Tips from the top
Mike Ashton, CIM fellow and managing director of Ashton Brands Consulting Group
1. Brand: product and communications planning must work together as part of a cohesive whole. They’re often the responsibility of separate teams that don’t talk to each other enough. A unifying strategy and joined-up planning are critical to driving cost‑effective, integrated communications.
2. Research: communications activity can so often look great but miss the target with the wrong tone, language, imagery or media. The cornerstone of relevant, effective communications is insight, derived from rigorous research. Yet often this is the first part of the budget to be cut – in my view, a massive mistake. After all, without insight where’s the competitive edge coming from?
3. Control: maintaining brand discipline across markets, languages and outlets is tough. An efficient online resource or library is a pre-requisite, centrally controlled, interactive and really easy to use. And, as a general principle, keep brand rules and regulations stripped out and simple. It’s better for colleagues to abide by 10 “must haves” rather than ignore 20 “like to haves”.
4. Flexibility: with a seemingly unending variety of media available, understanding the relevance of each channel to different consumers on different occasions is vital. It is also critical to plan content and creative to work powerfully in each channel.
5. Engagement: we wouldn’t expect a dinner date to go too well if our partner was expected to listen, but not express a view. So why is so much of our corporate communications designed to work this way? In an age of social media, dialogue and engagement, we often seem stuck in a one-way street. It’s time to shift into listening mode and embrace interaction and transparency as more than just an afterthought handled by the web team.
>> Read the full article, "How to communicate your brand's values"
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