Obstacles Or Opportunities?

I love my job!  I get to help those who manage America’s iconic brands refine their brand presentation to the marketplace, as well as help individuals discover their own personal brands, and how to make that more clear to others in their life.

But one thing that I have noticed is everybody sees obstacles to optimizing their brand and whether I’m talking to one of America’s largest consumer packaged goods companies, or a solopreneur, one of the things that I find myself doing is helping my clients see how obstacles can be turned into opportunities.

An iconic brand has an instant recognizability that makes it easy to register a brand impression.  You’d think they would have an easy job … But those clients are concerned that their iconic nature restricts them from expanding their brand in new areas. 

Those who are struggling to reinvent themselves and stretch their personal brand struggle with a feeling of inadequacy for the new brand identity that they are trying to create.  They spend a lot of time apologizing for the past, which they don’t feel supports the direction that they want to go in the future. 

But make no mistake about it, both of these situations are examples of clients seeing the brand obstacles instead of the brand opportunities.  Corporate brand or personal brand, it doesn’t matter.  The opportunity is always to create a bridge from where you’ve been to where you want to go, and what you want to be in the future. 

For corporate marketers, the strength of a brand provides guidance of where the brand can go.  And rather than see this as constrictive, you should see it as instructive.  If you can identify the core brand strengths and understand that which undergirds the foundation of a brand, you can use that as the platform upon which to build the future.  When I was working on the Miracle-Gro® brand, we wanted to find new ways to expand the brand, not only with new ways of delivering plant food, but ways to really innovate—even though we needed to keep within the limits of the brand.  An understanding that Miracle-Gro® stands for all things nurturing allowed us the flexibility to go in lots of different directions within the gardening category without being too restrictive.  The result has been astronomical growth for that brand into potting mixes, garden soils and a whole host of other product innovations.

So the question I would ask my Corporate clients is, do you understand the foundational underpinnings of your brand?  Because once you understand that, you will have a very good basis upon which to build.  Rather than being restrictive, the brand personality provides guidance for future growth opportunities.

This also works on a personal level.  The other day I was giving a talk about personal branding, and one of the participants wanted to move into doing more public relations work and grant writing.  She had just started transitioning from her former life as a reporter.  She felt at a competitive disadvantage by not having years and years of experience as a Public Relations professional.  While certainly she should be looking to add new skills and PR “tricks of the trade,” my counsel to her was not to apologize for her background as a reporter.  As a matter of fact, it is exactly that which made her unique.  Because of her background as a reporter, she approached public relations challenges with a reporter’s sense of “what’s the story” that some public relations professionals miss.  Guaranteed, her clients will benefit and get more exposure from utilizing the reporters’ skill set that this woman brought to her work.  That which she saw as an obstacle was really an opportunity. 

Every marketer is looking for ways to be distinct, unique, different.  So stop seeing the brand obstacles, and start seeing the brand opportunity.  If you’d like more help with this, we’d love to provide insights and help you see the brand-building opportunities that are already inherent within your brand.