Bernard Kelvin Clive
In less than 24hours he had a cute logo created, sleazy tagline with a sweet brand name. Kwadie’s Cakes & Confectionaries was birthed with the brand name “Kwakes”. He instantly created an Instagram page, filled in Facebook page details and boom, ads began rolling for likes and leads! Wow, over 54,000 and 20,000 followers respectively on Instagram and Facebook in less than 48hours. His fame began to rise and orders for his cakes (Kwakes) started to rise through the roof. A business could be that easy; he thought to himself. Kwadie was in business. A brand at the speed of thought.
Word of mouth marketing set in and in his 3rd day of business, the business was rewarding – making more than his Return on Investment (ROI) on social media ads. Orders got delivered and on the fourth day, loads of social media comments started surfacing. Feedbacks from customers were nothing to write home about. Screenshots, tweets, and feeds were filled with negative remarks about his Cakes. Brand dead on arrival!
Well, what went wrong? Your guess could be good as mine. The social media hype of his product didn’t meet the expectations of consumers and the same channels that got him to the top, caused him to come tumbling down.
But hey, wait a minute, what accounted for the success of Kwadie’s Cake brand? Well, he used social media to his advantage but his so-called success was quite short-lived. When reality catches up with hype, the truth will be uncovered.
The story illustrates how several startup brands go about their branding. Quick to rise and even quicker to fall.
Social media is a good tool for branding, however, it needs to be done properly with the right mindset and value proposition. Without value creation, the hypes and noise of brands will be futile.
Let me offer you ways to remedy the hype brand syndrome.
Here are key Mindsets to develop for your Brand to Triumph the Test of Hype
Ground Mindset: This is having the fundamentals of your brand right. Don’t jump the initial stages of defining and reasons for your brand. The ground rule is to know 'your why' for your brand. Develop your brand and business purpose into one simple statement that you can share with others easily – let’s call it, your elevator pitch.
Answer these questions…
Why are you branding? Why are you in business? What unique value are you bringing to the market place? Whose needs and wants are you meeting? Once you have clear answers to these questions the others follow. You can then look at your brand name, logo, tagline, attributes, identity, etc.
First, get grounded, get your brand basics right then you can build successfully on it. Don’t start of off social media, branding is not just about social media. It’s a great tool for building your brand but it’s not all there is to branding.
Growth Mindset: Brands are like living organisms; they grow and evolve. Successful established brands understand the growth mindset and thereby use it to their advantage. The growth mindset has to do with the understanding that becoming a better brand requires a process. It requires going from one stage to the other and it doesn’t happen just by a sudden push of a bottom to propel one to the top. When you have that understanding you will prepare your grounds/foundation and build on it gradually. You become determined to find ways to better your best.
Growth has to do with consistently improving, fine-tuning and tweaking to ensure your brand stays fresh and strong in the mind of your audiences. A growth mindset asks; what can I do to become a better brand? What can I do to give more value to my clients? A growth mindset listens to feedback and makes things better, they refuse to stay the same. They constantly add new things to make the brand better.
In connection with your personal brand, you may need to take some extra courses, go back to school, get some coaching, learn a new skill, read wider and try new things. When you become better your brand becomes better. Just like living organisms, any brand that does not grow dies! Grow your brand consistently, become like the proverbial wine – age with grace.
Glow Mindset: It’s good to grow in every aspect of life and to consequently glow (polish, perfect) your brand and business. Growing is not just good enough you need to move the nudge up a little. You must glow! Glow mindset in brand building is the quest and strife for excellence. To reach the iconic stage of branding. To be known to represent nothing short of remarkable, excellence and value creation. Glowing is the icing on your cake, it is the light on the candle. When you glow, you make your brand more visible and impactful.
A glow mindset refuses to stay the same, they polish their pearls till it glows. They do all they can to stay atop the mind – to be the only preferred choice. Glowing kills ambiguity and uncertainty in the minds of consumers. It shortens their decision-making cycle. Once your brand comes to mind, you shine through. Be consistently remarkable – glow!
Key take-home: Average brands settle at just growing and exceptional iconic brands glow. They don’t just shine, they outshine the competition, the become team-leaders, thought-leaders, pace-setters, trailblazers. They keep setting new standards and records. Can you name some glowing brands? List them and learn from them.
Finally, if our friend - Kwadie, had learned these three processes of building his brand, he would have made it to the top and stayed there. Don’t rush to fame, take time to build an impactful brand with the Ground, Growth and Glow Mindset.
The best is yours.
Bernard Kelvin Clive is an Author, Speaker, Corporate Trainer and Lecturer at Central University. Ghana's foremost authority on Personal Branding and Digital Book Publishing. An Amazon bestselling author of over 40 published books. As a speaker & trainer he has been known to simplify complex ideas about branding and life and present them to audiences in clear, actionable steps. He has over a decade experience in digital publishing and has globally consulted for entrepreneurs, pastors, and people like you to write books and build brands. He hosts the number one ranked Career & Business Podcast in Ghana. Bernard is a brand strategist at BKC consulting and runs the monthly Branding & Publishing Masterclass.
