economy. You may have built a successful company, but the value in it consists entirely of tangibles - fixed assets, people, balance sheets and so on.
But the intangibles, the non-functional brand attributes - that’s where the real value lies. And this doesn’t happen by accident. It happens by investing in it - not just money but senior leader time.
Ready to turn your commodity into a character? Let’s build your brand! Tell me your brand story - the villains, the heroes, the beginning, middle and end: tiffany@generateleads.ie
