Is your brand, your company expressing the qualities of a leader?

Posted by Rahna on January 19, 2009 under Branding | Be the First to Comment

In my last post, I talked about my mentoring experience with a National Teen Leadership Council.  As a marketer, leadership is a very important concept, both on a personal level and a brand level.  Today is Martin Luther King, Jr Day, and tomorrow, the first African-American president is sworn in to office. 

 

Huge.

 

Huge leadership examples, both of them.

 

Leadership is something everyone is talking about.  As we transition our national leadership teams, it makes sense to think about how it applies to you business life.

 

So it makes me think, how does that apply to my client’s businesses?  What is the lesson in it?  Here’s what I think.  Leadership qualities can apply to people … and to brands, companies, and services.  I’m asking myself, “How am I encouraging my clients to express leadership in their own worlds?”

 

Does your brand have a vision?

 

Leaders have a vision of how things ought to be.  Obama has talked many times about his vision for the country, and Apple has a vision of how innovation and technology should be pervasive in their products.  What is your brand’s vision for your industry, for your consumers, or for your category?

 

Are you challenging the status quo?

 

Leaders are the ones out front, blazing the trails.  They certainly respect where we come from, but they are not stuck in the past.  Risk is an inherent part of leadership, but it is a mantle that leaders are happy to put on.  What is your product, your company, doing to challenge the way things have always been done?  Innovation comes from saying, “Why do we do it that way?”  “What if we did it another way?”  How are you blazing a trail in your category?  Do you play it safe, just following the crowd?  Or are you taking risks and showing the world a new way of doing things.

 

Are you encouraging your people?

 

Whoever “your people” are, they need to be inspired, encouraged, cajoled, appreciated.  Are you a voice for “hope” or “change” in your own world, just as we’ve heard so much in the past year on the national stage?  Are you engaging with your people … your consumers, your customers, your staff?

 

Are you empowering?

 

Does your brand make your consumer’s life better?  Does it enable them to go beyond what they thought they could do?  Brand leader Nike does. Brand leader Apple does.  Who’s the brand leader in your category … and how can you get it to be YOU?

 

Do you “walk the talk?”

 

Brand leaders are consistent in their communications.  If they are creative and irreverent in their advertising, they are creative and irreverent on their website and everywhere else?  If you say you care about customers, how are you backing up that statement?  Actions speak a billion times louder than words.