Branding: the entrepreneur’s advantage.

Okay, so nobody’s ever heard of your company, your product, your service – yet.  You may have barely gotten the shingle hung.  If you even own a shingle.  But no matter where you are as a startup, understand that you’ve some serious advantages over your bigger and more-established competitors when it comes to launching a branding initiative.

Like what, you ask?

No inertia.  Ever heard of ‘organizational inertia’?  It makes modifying or fine-tuning a brand image almost impossible sometimes – believe me.  I recently spent six months working on a brand re-launch project for a major CPG firm.  Support and commitments came from across the organization, right up to the C-level.  But when time came to pull the trigger…there were suddenly a hundred tiny, nattering voices who didn’t want the status quo disturbed, even if the outcome was potentially game-changing.  “Good enough” ruled the day.  You’ve got no such bureaucracy or entrenched habits to battle.

The spirit that moves you. Small businesspeople, entrepreneurs, innovators, all have a precious set of commodities that can be expressed in their brand promise: enthusiasm and vision.  Where big companies drift into maintenance and codification of what they’re all about, you’re still close to the beating heart of your business – the aspirations that got you going.  That’s the kind of energy that makes a brand authentic and real to your customers or consumers…and it’s exactly what they’re looking for.

Holistic grasp. If you’re small, you can have a hand in every aspect of the business, and of the branding.  That means it’s far, far easier to control it, adjust it, fine-tune it and have fun with it, in every expression.   It makes you nimble (see: inertia) and it makes it easier to react if you need to turn on a dime to confront a new opportunity.

Owning it…and up to it. It’s your company and your brand – and it’s your responsibility and challenge, too.  Brands are meant to be coaxed, nurtured and grown, not simply set loose.  By not managing your image and branding, you’re inevitably putting them at the mercy of the marketplace — and your competitors.  A passive-aggressive brand will someday run up against a problem where it doesn’t have the gumption or wherewithal to measure up to the challenge – see BP in the Gulf – because it’s lost the reflexes that allow it to seize the moment.  If you’re serious about your brand, you’ve got to own up to that responsibility every day.  Ask an Apple, a NIKE or a BMW about what being strict, smart and proactive about their brand image has done for them.