Important message for The Brand Surgery® community regarding Coronavirus

Over the past few days, confirmed numbers of people infected with Coronavirus across the UK have increased significantly. The Brand Surgery® sends peace and love to all people who have been infected, families of those who are infected, and also to the hundreds and thousands of business owners  and their employees who are suffering from loss of business. The health and safety of our community is our first priority and this message is written with you in mind. 

The Brand Surgery® is a home-based marketing and design consultancy, working hard for our clients from the south coast of Worthing (view above), West Sussex, founded and led by Vicky Vaughan FCIM FInstLM. Our creative community of designers and marketers are also home-based.

The reason for mentioning the above is because as a home worker, Vicky and her team have already been self-isolating in the main, so hopefully we have a reduced risk of developing Coronavirus. For peace of mind, Vicky and her team have also been taking extra care with hygiene, social distancing, limiting use of public transport and is being mindful of any changes in her health. 

For the foreseeable future, we aim to make the most of technology and conduct meetings remotely, via Skype, FaceTime and phone. Apart from meetings, disruption will be minimal and we are pleased to continue to offer professional marketing and design agency solutions.

Coronavirus communication template to send to your customers and staff

We have been researching the best Coronavirus Communication templates to update your communities about your Cornonavirus safety plans. We have found that these guidelines by Harvard Business Review are excellent and we hope it will help you. Sharing is caring!

Marketing your business is even more important through a crisis 

There will no doubt be a number of small businesses who are concerned about reduced income over the next month or two. Marketing your way through a crisis is even more important than ever. During the past twelve years, we’ve endured the 2008 Recession, Brexit and now Coronavirus – it is now important to keep your business on the radar by making it stand out through professional marketing and creative design. 

We are passionate about creating healthy brands from the inside out though marketing and creative. If your business is quiet, then use this opportunity to spend some time looking at your marketing strategy to see where your social media communications, brand message and communications can be improved. We are here to help. 

If you have any questions, please call our team on 01903 898977 or email our team at vicky@thebrandsurgery.uk.

Are you where you are as a result of design or default?

On the run-up to the Euro Final, I heard Kriss Akabusi describe England’s achievement in the final as ‘design not default’. As The Brand Surgery’s 20th anniversary approaches, I have been reflecting on how I ended up as a business owner as a result of default, through redundancy, back in 2001. What have I done to design my way to success. I’m interested to learn how many businesses owners are in their position by default or design?

Then my thoughts extended to how many of us have defaulted back to various positions due to the pandemic. How do we design some oomph back in our lives – both professionally and personally? Rather than being a victim of the pandemic, how can we creatively design our future?

When people think about creative design, they often think about brochure or website design.

Creative design gives your business a competitive advantage

We eat and breathe creativity and naturally  our core values include creativity and curiosity. However, before we begin designing your project, we always conduct marketing research to understand what type of design and words will engage your perfect client.

We guarantee that our creative design solutions will help your business to grow because our Chartered Marketer because our in-house Chartered Marketer injects tried-and-tested marketing knowledge and expertise into everything we design.

Unless you are 100% certain that you know what your customers want, we encourage new clients to invest in a one hour marketing mentor session. This will highlight any potential gaps and ensure informed decisions are made regarding your business.

Creative design gives your business a competitive advantage

We eat and breathe creativity and naturally  our core values include creativity and curiosity. However, before we begin designing your project, we always conduct marketing research to understand what type of design and words will engage your perfect client.

We guarantee that our creative design solutions will help your business to grow because our Chartered Marketer because our in-house Chartered Marketer injects tried-and-tested marketing knowledge and expertise into everything we design.

Unless you are 100% certain that you know what your customers want, we encourage new clients to invest in a one hour marketing mentor session. This will highlight any potential gaps and ensure informed decisions are made regarding your business.

The Brand Surgery® is excited to be sponsoring the communications category in the 2020 IESE Public Sector Transformation Awards.

Having served as a Borough Councillor between 2010-2018, our CEO, Vicky Vaughan, understands that authentic communications are essential to keep improving council services for communities.

We have been enjoying reading entries which demonstrate how communications have enhanced transparency, built meaningful partnerships, improved leadership, communicated effectively with traditionally hard-to-reach communities and promoted a commercial mindset and culture in councils across the UK.

The Brand Surgery® works with community groups, local government, building energy management system providers, consultants and charities. Vicky has been helping iESE public sector consultancy with marketing research, strategy and creative since 2012. More recently she has been helping IESE to future-proof its product portfolio and communications, maintaining relevancy so they can continue to provide effective solutions for public sector challenges.

The entries for the Communications category which we are sponsoring are:

The campaign achieved a huge reach across all social media of over 5.5m. The campaign gave clear and simple messaging about what the changes meant for residents, used social media content showing the new logo in iconic locations and showcasing employees working together to improve residents’ lives.  A post-campaign survey with residents a 30% increase in awareness of the Council compared to pre-campaign levels. No customer service complaints were received as a result of the change.

London Borough of Havering: On track

The use of apprenticeships is a core part of the council’s medium-term transformation plans. Havering Council used Apprenticeships to create opportunities that enabled junior and middle management staff to progress and set a standard of management across the organisation. The ‘On Track’ campaign was designed to engage staff with opportunities to undertake Level 3 or 5 Management Apprenticeships. In just over two weeks, it engaged at least a third of the workforce and generated over 60 applications for 30 places. It also unlocked £257,500 of our apprenticeship levy and promoted Havering as the leading London borough with the largest cohort of Management.

