Ten Principles of Big League Branding
What is the difference between a Sales Organization and a Brand?
How about the difference between a Story and a Narrative?
Why is a highly distinctive Identity so crucial to any long-term strategy?
Just several of the dozens of provocative questions readers have been asking since the November 2021 release of BIG LITTLE LEGENDS. When the book was first published 24 months ago, there was no way of knowing how many sparkling questions it would ignite from genuinely curious people like you; willing and eager to understand this subject at a much deeper level.
What if your Brand is the single most important investment you can make in your business?
On a recent trip to the NHL’s Heritage Classic, friend and fellow author Bob Mueller observed from high above that Commonwealth Stadium is a perfect metaphor for any crowded competitive market. The #1 question for any leader is … “What makes you stand apart from all the rest”? If you are a superstar hockey player like the Oilers Connor McDavid or featured second intermission rockstars, Nickelback, you have established a big league reputation that attracts volumes of attention and commerce. But long before they achieved fame and fortune, both the athletes and the musicians had mastered the fundamentals of their specific craft.
What if long-term brand building works the same way? Could there be much more to uncover since the 350-page, 12-chapter book with 36 timeless takeaways was originally published two years ago this week? Blessed with the good fortune of sharing BIG LITTLE LEGENDS message with audiences from Taiwan to Toronto, Texas, and beyond, people have responded with their own thought-provoking questions and observations. Insights that make you stop and think like a student again. Willing to embrace basic fundamentals like mastering three chords or the skills of skating, shooting, and passing.
Stage lights are on. Guitars are tuned. Time for a puck drop. Discover what fellow fans have suggested as the Ten Principles of Big League Branding in this edition of Leaders & Legends.
When he was a kid, he'd be up at five. Take shots 'til eight and make the thing drive
Out after school and back on ice. That was his life, he was gonna play in the big league. TOM COCHRANE
Sitting at any keyboard, nothing stops you and me from fully accessing this 24-7 wired, transparent world. Nothing is stopping any one of us from playing in the big leagues of branding. From massive global brands like Apple and NIKE to fledgling start-ups, any company can create and broadcast its own media. Consequently, the fundamentals of “brand” have become all-encompassing.
Unfolding across all customer and cultural touchpoints, a highly distinctive brand has the force-multiplying potential to dominate any local or global market.
What it represents in terms of Identity and Reputation impacts public perception of your products, services, employees, leadership team, and social media presence as well as your suppliers, strategic partners, recruiting efforts, HR policies, and more. Much more than just one piece of the puzzle called your logo, your brand is a combination of 1001 different elements that tell a story in the mind of the market.
One of the best examples of achieving big league success with long-term brand building is U.K. billionaire Sir Richard Branson.
Currently, the Virgin Group is a conglomerate of more than 400 companies that range from travel and leisure to finance and communications. From Virgin Records to Virgin Mobile, Virgin Atlantic, and many more, Branson has consistently applied a brand-building fundamental that dates back more than 50 years.
Focus …. And it will expand.
It’s like using a magnifying glass to concentrate the Sun’s rays onto a block of wood or a piece of paper. In other words, by grouping all of the different companies under the umbrella of the Virgin brand, Branson multiples both reach and impact. Each Virgin company benefits from the marketing efforts of the other to create a form of compound interest in the minds of readers and viewers like us. Friend and author Dan Martell first brought this to my attention in 2014 shortly after he had spent a week with Branson at his private chalet in the Swiss Alps.
Besides concentrating your marketing efforts around a singular brand Identity, here are the Top Ten principles of big league branding that readers and audience members have contributed through their experience with BIG LITTLE LEGENDS:
10. Any product, service, or level of expertise can be quickly outdated, but a successful brand endures forever.
9. Marketing used to be focused on gimmicky persuasion and manipulation. Now it’s about telling the truth and being brave enough to share it.
8. The more powerful your brand, the more it becomes a metaphorical suit of armor; your best protection against business factors beyond your control.
7. People are naturally, magnetically attracted to brands and willingly seek them out. People hunt down brands. Sales organizations hunt down people. People IDENTIFY with Brands. People will NEVER identify with a Sales Organization.
