Invisible Brand

If service brands are people businesses, and if one of their biggest challenges is to align the attitudes and behaviours of their people with the values of their brand, then common sense says that the greater the number of people, the more difficult the challenge.

That’s certainly true, as many very large people businesses will ruefully testify.

But what about the opposite end of the spectrum? Is it all much more straightforward for very small people businesses – and, specifically, for the smallest people businesses of all, those that consist of just one person?

Some people – and perhaps especially some people who work for themselves – have no trouble at all in creating clear, positive and differentiated brand perceptions in the minds of their target groups.

Take my window cleaner, Ray. Ray has no marketing director, and no brand strategy: he has never carried out a market mapping exercise, and he doesn’t track perceptions on Milward Brown.

Ray just knows how to be a great service brand. He calls to remind us when he’s due and arrives at 7.30 in the morning, so we can go off to work and leave him to it. Not only do the windows always sparkle inside and out, but we know he’ll wipe the ledges and cut back the ivy when necessary – and both of us tend to hang around for a quick chat (he’s a really nice man!).We leave the house knowing that all will be well on our return. Would we still pay him if the windows weren’t clean? I think we’d give him the benefit of the doubt for quite some time!

Although there are plenty of people like Ray who have an instinctive sense of their own brand values and fully understand the importance of ‘living the brand,’ there are many millions who don’t.

Arguably, a true brand evangelist would say that every aspect of an individual’s life – right across the range of their personal and working relationships – is susceptible to the disciplines of brand management. A partner on a first date is as much a target market for brand launch communications as a potential buyer of Ray’s windowcleaning services.

But it is in the context of work that some people, and organisations, are now showing an interest in enabling individuals to define and manage their own personal brands. I know of a start-up business in the career advice market seeking to do just this, using a combination of seminars, workshops and on-line services. And although books like Brand Yourself, by David Andrusia and Rick Haskins, are actually more to do with personal presentation than true brand management, the title at least is another straw in the wind.

While welcoming the development of brand management for individuals in principle, I can’t help feeling mildly alarmed about the business implications for agencies like CCHM. Frankly, like most agencies, our enthusiasm for working with interesting people with minuscule budgets was severely tested by the dotcom boom that ended a year or so ago. I doubt whether our business could stand a surge of private individuals looking for us to apply our skills to the development of their own personal brand strategies.

Perhaps what we should do is just introduce them to a positive role model.

I could always give them Ray’s phone number.