Build it Right

An amazing thing has been going on the past several years.

You and I have been building our reputations.

If you have been careful with your life, giving your word, standing by your word, doing the work, standing by your work, and helping others with a sincere heart, then you have been building it right.

I'm not talking about perfection, but there is a big difference between deceit, and mistakes.

Drew wrote about this recently:

Your brand’s foundation

Posted: 18 Jun 2011 07:51 AM PDT

How are you building your foundation?

A brand, much like someone’s personality, isn’t something you concoct or fabricate. You can’t put it on and take it off at will. It’s not window dressing, but instead it comes from within your company, the culture, the people, the vision and of course…the marketplace in which it exists.

You can, of course, amplify your brand by doing the right things with intention and frequency. But…the foundation is already set.

In fact…you build your foundation with every choice you make as an organization and as the individuals who work for that organization. David Ogilvy once said “every advertisement is part of the long-term investment in the personality of the brand.” In today’s digital world where everything is archived by Google — it goes far beyond that.

Long before you are consciously on the radar screen of your target audience…you are creating your brand’s foundation with every:

• Tweet
• Facebook update
• Snarly employee wearing one of your logo’d shirts in a bar
• Branded truck driving carelessly
• Sponsorship of an event
• Comment left on someone else’s blog, FB, etc.
• Advertising/Marketing offers

Think of each action as a log or brick. Without meaning to — you are stacking each of those choices/actions together to create my first impression of you. The foundation upon which I will decide if I want to keep interacting.

And by the way — your absence is as noticeable as your presence. Those choices should be made as carefully as deciding where you do want to be seen.

Here’s my question. How intentional are you being about your brand’s foundation? Are you building it with a vision and purpose or is it just happening haphazardly?

Hat tip to Derrick Daye for reminding me of this Ogilvy quote.

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