6. Branding is both the beating heart and DNA of your business; the promise you make to customers, employees, and the community you serve. Sales & Marketing is the megaphone that announces this promise.
5. Sales is a tangible, metric-based activity subject to ups & downs. A brand is an intangible yet permanent way to build a reputation that generates sales on its own.
4. You either give the market the story you want them to talk about, or they will make up their own and tell that story instead.
3. The founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos is fond of saying, "Your brand is what people say about you when you are not in the room."
2. Brand Identity behaves a lot like gravity; an invisible force that controls every aspect of your business and influences every decision you make. Reader Greg Langman offers, “Legends flow from the authentic stories of people who live out their true identity with the long game in mind.”
1. A story is a singular event. With a well-defined beginning, middle, and end. A brand narrative represents something more abstract and symbolic; a shared belief like The American Dream. Or what it means to “Just Do It”. A narrative can be compared to a larger concept like a Thanksgiving table, which represents thousands of individual and shared stories. From the early Pilgrims and Plymouth Rock to family feasts, turkey with all the trimmings, corn, cranberries, a deeper sense of gratitude, pumpkin pie, and a day filled with NFL football.
BIG LITTLE LEGENDS involved four years of writing and research with the aim to inspire small to mid-size enterprises to recognize that they too could create brands that operate on a big-league level. One of the very best from dozens of examples is what Jesse and Emily Cole and their minor league baseball team are doing to reinvent an entire sport. They may not have the marketing budgets of an Apple, NIKE, or Disney, but nothing has stopped the Savannah Bananas from thumbing their nose at more than a century of conventional baseball wisdom,
From Richard Branson to the Savannah Bananas, there are plenty of examples of how anyone can elevate a brand to stratospheric heights. Anyone can become the metaphorical equivalent of Wayne Gretzky, Connor McDavid, Led Zeppelin, or Nickelback in their chosen pursuit or profession.
However, achieving any level of big-league success still hinges on deeper knowledge and consistent application of the fundamentals. Golf legend Jack Nicklaus was fond of saying, “Learn the fundamentals of the game and stick to them. Band-Aid remedies never last”. Basketball great Michael Jordan once said You can have all the physical ability in the world, but you still have to know the fundamentals.
In the competitive arena of long-term brand building, the most fundamental thing of all may be knowing that fundamentals will always demand practice and refinement to achieve true mastery.
“Branding demands commitment; commitment to continual re-invention; striking chords with people to stir their emotions; and commitment to imagination. It is easy to be cynical about such things, much harder to be successful” SIR RICHARD BRANSON
p.s…. If you are curious, Dan Martell’s best-selling book can be purchased here
while Bob Mueller’s Emmy-Award-winning art can be explored by visiting:
p.p.s…. Discover more about our exclusive coaching programs, including the groundbreaking BIG LITTLE LEGENDS MASTERCLASS. Click here to schedule a one-on-one conversation and embark on a transformative journey!
UNLEASHING LEGENDARY INSIGHTS: SUPERCHARGE YOUR EVENT WITH BIG LITTLE LEGENDS
The business landscape evolves at breakneck speed, and staying ahead requires an edge. Imagine delving into the ageless wisdom that forged legends to catapult your organization or industry association into new realms of excellence. It’s not just about the moment in the spotlight; it’s about the lasting IMPACT that reverberates long after the echo of applause fades. This is what keeps you triumphantly navigating the ever-shifting waves of Relevance. Hosting an in-person event later this year or in 2024? Elevate the experience by embracing the universally potent message of BIG LITTLE LEGENDS. The time is now to craft your own legacy.
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“Heroes get remembered. Legends never die” BABE RUTH.
ACCELERATE YOUR BRAND: NAVIGATE THE BRANDING HIGHWAY 🚀
If now is an opportune time to discover the brand story and strategy uniquely your own, consider exploring a metaphorical road trip called THE BRANDING HIGHWAY. Designed for larger companies and organizations, our Executive Bootcamps serve as a journey and destination to help your brand emerge as an undeniable, undisputed, "Category of One.” Along the way, you will discover how to create substantial Differentiation and strategic Relevance while aligning your executive team. Impossible to describe with its many twists and turns, it helps to take a quick peek at this video:
“No one remembers who took second place. That will never be me" ENZO FERRARI
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