Who the heck are you?

If your company is still hanging in there through waves of financial meltdowns, you can proudly call yourself “survivor.”

Feel free to pat yourself on the back – for about five seconds. Then consider an unforeseen ramification or two of the global shake-out. Competition that fell by the wayside has been replaced by leaner, meaner competitors – companies you may have never heard of that are nevertheless all too ready to take a hunk out of your market share. Your grand five-year plan has been temporarily replaced – and certainly altered – by the more immediate issue of successfully seeing in the New Year. Your employees, while doubtless happy to still be drawing paychecks, have likely forgotten the focus on your company’s “big picture” – which has changed, anyway.

Beautiful thing, the free enterprise system.

So, what’s your next move?

Try “relaxing.”

We realize it’s counterintuitive, but it’s also critical. Take a minute– about the time it takes in the life of your brand – to think about who your company is and what it has to offer. Define yourself rather than being defined. Create a set of corporate statements – mission, vision, brand proposition, elevator speech – or carefully re-visit them if they’re already out there.

It’s not indulgent. It’s imperative. And, frankly, it’s not something you can do alone. (It’s kind of like trying to take a 360% look at yourself in the bathroom mirror – hopefully flattering, but far from complete.)

That said, we’re not talking heavy lifting here. No massive messaging exercises. No market research firms talking to everyone you’ve never met about something they know nothing about. In broad strokes, you know where you’re going and what you have to offer. Our job is to build clarity around these data points to ensure that everyone else knows them, too.

Our process goes like this – we interview you and others you specify and audit your competition. From there, we develop a working brand platform. From there, we generate your core statements. Elapsed time: 6-8 weeks.

Whether you’re pitching eyecare or middleware, getting your story straight frees you to be pro-active rather than reactive. It lets your workforce know where you’re headed. It puts your competition on notice. And it sets you up tactically for the development of branding that’s fundamentally sound – and similarly common-sensical.