5 Features of Enduring Brands

Building a brand is not about getting the best possible logo designed or spending tons of money on advertising. Your brand is something that is nurtured over months and years from serving your customers and making sure that your business provides a set standard of care and product quality.

Building Enduring Brands

We have come to expect a certain level of service from a number of brands that have been around most of our lives, and some that are 2 or 3 times older than a lot of us today. These are brands that are synonymous with most of our daily routines and in some ways integral to it.

It’s true that there are many companies that do virtually the same thing and are in direct competition with each other, but there’s always a clear favorite. Comparisons are usually followed by a heated debate from proponents of either side.

I’ve done some research and identified 5 key elements that any popular leading brand today has done over the lifetime of their existence.

1. Commitment to Tradition

A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well.

Jeff Bezos – Amazon

Every company that is in existence today started somewhere obscure. Whether it was a garage, a dorm room, grandma’s basement or working late nights after getting back from work. The work ethic that was used by the founder during those formative years is most likely part of the company tradition today. You probably know it as the company mission statement, the top 10 or even just a simple saying the founder must have said at one point of time.

It’s that tradition that draws a customer to a business that is now part of its persona.

2. Quality Innovation

Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.

Steve Jobs – Apple

Trying to re-invent concepts that cannot be done any other way is foolish, like a wheel for instance. Trying to innovate on a concept better than it already is the stuff that legends are made of. The iPod is a recent example. Up until Steve Jobs unveiled it the online music space was pretty much a gray area of the web and a non-existent business. Similar examples include the first laptop computer by IBM, searching the web by Google and more recently the electric car by Tesla.

3. Attracting Talent

We just want to have great people working for us.

Sergey Brin – Google

When any business grows in leaps and bounds it is bound to attract the top talent in the industry. Some of the top tech companies today receive applicants measuring in the tens to hundreds of thousands for a few hundred jobs. When you’ve built an enduring brand you can look forward to seeing it last a long time as it attracts a fresh pool of talent. As long as you don’t call yourself Lehman Brothers.

4. Knowing the Customer

In the end, the customer doesn’t know, or care, if you are small or large as an organization…she, or he, only focuses on the garment hanging on the rail in the store.

Giorgio Armani – Armani

We all have fickle tendencies. A business knows this more than anybody else as they always have to deal with us. But a business also knows that by providing just the right amount of solution a prospect will convert to a customer, offer too much and you end up losing their patience and them.

I feel many companies today are not paying attention to this important detail and are heading off into various directions where they have no idea what the outcome will be. Rather than adopting new lines of businesses, and losing direction for short term profits, they need to just stick with what they do best and continue to innovate and advance in their sphere.

5. Being Leaders

I always knew I was going to be rich. I don’t think I ever doubted it for a minute.

Warren Buffett

I wish I could have a company just like Apple that continuously delivers remarkable products. Not too mention having a solid customer base that adores you for doing just that. Or, being at the helm of travel innovation like Tesla or providing a way to harness renewable energy like GE. While I don’t exactly want to be the next McDonald’s I wouldn’t mind having a chain of global food restaurants that only supports local and organic produce.

Being a leader in your field is what provides your brand the enduring quality that few possess today and many constantly try to grab at.

• 23rd June, 09
• Posted under: Logos and Branding