Posts Tagged ‘2008’

Welcome to Day 1 of VOCO Creative’s “Does It Work?  Assessing Your Brand” series!

Assessing your brand doesn’t have to be a daunting process.  Whether you’re a small firm or a large corporation, you have to look back before you can look ahead.  Should you get bogged down in details or past mistakes?  No.  Should you learn from what was and move forward?  Of course!

Step 1 of your year-end brand assessment essentially consists of one (deceptively) simple question: 

Where am I?

I don’t care about your ZIP code.  I care about hard data…facts and figures.  If you can answer these questions, you’re off to a good start:

• What one word would I use to characterize my brand’s progress this year?
• What specific actions have I taken to market and promote that brand?
• What kind of audience do I have?  Has that market changed in the past 12 months?  If so, how?
• How much money have I spent on branding this year?  What has been my return on investment?
• What metrics do I use to mark my progress?  What do those show me about my business?
• What am I happiest about with my marketing and brand strategy?
• What is my wish list for 2009?
• What is my budget?

Seem like a long list?  Maybe.  Consider it the kernel for your assessment.  These facts and figures are a great starting point.

Continue to join us this week…we’ll teach you how to use the answers you find to assess the strength of your brand and how to adjust if you don’t have all the information you need.

Photo courtesy of emdot

Mulled cider and Santa schemes aren’t the only thing brewing this time of year.  In fact, I find that my clients like to look back at year’s end to see how far they’ve come, where they’re going, and set some financial and business goals in order to head into the new year with confidence.

But how do you even wrap your head around your brand, anyway?  Brand assessment doesn’t have to be daunting…in fact, there are several quick strategies and assessment tools you can use yourself as you close the book on 2008.

Over the next week, VOCO Creative will be offering a fresh new blog series about brand assessment right here.  Check us out Monday, December 8 for the first installment!

This will be short and sweet…HackAttack 2008 has officially come to an end.

Lessons learned:  we have an incredible support team here at Voco.  It’s a blessing to deal with a crisis with laughter, strategy, and relative calm instead of falling into a chasm of panic, defeat, and frustration.  Definitely one for the record books, though.

What’s the latest crisis you’ve averted?  I’d love to know.