Are you getting brand update notifications?

Slowness. Freezing. Inefficiency. Not connecting. All are symptoms of a computer operating system or program when it is in need of an update. Most often the update notification appears but you have no idea what it means or what to do about it until you have your IT department look at it. And sadly, a great deal of people ignore the update notice until some situation becomes complex enough to warrant immediate and sometimes lengthy attention.

Maintaining your organization’s brand sometimes follows the same path. There are signals that indicate something is amiss or not synced up correctly. These signals can be subtle and easy to miss. Or, just like the update notification, they can be ignored. But that never turns out well – for your computer or your brand.

Not too many people would trade their computer in on another one simply because the update notification was appearing.  An update by a qualified IT professional should enable your computer to return to its previous efficient and smooth running condition. Your brand can be handled the same way by having it reviewed and tweaked by a qualified brand technician.

Brand technicians will tell you that sometimes when financial services providers ask for help to develop a new brand for them, quite often it isn’t necessary. Some of these organizations have good solid brands with interesting heritage and strong brand equity, but they have simply lost their way. Their lack of focus, consistency and continuity with their brand communications results in a loss of power. Just like the out-of-date computer.

Most often, the brand simply loses the ability to express its differentiation.  Not having a clear, concise and easy-to-understand brand position results in being lost in the sea of sameness from all the other competitors operating in the same space. The building blocks of differentiation are there, they’ve just been forgotten, ignored or are miss-firing. The brand needs an update.

A brand update or refresh puts your brand back in the high efficiency mode.  It examines your marketing communications and the experience that you are currently delivering to determine if your brand is standing apart from the crowd. Is your brand promise clear? Messages consistent? Personality evident? Tonality correct? Imagery and verbiage appropriate? Can every one of your associates express how your organization is different in a few short concise words?

Anyone of these components (and others) that fail can throw your brand out of sync. Any one of them can cause your update notification to appear. The question is, do you click on it? Or, do you ignore it?

Don’t put it off any longer. Have your brand inspected by a qualified brand technician to implement an update. If you don’t know one, just look around this CUInsight newsletter and you’ll find a few.