Chapter 9

Countdown to Takeoff: Launching or Relaunching Your Brand

In This Chapter

Preparing your organization before taking your brand public

Gaining internal buy-in

Writing your brand-launch marketing plan

Propelling your brand into the public arena

Whether you’re branding a new business or product, revitalizing an established brand, or rebranding with an all-new name, logo, and brand promise, when you’re ready to lift the curtain on your new brand, give the moment the fanfare it deserves.

That’s what this chapter is all about. It helps you launch your brand from the inside out, making sure you bring every aspect of your business into alignment with your brand promise, personality, and character before you raise the curtain and introduce your brand in your marketplace.

The upcoming pages lead you through the key phases of your brand launch: preparing for your brand debut, writing your brand-launch marketing plan, launching your brand internally, and moving your brand into the public eye.

Carpe Diem! Seizing the Opportunity to Put Your New Brand in the Limelight

When it comes to brand launches, we’ve seen extreme successes and real flops, and the difference, almost without variation, comes down to whether or not the launch took place within the organization before it traveled to the outside world. If an internal launch doesn’t occur first, a brand fails to win the kind of organization-wide buy-in necessary to imbed the brand message into the entire brand experience.

Your brand is conveyed through everything people see, hear, and encounter. How you answer your phones, how you treat your employees, how your employees treat your customers, how it feels to deal with your business, the look of your workspace or website, the music that plays in the background, the nature and quality of your logo and marketing communications — these are all expressions that make your brand message and promise a reality. To create the experience that accurately reflects your brand, your internal team needs to embrace your brand before it sees the light of the world outside your doors. That’s why pre-launch planning is essential.

Preparing for Your Brand Launch

After you’ve decided on and approved your brand name, logo, and tagline (see Chapters 7 and 8), hold that information close to your vest while you put your brand through final tests and prepare it for unveiling.

Whether you’re launching a new brand or revitalizing an existing brand, you need to announce a complete brand story. If your new brand identity leaks out in bits and pieces — your name one day, your logo another day — people within your organization are likely to think one of two things:

• So what?
• They spent all that time and money on that?

Especially if you’re relaunching an established brand, brand changes can be difficult for those in your organization to embrace until you share the reasons and reasoning behind the changes you’re unveiling, following the steps in the upcoming sections.

Knowing your story, chapter and verse

Before you enlist the understanding, interest, and support of others, be sure you’re 100 percent ready for your internal launch by assembling short statements that summarize each of the following brand elements:

• Your market position: Chapter 5 helps you arrive at a statement that tells what you offer, who you serve, and the unique benefits you offer in your competitive market arena.
• Your brand promise: If your brand promise isn’t already clearly established, turn to Chapter 6 to define the benefits customers can count on and the value and experience they can expect to receive without fail.
• Your brand character: Chapter 6 also helps you arrive at a one-sentence brand character statement that defines the personality of your brand and the mood and tone that will be reflected through all brand expressions, including every contact and experience with your brand.
• Your brand definition: Also called your brand statement, this short definition wraps your target market, market position, point of difference, brand promise, and brand character into a statement that directs all your branding efforts. Your brand definition is an internal steering device, not an external marketing message. It guides your brand’s development, following this format: [Your name] promises [your target market] that they can count on us for [your unique attribute or benefit] delivered with [information about the character, tone, and mood you convey].

Putting your brand launch into context

You’re probably reading this book because you’re in the midst of creating a new brand or revising an existing brand, either through a brand identity face-lift or through a complete rebranding effort — which we liken to a golfer’s mulligan, because rebranding involves basically walking away from your established brand and starting the brand-building process all over again.

Either way, before you unveil your brand, all employees, shareholders, and customers need to understand what you’re doing and how the effort will contribute to the value of your organization.

To prepare for your brand launch, know your answers to the questions in the following sections.

Why are you undertaking this branding effort?

