Grassroots Brand-building Questions: A Baker's Dozen

I was waiting for my plane at the San Francisco airport a couple of weeks ago. I chuckled when I overheard a comment from a fellow traveler. He was saying something about his  “We say that we are working on the project Fusion but within the company some of us feel that there is only Confusion”

Note: You don’t get extra points for guessing the name of the company.

While the remark was funny, the fact remains that whoever was making that comment was hurting the company’s brand. One can never tell what was the extent of the damage he was causing but we can be certain that some damage was done.

As an employee of any company, you are doing one one of the following. You can:

(a) hurt your company’s brand
(b) making no difference to your company’s brand
(c) help your company’s brand.

As you can guess, you are more valuable to the company when you are helping the company’s brand.

So let us say you want to help your company’s brand. For starters, answer the following questions (or find answers from the right people) to unleash the power within

1. Why should you be proud of working for your company? Why should you be proud of being part of your team?

2. Why should your company be proud that you are working for them? Why should your fellow team members be proud that you are part of their team?

3. What is your current sphere of influence? what are you doing to expand it?

4. What is the strength of your personal brand today? What are you doing to strengthen it on an ongoing basis? How effectively are you using your personal brand to strengthen your company’s brand?

5. What are you doing today to build and extend your network? Think: How is your company, people involved and the offerings relevant to your network?

6. What is your plan for participating and contributing to the community as a representative of the company? The participating venues can include but not limited to blogs, newsletters, forums and magazines.

7. Do you know the elevator pitch for the company, the main offerings and the people behind? Do you know how to customize this pitch to make it relevant to the audience?

8. Are you effectively evangelizing your company’s projects to the relevant audience within and outside of your network?

9. What are you doing to make your company’s clients insanely successful?

10. What are some of the remarkable things that your company and/or your division and/or your team are involved in?

11. What is your company’s sustainable competitive advantage?

12. What are  you doing to increase the capacity of your company and your colleagues to fulfill the brand promise of your company?

13. What are you personally doing to fulfille the company’s brand promise

Note: The above list is not complete and not all questions may be relevant to your company.

Imagine if each one of your employees do this exercise for themselves. There will be some learning individually and collectively that will contribute to strengthening the company’s brand.