Hi, welcome back. Yesterday we talked about some alignment problems, when your colleagues ought to be using Brand Guidelines to ship their customer conversations. Today, before giving some solutions to this alignment problem, I'd like to first call out how some colleagues might even actively ignore the brand guidelines. I've seen the following situation before at many companies I've worked for. Let's imagine a post sales team, in a certain geography, which has had great success in getting customers to make repeat sales, or renewals. Because of their success, they might resist using generalized brand messages in their communications to the customers, because they perceive rightly or wrongly, their own style of communication about the product to be more effective than the brand guidelines. They might ask, "Why should I change the way I communicate with my customers? I am making more sales than the other regions." Their incentives, in this case relative sales, give them confidence, that their own ways of messaging the brand value are better than the official ones. Smaller companies where there is less specialization of roles, the disconnect between brand guidelines in the actual customer conversations is also very much present. In these smaller companies, you are likely to find employees responsible for touch points who have no idea what the Brand Guidelines are, but are nonetheless responsible for creating content, or having customer interactions and conversations in various touch points. So, for example, in smaller companies, customer service activities such as responding to customer questions via email support, might be done by the development or technical team, and not a Specialized Customer Service Operation. I've seen this in many companies I've worked with. Developers that perceive that complaining customers are preventing them from doing the real job. So, instead of solving their customer problems, they're trying to just get off the phone, so they can go back to their coding. These techies are hardly going to be the champions of the brand guidelines in message. So, the main problems with this use of brand guidelines are sometimes is misuse, sometimes lack of awareness, in other cases, it's just lack of appreciation for the impact that the brand guidelines should be making. So, how do you address this? Well, some of the challenges with brand guidelines can be fixed quite easily. Like swapping in the correct font or logo in place of the wrong one, that's easy. But others are much more difficult to solve. So, here are a couple ways to think about brand guidelines in projects, brand guideline projects in a way that improves the likelihood the teams across your company will make the best use of them. So first, don't let the brand guidelines blindside the teams that will be using them. Involve them in the brand strategy process, even if the process is being managed as is often the case by an outside consultant. Don't create the new brand in a vacuum. Second, think of brand guidelines not as a sacred document but as a way of starting conversations with teams. Use these conversations to remove ambiguity, provide coaching, and help them manage expectations. Third frequently refresh your colleagues awareness of the brand guidelines in their understanding of how they're used. So forth, think of different ways to spread the awareness of the guidelines. Don't rely on a simple link in an Intranet web page or a hard-copy print out of the grand guidelines. Instead, look for creative ways to teach your colleagues about the different components of the brand guidelines; a quiz, a workshop, awards for best brand adherence, identify brand champions, et cetera. Fifth, prioritize. All aspects of the brand guidelines are not equal. Don't become the brand police. Identify and address the most critical gaps between, the guidelines and their use or their lack of use. So finally, Brand Guidelines are probably the most common way that brand messages get cascaded into the various touch points throughout the whole customer experience across a customer journey. As we've discussed in these last few courses, it's absolutely critical to recognize that your colleagues are not going to live and breathe your guidelines just because they received them as a booklet or a link to your internal website. You as brand and CE professionals, need to actively promote the usefulness of the brand guidelines. I hope these classes have emphasized this for you. Thank you.