Most branding programs aim to achieve one or more of the following outcomes:

• Build awareness: Awareness leads to marketplace dominance and easier sales efforts, so awareness is usually a top objective in any brand launch.
• Create an emotional connection: Brands need to build emotional connections with those they serve, and that’s especially true for brands with offerings that contribute to a sense of personal satisfaction or security. Additionally, brands aiming to enhance customer loyalty often aim to deepen emotional connection, realizing that customers remain true to brands they love.
• Differentiate your offering: For brands in crowded market categories — where many competitors offer similar products, services, and promises — differentiation is usually a key brand launch objective.
• Create or enhance credibility and trust: Every service or online business needs to make credibility and trust a branding priority because service and online purchases are, essentially, made based on nothing but trust. Customers can’t see, touch, or try out a service or online offering before saying “yes” or clicking to buy. Instead, they select based purely on the belief that the company will deliver on its promise.
• Motivate purchases: Rapid sales growth is a primary objective especially for those introducing product brands, largely because retailers offer such a small window of opportunity before booting new products off the shelf to make room for those with greater sales potential.

For help determining your branding priorities, turn to Chapter 3. It includes a worksheet to help you determine the strategic importance of various brand functions to your branding success, while also helping you assess the pre-launch strengths of your current brand if you’re undergoing a brand revitalization or rebranding program.

What do you expect your brand launch to achieve?

After you set your branding priorities (drawing from the list in the preceding section), you need to set objectives for the quantifiable outcomes you want your brand launch to achieve. The more clearly you state your objectives, the more quickly you’ll win buy-in from shareholders, funding partners, your management team, and the staff who will help make your brand a success.

• If you’re launching a new business or brand, you’re starting from zero, with no brand awareness, emotional connection, credibility, brand differentiation, or sales momentum. Therefore, setting objectives is a matter of determining how quickly you intend to reach certain levels of success in each priority area.
• If you’re rebranding or revitalizing an existing brand, begin by assessing the pre-launch strength of your brand to establish the benchmark against which you’ll measure the success of your brand launch or relaunch.

  Chapter 3 can help as you analyze your current brand strength. For help conducting research or enlisting professional assistance, turn to the research sections in Chapter 5. After you know your starting points, you can set your brand launch objectives by defining the increases you intend to achieve above the pre-launch level in each priority area.

Be realistic about how much change you can effect over the brand-launch period and how much it will cost in terms of marketing investment to reach your objectives. The market adopts change incrementally, which is a nice way to say slowly, so be prepared to invest in the effort and to set objectives with your eyes wide open about the momentum you’re likely to achieve.

Plan to assess your brand’s performance pre-launch, at the completion of your brand launch, and several times over the next year. Doing so allows you to monitor increases in sales, distribution, market share, and pricing, and also to gauge changes in consumer awareness, preference, perceived value, perceived point of difference, satisfaction, reviews, ratings, social-media following, and customer word-of-mouth, referrals, and sharing.

Depending on the size of your organization, you can conduct this research on your own following the survey and interview advice in Chapter 5, or you can enlist the assistance of a research firm. You can find research firms through business directories or by requesting referrals from advertising agencies and branding firms.

Do you need to launch your brand on or by a certain date?

If you plan to have your brand launch gain momentum with a tie-in to a major conference, trade show, or industry event, or if it will benefit from introduction at a certain date for some other reason, make that date clear when you launch the brand internally.

People in your company can easily be complacent about something that seems like an aesthetic change. But if you make it clear that, on a certain date, the curtain needs to rise and the brand needs to be ready to go in order to achieve awareness, momentum, and important objectives, they’ll step on board with a greater sense of mission.

What’s your message?

Before unveiling your brand internally or externally, be certain about the message you want to convey during your brand launch. By clarifying your message in advance, all brand-launch communications — formal and informal, from the CEO to the front-line staff — align, contributing to a strong, clear impression. Use the following guidance for creating a message for new brands or revitalized brands:

• When launching an altogether new brand: Your message should convey your brand’s unique position, point of difference, promise, and value. (Turn to Chapter 5 for information on determining your brand’s competitive position and point of difference. Chapter 6 is your guide to putting your brand promise and your brand definition into words.)
• When launching a revitalized brand or a announcing a rebrand: Your message needs to convey your unique position, point of difference, promise, and value, just as in any other brand launch, but you also want to convey the reason behind the changes you’re unveiling. Count on Chapter 17 for help as you make and announce minor-to-major changes to your brand.

