Today we are answering the question What is an Asset to My Brand? So let’s get to it.
Here are the Two Ways to Determine If You have a Great Brand Asset on your hands:
1) The brand asset is truly unique.
Yes, creativity counts, but here’s the golden nugget of truth, what makes it unique isn’t necessarily the creativity although those can go hand in hand — what makes it unique is it’s the result: it should be automatically associated with your brand in the minds and hearts of your consumers, and never associated with a competitor’s brand. That’s the result your branding asset must hang its hat on.
2) The brand asset is well-known.
Most of all of your audience should recognize the brand asset as representing your specific brand. Even if it’s a new package design your audience should easily recognize it as representing your brand. Specifically, your brand promise.
As an entrepreneur, creating valuable brand assets is your first delightful step toward supporting your marketing and sales efforts with the robust resources and engaging content they need to inspire and inform their audience and create a massive community of brand loyalists. If your mind is going blank or filled with thoughts like “I’m at the beginning I have no assets,” or “my assets are dated,” you’re falling into a very well-oiled slippery slope of doubt in your resourcefulness. Open your mind to the idea that you have more assets than you know. It is ok to have self-doubt, don’t let anyone put you down for that, self-doubt is just a human experience that you get to choose if it buries you or raises you up to your highest expression of yourself. Doubt is the mark of a discerning mind. Discernment is a master leadership skill so go ahead pat yourself on the back.
There are so many of our natural human emotions that we’ve been taught to use against ourselves. Here’s the best part: you are aware of that and you get to choose to honor your emotions and see them as a hand up from your higher self to raise your game because deep down you know you’re a badass. You have amazing pics of you, you have people following you on your social media, you have your expertise, your skillset.
What is an Asset to My Brand?
You and everything you’ve created so far.
To set you up to win I have a free guide for you Click the link to get the 2021 Branding Checklist
When going over the branding checklist and anytime you are creating Brand Assets play to your strengths.
Are you a writer? Grab a quote book or search quotes by your 20 favorite thought leaders. For me they would be Tony Morrison, Martin Luther King, Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Ogilvy, Joseph Campbell, or 20 of your industry keywords. For me they would be ‘Branding,’ ‘Naming,’ ‘Taglines,’ ‘Entrepreneur,’ ‘Creativity,’ ‘Marketing,’ ‘Leadership…’ You get the point. Whether you sit down with a book or a laptop, it takes a day or so to write 100 quotes. And here’s the fun part; once you start you can’t stop. It’s like when you get a car and suddenly see 1000s of them everywhere. You will start to see inspiring quotes everywhere. Snippets of conversations suddenly become whippits of information.
Are you a visual learner? Do you have a phone camera? Of course, you do, probably a pretty good one—you’re resourceful. Take pictures to go with your quotes. If you’re more of a visual learner you can start with the pictures then add the quotes. It’s fun and it’s your job. Isn’t that what you have been wanting for— well, every day of your working life? That’s 1-2 days of creative fun and 100 assets.
Empower Your Team, and You SuperFuel Your Brand’s Assets
Next, be sure to label and house your assets in an easy to identify brand assets folder – We use Basecamp and Dropbox because we run our Agency as a team with very little hierarchy and Basecamp is great for keeping the communication flowing from both sides of the table, so be sure that your team members can easily locate them. Don’t forget, with the right team culture your teammates will also have brilliant ideas on different ways to leverage each asset and that is where the goldmine really is… here is the immortal truth according to Canon: There is no success without it being a shared success. Just to really lower my outstretched hand down that slippery slope of self-doubt and grab ahold of your hand: Rise up outta there knowing being an entrepreneur and branding your offerings to the world is your chance to create shared success perhaps with hundreds at first then thousands then millions. But it starts with that mindset that there is no success without shared success.
So let’s build that foundation:
What is considered Brand Assets?
Let start with the easier to identify and then go into the more subtle but also more effective brand Assets:
Name, Tagline, Logo, Website, Bio, Headshots, Quotes, Content, User experience, Books, Articles, E-books, Free Content, Your Origins Story…Some of the more subtle brand assets are the unique characteristics of your company, your point of view, anything that makes your brand stand out from everyone else in your market space, both tangible and intangible. Did you know the announcer guy, Michael Buffer? Every time he’s made to say “Let’s get ready to rumble,” depending on how the match is going, Buffer earns between $25,000and $100,000 every time he utters those five simple words. Even on a handful of occasions, Micheal Buffer has been paid $1 million to utter that brand asset.
While these elements all play a vital role in your brand identity, only some qualify as true brand assets as we discussed.
But here’s a simple way to look at it through some qualifying questions:
Does the brand asset embolden, uplift, inspire your brand’s values and ethics while it delivers your brand promise? Let’s look at your brand’s assets and ask these questions.
Is this asset likely to be associated with another brand? Lose it to avoid any copyright or trademark infringements. You’re resourceful. It just means you need to get more dialed into your brand’s promise.
Next qualifying question: Is this brand asset easy for consumers to recognize and understand? The M in McDonald’s is pretty easy to understand even if you don’t consciously see that the M is french fries and the red banner is ketchup. If so, use it. Use it again and again. Remember Brand Consistency Builds Brand Loyalty and Brand Loyalty Is Your Business Plan.
But if a brand asset of yours needs lots of explanation to understand why it goes with your brand then lose it. It’s not truly aligned with your branding message.
Then of course there is a grey area: These are brand elements that are aligned but haven’t seen the light of day much. Test these! Don’t discard them. Remember how I said when you have a great team and give them access and accountability with your brand assets they will see ways to leverage the branding power of these assets that you may have not seen? Win-win. So for these assets in the grey area – Test and invest in their potential, you might be sitting on the message that reaches the most people yet.
I hope this has served you well in gathering your assets to launch your brand, to build your brand, and of course to keep providing the wonderful service you provide the world. If you enjoyed this episode follow me on FB and IG and subscribe to my YouTube channel, so you don’t miss a single thing. I release new videos every Tuesday and Thursday, so treat these episodes as a masterclass for becoming an Inspiration to Millions with Branding. And as always the way to becoming an Inspiration to Millions starts with our motto: Love What You Do and Love How You Do It.