Ready vs. Right: Re-Evaluating Our Brand Six Months Later
Getting started, on anything really, is oftentimes the most difficult part. It’s a balancing act between getting it ready and getting it right at the beginning. There’s a pretty big space that exists between those two stations, ready and right, and that space is where experience comes into play. Everything has a learning curve attached to it; unexpected challenges and unforseen roadblocks happen all of the time, as do new avenues and opportunities to explore that you didn’t imagine at the outset. Nobody (so far as we can tell) gets it right from day one, and a lot of people quickly learn that they weren’t really ready. Both of those realizations are okay. It’s part of the learning process, which is what we’ve been thinking a lot about lately six months into our new venture.
We recently came across an ebook produced by a Chicago agency that reminded us about the realities of one’s brand - what it is and how it is constantly evolving and changing. It is, it happens, and it matters. The timing couldn’t have been better for us to think about our own brand in this light at this stage in our evolution. We’ve spent some time over the past few weeks engaged in conversations internally about what we can do better, how we can do it better, and for whom we can do it better. From these we’ve uncovered new opportunities to be excited about, new ways to approach clients and find creative solutions for them, and we’ve talked through things we would have done differently to improve future projects (the “had we only known” conversations - you know the ones. Don’t be afraid of those. That’s how you grow and evolve).
What’s most evident from all of this is we would never have been able to engage in these discussions and feel good about where are as a business in a healthy and enlightening way if we weren’t ready when we started. That’s not to say we haven’t gotten a few things right along the way either. But what’s most important to us is taking the time to reflect and remind ourselves to enjoy the process, to celebrate the good and learn from the not so good. That’s difficult to remember and to do sometimes in this environment where results mean everything, and the prevailing mentality is to just go, go, go.
So, what’s the point here? If you’re ready, you can embrace the curveballs that come your way and use them to improve yourselves and your business or organization. And if you do that, you’ll be improving what your brand can do as well. Sometimes not getting the results you expected is best thing that can happen to you. By not getting it right, maybe you can reaffirm the fact that you’re ready to do better, think a little differently, be more comfortable with trying something new knowing that it might not work out.
Use the challenges you face to rethink and refine your language–how you talk about yourselves and how you talk to your clients–, re-evaluate your strategies for reaching and supporting both new and existing partners alike. If you’re not in a position to re-evaluate and adjust, you just might miss some really good stuff happening around you. Just be ready, and don’t worry too much about getting it exactly right (a healthy amount of worrying is important however). There will always be another opportunity for that.
We’ll leave you with some questions that we’ve been working through in our effort to be ever-improving, some of which translate to our website and other external channels, and some of which are for our internal use only.
Do our materials communicate our purpose effectively and represent our voice accurately?
Is it clear WHAT we do?
Is it clear HOW we do it?
And is it clear WHY a business would benefit from partnering with us?
What more can we do to reach our intended audience?
What other strategies and mediums are out there to create touch points and opportunities with businesses we’d love to work with?
Whose visual identity and messaging (within our industry or outside of) do we admire and why? What can we learn from them?
What have we learned from client engagements thus far that can inform our approach? Is there a new direction we should try based on what we’ve experienced so far?
What can we do differently with our next proposal to set ourselves apart more effectively?
Are we asking the right questions?!
We would love to hear from you if you need support with your branding efforts.