Producing introductory brand prototypes

As you prepare to introduce your brand, be ready to show how your brand will appear in the marketplace over the coming weeks and months. Do this by creating prototypes, also called mock-ups, of everything from signs to ads to web pages to uniforms, apparel, specialty items, and product packages. By showing samples of how the brand will look in actual applications, you allow people on your team to engage and interact with the brand identity. By seeing how the identity works, they begin to lose their attachments to previous brand identity representations. The also begin to release doubts, if any, about the new brand identity representations you’re unveiling.

Don’t skimp on the production of your prototypes. If the samples you show aren’t impressive, the reaction to your brand won’t be impressive either. Invest in prototypes that look as much like the real thing as possible. If you’ve hired designers, an ad agency, or brand consultants to help develop your branding program, they can help you create these prototypes.

Checking your internal readiness

In branding, what you say pales in comparison to what you do. The experience your customers have with your brand trumps your logo presentation, advertising, and marketing efforts in a heartbeat. In fact, given the choice between a beautifully presented brand identity that’s backed by an uneven brand experience and a marginally presented brand identity that’s backed by a brand experience that’s impeccably reinforced at every touch point, we and most other brand consultants would vote for experience over identity any day.

To prepare your organization to consistently deliver a superb brand experience following the brand launch, create an inventory of all the ways people encounter your business. Evaluate each contact point to see that it accurately reflects the mood, tone, and promise of your brand. Chapter 13 provides a complete guide for testing, auditing, and strengthening your brand experience. Before your brand launch, be sure the following points of contact are ready to reflect your brand and strengthen your brand promise:

• Telephone: Are you prepared to answer phones promptly and with a message that reinforces your brand, including your new brand name? Do voicemail recordings convey your brand name, tone, and message?
• In-person arrival: If customers reach you at a physical location, will signage reflect your new brand? Upon arrival, will the entry area make a good impression for your brand? Are people who greet visitors prepared to reinforce your brand promise?
• Online arrival: Is your website ready to present the new brand identity and message on pages that are quick to load and easy to view on all screens — especially on mobile devices? Have you reserved your brand name on social-media networks, and are you ready to develop and interact with a following? Turn to Chapters 10 and 11 for advice on launching your brand’s digital and social-media presence and interactions.
• Within your business: Does the look, sound, and even the smell of your business convey your brand character? Do your employees reflect your brand identity by the way they look and act, the clothes they wear, and the way they interact with customers?
• Correspondence: Have you standardized mail and e-mail correspondence so that communications, whether they come from a salesperson, an invoice clerk, or a service representative, create an echo chamber for the quality and caliber of the brand you’re launching?
• Service: Are you ready to project your new brand at each of the following eight service points?
  • Initial contact
  • Establishment of rapport
  • Product presentation
  • Sale negotiation and transaction
  • Payment
  • Delivery
  • Follow-up to confirm customer satisfaction
  • Ongoing customer service and communication

  If any of these service points fails to convey the brand well, you run the risk of an uneven customer experience with your brand, which is a fast track to breaking your brand promise and eroding brand strength.

The minute you’re sure that everyone in your organization understands your brand message and is prepared to contribute to an experience that conveys and strengthens your brand at every customer touch point, you’re ready to take your brand public, beginning with your highest-priority audiences: your investors and most-loyal customers.

Previewing your brand with priority audiences

Prior to the widespread public launch of your brand and again on at least an annual basis, tell your brand story to your most important outside audiences: your investors and your best customers.

Taking your brand story to key partners, investors, and analysts

The financial world watches the Interbrand and BusinessWeek annual surveys on power brands for a reason: Investors realize that a good way to monitor a firm’s earning potential is to monitor the strength of its branding program.

