By Marcie Kelso, Partner/Director of Accounts & Strategy

When thinking about what best defines a brand, it would be easy for me to wax philosophical on the thing that many get wrong when talking brand—that a brand is a logo and maybe a tagline. No, those are design and copy elements that represent a company and/or a product. So, what is a brand? It is all that makes a company or a person unique among its competitors. Further, I believe that at the core of a great brand is a company’s beliefs and values. 

Here are just a few of the beliefs I’m talking about:

Does your business believe in providing the world with the finest product or service available? What do you believe your company can do to make a product or service better than your competitor? Does your company believe that it can deliver the greatest value to its owners and shareholders by lowering costs? Does your company believe that it can lower costs without sacrificing quality, or that in lowering costs to maximize value it’s ok to not be in the premium tier of your product or service? What does your business believe is its obligation to the community, specifically? I could go on and on.

When we take a client through a brand discovery process, we are leading a search for that which makes the client absolutely unique and the supporting beliefs to prove the client’s value. To best showcase this, let’s take our company, Kelso Communications, as an example. Kcomm has a set of beliefs that supports our promise of Intelligent Creativity. Here are just some of those beliefs baked into the Kelso Communications brand:

  1. We believe that to be successful, we need to be a part of our clients’ teams. This can mean anything from functioning as the marketing department for a company like Tryon Medical Partners to being at the ready when the in-house marketers at Moore & Van Allen need us.
  2. Kelso Communications believes that to be a valuable and integral part of the Charlotte community we need to give back every day, not just a few times a year. We stay involved in the non-profit community in both arts and human services every day.
  3. We believe that in the complex world we live in, all of our team members need to have a broad understanding of all of the tools available to communicate – digital, traditional, visual and written.
  4. We believe that it is continuous learning that keeps our team vital. Whether learning about our clients’ businesses or the latest search algorithms, we are dedicated to curiosity and knowledge. 
  5. We believe that keeping our hands in the work keeps us excited and the results for our clients fresh and superior. No one in the Kcomm team will ever reach a point when they just supervise and don’t have a part in doing the work.
  6. We believe that a company is far more than four walls. Kcomm does not compartmentalize. If a team member needs to work at home one day to care for a child, that shouldn’t count as an absence as we are still thinking and doing for our clients.

So, those are just some of the beliefs that uphold the Kelso Communications brand. By taking a hard and in-depth look at the beliefs of your organization, you can develop the foundation of your brand—what makes you valuable, unique and necessary.