Just finished the branding of my latest client whom owns several Telstra shops both consumer and business licensed stores. This project included deciding the company name, registering appropriate url’s, building a web site, launching the brand to staff and building a public profile for the new aggregated company.
My quick view of this process which has taken months is that a brand must reflect everything a company does or says at every customer access point. If for example your advertising on TV is a customer service strategy and yet when customers come into stores and find a lack of staff and they are not knowledgeable on the products and services you instantly have lost some integrity.
In choosing and launching a brand my strategy is to always first seek to understand then be understood. As a marketer and/or a consultant go out and spend time in the various customer touch point, get a feel for what is happening, gain an understanding of the culture. Spend time with the management team in all divisions and understand the strategy of the company and where it is heading.
Once you understand where the company is currently positioned design a branding that reflects and reinforces that position so there is no integrity loss at initial launch. Then by understand what is the company’s desired direction is you can have the brand with flexible elements to travel on the same journey.
In TshopBiz the name reflects the business is made up of Telstra Licensed Shop – it’s a Telstra Licensed Shop Business. The star reflects the various colours related to individual locations and represents the coming together of each location to build a ‘group’ of companies. Each colour within in the star can be changed are the star pivots so if the business continues to grow by changing colours we can have the same logo for multiple locations. The description of the company, the vision and values were derived and agreed at server senior management workshops and are ‘lived’ every day by staff and built into their annual reviews. With TShopBiz you get what you see.