In addition to watching how a brand stacks up against others, investors watch how well brands are managed. When presenting to those who invest in your business — whether with money or with partnership decisions — convey information that assures them of positive answers to the following questions in most investor minds:

• Does the brand convey the same identity, message, and promise when dealing with all stakeholder groups, from investors to consumers to employees?
• Does the brand express itself through an integrated marketing program that projects a consistent look, tone, message, and promise online and offline, within and outside the business, in advertising, in fulfillment materials, to all audiences, and at all points of contact?
• Does the brand retain its customers — an indication that it delivers well on its brand promise?
• Does the brand have coordinated internal management, as evidenced by a brand experience that’s without variation whether it’s encountered as a prospect, a customer, a job applicant, a supplier, or an investor?

If you’re seeking investor support, first build a branding program that assures a strong “yes” response to each of the preceding questions. Then, at the time of brand launch and periodically thereafter, deliver your brand story to the investor and analyst community by

• Creating an investor/analyst presentation that features your brand story and success indicators (for examples of brand presentations, search online for “investor analyst brand presentations” to find corporate sites that allow you to click on investor podcasts, webcasts, presentations, news releases, and fact sheets)
• Hosting online or conveniently located events to present and discuss your brand story
• Following presentations with news recaps released to investment firms and financial media
• Posting investor/analyst information in your website’s news center

Treating your best customers to an insiders’ preview

If you’re rebranding, revitalizing your brand, or introducing a subbrand or brand extension, don’t let your best and most loyal customers hear the news through the grapevine. Instead, treat them like the insiders they are by reaching out with invitations to in-person or online brand-preview events. Share your enthusiasm, help them understand and embrace your brand changes and message, and reward their interest with meaningful brand offers or gifts. Chapter 14 gives you advice to follow as you cultivate brand loyalty and turn customers into raving fans and brand ambassadors.

Ten, Nine, Eight … Writing Your Brand-Launch Marketing Plan

Don’t leave your brand launch to chance. By putting a plan in writing, you force yourself to clarify your launch objectives, the strategy and tactics you’ll follow, the timeline you’ll meet, and the budget you’ll live within.

You can launch your brand with a plan that exists only in your head, but you shouldn’t. To keep yourself and everyone on your team on track for a successful launch, take these steps, which the following sections explain in greater detail.

1. State your brand-launch message, following the tips and advice in earlier sections of this chapter.
2. Benchmark your pre-launch situation by determining your brand’s current levels of awareness, emotional connection, distinction, credibility and trust, and sales.
3. Set your brand-launch objectives by prioritizing what you want to accomplish and by pinning each priority to a measurable outcome, such as a percentage increase in brand awareness, emotional connection, distinction, credibility and trust, and sales.
4. Define your target market so that you can direct communications specifically toward this group.
5. Define the brand promise and brand character to be conveyed in all brand communications and experiences.
6. Establish your brand introduction strategies.
7. Detail your marketing tactics, including how you’ll use advertising, publicity, social media, promotions, online marketing, sales efforts, packaging, and point-of-sale efforts to introduce your brand.
8. Establish your budget.
9. Create your action plan and timeline.
10. Measure and monitor your success.

Benchmarking your pre-launch situation

Chapters 3 and 5 include information on assessing your market situation and conducting research to find out more about your brand’s awareness, distinction, and preference in your market. Use the form in Figure 9-1 to benchmark your pre-launch situation and to monitor shifts in brand presence and performance during the post-launch period.

Setting your launch goal and objectives

Your goal is what you want your brand launch to achieve; your objectives define how you’ll achieve your goal. For example:

• If your goal is to win awareness for your brand and its distinctions, your objectives may include gaining name recognition, knowledge of your unique point of difference, social-media followers, and favorable publicity within a certain length of time from the conclusion of your brand launch.
• If your goal is to enhance credibility and trust, your objectives may be to win industry recognition and awards; to receive endorsements from those who influence prospective customers; to obtain favorable ratings, reviews, and recommendations; and to achieve online sharing and interaction within a certain length of time from the conclusion of your brand launch.
• If your goal is to motivate sales, your objectives may be to add new distribution channels, to generate and use an opt-in mail list, and to realize a sales increase without sacrificing unit sale price within a certain length of time from the conclusion of your brand launch.

