Small businesses can benefit from branding
Students and business leaders at a recent Junior Achievement celebration breakfast got an advanced lesson from branding expert Scott Bedbury.
Bedbury, best known for his work as a marketing executive at Nike and Starbucks, explained the basics of branding at the Junior Achievement breakfast Tuesday at the Tulalip Resort Casino.
We enjoyed hearing about Bedbury’s “Just Do It” campaign for Nike which made the company a household name, and about his inspired redesign of Starbucks stores that took the company from a few hundred stores to several thousand.
That got us thinking about how small businesses can use Bedbury’s branding lessons — and why small businesses, not large companies, have the edge in creating meaningful brands.
What is branding?
A company’s brand is not just the product or service it provides but the overall experience customers have when they do business. As Marty Neumeier puts it in “The Brand Gap,” a brand is a person’s gut feeling about a product, service or company. It includes his or her impressions about value and quality based on a perception of the company’s products and services.
Everything matters, Bedbury explained at the Junior Achievement breakfast, from customer service to the look of your restrooms.
“It’s not just what you do but how you do it,” he said.
Having a trusted, relevant brand is especially important during down economic times, Bedbury said, and we think it’s equally important for large and small companies.
“Brand relevancy and resonance, rather than brand awareness, will determine the winners and the losers (in this economy),” he said.
Great companies create positive emotional ties and relationships with their customers, which outlast their products and services, Bedbury states on his Web site, www.brandstream.com.
So how do you build a brand? People increasingly want to support and work for companies that stand for something, Bedbury said. We agree, and believe that companies that exhibit a heart and soul earn respect.
Bedbury also advised companies to be clear about how they define their success by communicating their company’s values. Be aware of what’s going on in the world so you can be relevant. Always take stock of what you’re communicating to your clients and how it reflects on your brand, he said.
But there’s more, and that’s how local companies can capitalize.
Local edge
With customer experience as the defining part of a brand, we believe local businesses have the edge because local owners and local employees can foster the best relationships with customers and make the most meaningful connections to community.
For example, at Zippy’s Java Lounge in downtown Everett offers much more than coffee. It’s a hub for community events, such as club meetings, poetry readings and open mike nights. Art by local artists line the walls. Inside you can meet the coffeehouse’s namesake, Zippy the Dalmatian.
Owner Marilyn Rosenberg and her employees are also deeply involved in community organizations such as Green Everett, which we wrote about in a previous column. The best brands, Bedbury said, are tied to common human needs such as safety, recognition, love, success and, as in the case of Zippy’s, involvement in something bigger.
Branding doesn’t have to mean hiring consultants or conducting surveys, although it often does include those things. It can be simply about creating an experience your customers will want to come back for and a relationship that can be sustained within our own unique communities during both tough and prosperous economic times.
We’re grateful to Junior Achievement of Washington for bringing Bedbury to Snohomish County so we could learn from him firsthand, and we’re also grateful for the timely reminder of how important teaching financial literacy to our young people is today. If you’d like to learn more about this organization, we encourage you to visit www.jawashington.org.
Pat Sisneros is the vice president of college services at Everett Community College. Lynne Munoz is director for the School of Business Design. Please send your comments to entrepreneurship@everettcc.edu.
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