All three are winners in our opinion and we are looking forward to meeting all involved on Wednesday 4th March in London.

Contact The Brand Surgery on 01903 898977 or email hello@thebrandsurgery.co.uk for further information about any of the above.

 How much do they trust your brand? | What are you doing to earn that trust ?

According to the Edelman Trust Survey,  the least trusted of all the markets is media which includes social media platforms. Having said that, trust in UK’s Government, Media, Business and Social Causes have increased by 4% since 2012, however, this figure has decreased by 1% since 2017.Â

64% of survey respondents expect business CEOs to take the lead on societal change rather than expecting Government to impose it. Wouldn’t it be amazing if the one-use plastic manufacturers pledged to stop manufacturing such packaging rather than waiting years for the Government to develop a 25 year Environmental Plan.

How can social media increase brand trust?

If we expect people to feel safe and buy into our brands, brands must evoke a feeling of trust. Digital marketing platforms can help us to promote trust, but trust building strategies are essential because otherwise social media will simply amplify mistrust.

Here are two social media trust building formulas that we have seen published:

• Trust = Influence + Reputation(Chris Brogan and Julien Smith, ‘Trust Agents’)
• Trust = Authority x Helpfulness x Intimacy / Self-Promotion(Steve Rayson, director of BuzzSumo)

I have taken these formulas one step further and created the 4A Brand Trust Marketing Model:

(Authenticity + Agile Adaptor + Authority) x Amplification = Brand Trust

(4A Brand Trust Marketing Model created by Vicky Vaughan, The Brand Surgery®)

Some of the other models divide the good work by Self-Promotion, however, the 4A model naturally reduces temptation to self promote because it promotes authenticity.

Authenticity

Authenticity is essential to maintain stamina and consistent behaviour even when the going gets tough. Having researched Transactional Analysis, it is apparent that inconsistent behaviour leads to mistrust. I have included Authenticity into this brand trust formula because leaders who create trust are authentic, transparent and honest. Authentic brand leaders tap into their souls and admit their weaknesses before expecting others to trust them. They easily walk the talk because they only make promises which align with their values and purpose, therefore, delivering on brand promise comes naturally which creates trust. Promoting and living by your values online creates transparency and also manages expectations; the writing is on the tin, for everyone to see, which again creates trust. If your tone of voice, communications, brand attributes align with your values, this will also create a consistent message and people will feel safe on your website, want to do business with you and become your brand ambassadors.

Authority

. The Edelman Trust Index survey 2018 reveals that if you are a technical expert, academic expert, financial industry analyst, social cause organisation, board of directors, journalist or government regulator, you have gained credibility and people are more likely to trust you. What this means is that the quality of the content you produce, will gain trust or invite mistrust – depending on how authoritative it is. It is recommended that marketers enrol on a CPD programme in their chosen field to keep up with the latest industry research and insights on a regular basis.

Agile adaptor

A trusted personal or business brand must be agile Learning Organisation. If not, they will be less resilient to change and let it’s customers down, breaking their trust. A brand can use digital technology for research. It must learn how to gain insights from big data. It must be ready for Internet of Things (IoT) and Industry 4.0. Only when leaders are ready and agile will they continue to offer customer value. Once achieved, the message that is amplified via social media will be relevant, personalised and even intimate.

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Accessibility

Social media enables your business to be much more accessible and for your customers to quickly interact with you. Ensure you have adequate resources to quickly answer customer questions otherwise you will lose credibility and they may shop elsewhere to find answers. Everyone in your business should be responsible for customer service to some degree. Allow frontline staff to make decisions.

Amplify

Once a brand is authentic, has authority and is agile, it can amplify all of the above and it’s intent and purpose (Corporate Social Responsibility) and become / remain trusted. Maybe, Iit can begin to make societal change as consumers now expect businesses to. As the media is currently the least trusted institution on a global scale, you must promote authenticity by backing your news up with evidence to avoid being branded as fake news. Digital marketing content must be communicated with purpose. Insights gained will help the brand choose the most suitable channel communications to seize opportunities for trusted communications to make positive change. Brands must also amplify our purpose to benefit more stakeholders than just one greedy shareholder.

If brands follow the above guidance, Government wouldn’t need to step in with laws because we’d all be living and promoting our purpose for the right reasons. I saw a quote the other day which said, if we all lived by our values every day, what would the world look like?

Do you agree that it is up to businesses to make societal change?

• If so, how well is your brand doing at this?
• How well is your industry doing at this?
• What would make it easier for you to do this?

Here’s a few interesting brand trust facts from Edelman Trust Index 2018 …

• In the UK,53% of people trust journalism and 36% trust search engines and social media platforms
• 50% of people globally are disengaged with the news and 66% of us think that news organisations are more interested in increasing their audience than reporting.
• 63% of average people can’t tell the difference between fake news and real news.
• Trust in the UK brand has declines and is only 57% – this may affect overseas trade.
• India (86%) and Indonesia (90%)  employees trust their employers the most. 71% of people trust UK employers which is an increase of 14% since 2016.
• 56% of employees believe that companies only think about themselves and their profits and 60% agreed that CEOs think about profits before making a difference in the world.
• The Top 3 priorities that businesses should focus on, according to the public are safeguarding privacy, driving economic prosperity and providing jobs and training.
• Globally, the lowest trust is in Consumer Packaged Goods, Automotive and Food / Beverages.
• Globally, the highest trust is in Technology, Health and Energy although there is a slight drop in the five year trend.

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If you have enjoyed reading this and you would like help in gaining trust in your brand, call us on 01903 898977 or contact us using the form below.