Commit your goals and objectives to writing in order to keep your efforts focused only on marketing strategies and tactics that contribute to your success. Then each time a new marketing opportunity arises, you can put it to this easy litmus test: Will this opportunity help us meet our goal? Does it support one or more of our objectives? If the answer is “no,” you can quickly decline the offer and turn your attention back to your plan.

Defining your target market

In defining the target market for your brand launch, answer these questions:

• Are you targeting new customers?
• Are you targeting existing customers?
• Are you targeting those in a position to refer customers to your business or to speak on your behalf?
• Will your introduction be confined geographically to a city or region, will it target specific social-media or online audiences, or will it aim to communicate with broadly dispersed consumers who fit a defined prospect profile?

Targeting your market puts you in a position to reach prospects effectively with well-chosen media and messages. It also helps you plan staffing and distribution to meet the market demand your communications generate.

Nearly all successful brand introductions start with narrowly focused target markets for these reasons:

• A brand introduction requires intensive communication in order to rapidly achieve a necessary level of awareness. It’s far easier and vastly more affordable to achieve intensive communication when prospects all live in a limited geographic area that can be reached with regional media, or when they share lifestyle or interest similarities that allow you to reach them with social media, special-interest media, or one-to-one communications.
• Most brand introductions come from small businesses that work with relatively small budgets. Huge corporations either buy and reintroduce existing brands or introduce parent-dominant brands that slide into the market under the strong umbrella identity of the well-known parent brand. Nearly all other brands start with budget, distribution, and staffing constraints that are best managed by introduction in highly focused target markets.
• Even major brands benefit from target marketing at the time of introduction. By introducing a brand in a single geographic market or through a single distribution channel or even a single retail chain, the brand can achieve a high level of awareness while building a success story that creates publicity, word-of-mouth, and other forms of viral marketing.

Setting your strategies

Marketing plans include strategies for the 4Ps: product, pricing, promotion, and place (or distribution channels). When creating your brand launch marketing, establish the strategy you’ll follow in each of these four areas:

• Product: Most brand launches revolve around the announcement of an altogether new offering or the announcement of changes to an existing offering. Be aware that new brands or products require a higher level of introduction, explanation, and purchase motivation than are required by product or brand revisions, which are often introduced to an already committed audience.
• Pricing: If one of your brand-introduction priorities is to achieve new sales, particularly from new customers, your pricing strategy is an essential element in your brand introduction. To motivate decisions, consider limited-term introductory pricing or payment options, rebates, trial offers, or other purchase incentives.
• Promotion: Your promotion strategy describes how you’ll get the word out about your brand. Most brand-launch promotions involve public relations, advertising, and online communications, each described in detail in Chapters 10, 11, and 12.
• Place or distribution: Your brand introduction needs to be backed by a distribution strategy that allows consumers to access your offering as soon as interest is ignited. To a business-to-business brand marketer, the distribution strategy may take the form of a new location, new website, or some other new means of access. To a consumer brand marketer, the distribution strategy must lead to an easy-to-access purchase point, whether online, via mail, or at a bricks-and-mortar location.

  Often, businesses introduce consumer brands first through a single distribution point or chain. This approach allows the marketer to maximize in-store visibility while minimizing the requirements of distributor discounts and slotting fees that can erode profits to the point of killing a consumer brand before it has time to get off the ground.

Selecting your brand-introduction tactics

To achieve cost-effective visibility while also generating awareness and building credibility, most brand launches rely heavily on publicity, public relations, one-to-one communications, and social media, rather than on advertising, which often is used as a follow-up to news stories and personally delivered announcements of the new brand. The following list describes various communication approaches:

• Public relations activities: These communications are the backbone of most brand introductions. The field of public relations includes employee relations, member relations, community relations, industry relations, government relations, and blogger and media relations that result in news coverage. Events, meetings, newsletters, exhibitions, and publicity all fall under the category of public relations. All spread news and generate understanding without involving paid advertising. Turn to Chapter 12 as you plan your public-relations game plan.
• Promotions: Special offers trigger a desired consumer action over a short period of time. Marketers introducing products or launching consumer brands use promotions to win support from distributors and retailers and to prompt customers to a first-time trial of the new product. See Chapter 12 for guidelines on promotions.
• Advertisements: Ads in newspapers and magazines and on radio, television, social-media networks, and targeted web pages transmit messages over large yet targeted market areas to reach broadly dispersed markets. Chapter 12 offers advice for scheduling, creating, and placing your ads.

  When using advertising as a brand-launch tactic, time your schedules so that ads break after your brand is released via news stories. After your message runs in ad form, editorial contacts may not view it as news, and you miss the chance to gain the credible third-party voice of a reporter, blogger, or newscaster.

• Mailings: Direct mail reaches a highly targeted audience on a one-to-one basis through mail boxes or email in-boxes rather than through mass media. If you’re delivering your brand announcements or event invitations via email, be sure to turn to Chapter 13 for information on how to follow online direct-mail rules and how to deliver email that gets opened and read.
• Personal presentations: Presentations to key audiences are especially important if the success of your brand launch depends on support from established contacts and customers. Most business and service brands host launch events and consider personal presentations as essential introduction tactics. Turn to Chapter 13 for information on building brand trust during presentations and at the point of sale.
• Sales materials, packaging, and point-of-sale displays: These visuals are essential for consumer brands and for brands with offerings that involve complex features, high prices, or considerable deliberation prior to the purchase decision. If your brand launch involves a new or re-introduced product, review the section on packaging in Chapter 12 and then hire a designer, ad agency, or branding or packaging specialist to create packaging that represents your brand well, because your package becomes your brand representative at the point of purchase decision.
• Online or digital communications: These messages play an essential role in brand introduction tactical plans, as described in Chapters 10 and 11.

Brand-introduction budget worksheet

After you’ve selected your brand-launch tactics (see the preceding section), you’re ready to plan and set your budget. The worksheet in Figure 9-2 helps you estimate costs involved to implement each tactic.

Takeoff! Launching Your Brand

Your brand launch needs to happen in two phases: first an internal phase and then an external phase. Only after your internal team is on board and every customer touch point is in alignment and ready to deliver on your brand promise are you ready to take your brand outside your organization and to your target market.

Launching internally

Even your internal launch needs to occur in two phases: the first one for senior management and the second one for your full employee team. This sequence is important because you need to get all executives firmly on board before you start rallying the troops. Otherwise, you risk gaining enthusiasm from employees only to have some vice president (also known as someone’s boss) say something like, “I don’t know why we’re spending so much time and money on this.” Just like that, internal support for your branding program can take a giant backslide.

If your company is small to medium in size, your two-phase internal launch can happen over a short time period. If you’re dealing with multiple locations or divisions, however, it will take longer. Either way, by involving executives in the brand planning and development phase, you cut down the time needed to bring top-level leaders on board because they’re part of the planning team from the beginning.

Starting with the bigwigs: Launching with upper management

Your top-level executive team was involved in the brand-development process (right?), so you don’t need to unveil your new or revitalized brand to this group. Instead, use the launch as your chance to bring the whole brand picture into focus, following these steps:

1. Review and win unanimous consent for your brand position, promise, character, definition, and launch message.

   Address any questions or doubts so that all leaders are reading from the same page when your brand message moves into your organization.

2. Gain agreement regarding your brand-launch objectives and timing.

   This is the last chance to learn about timing conflicts between the brand launch and other business activities so you can iron out kinks by altering the schedule, shifting launch responsibilities, or hiring employees or outside professionals to handle the tasks involved. Deal with any issues at this stage of the launch so they don’t become a barrier to success as you implement your broader launch.

3. Preview your brand-launch materials and presentation.

   The tasks covered in the section “Preparing for Your Brand Launch” earlier in this chapter help you prepare your presentation materials. Now is the time to preview them with your top-level team so there won’t be any surprises (or resistance) at the company-wide presentation.

4. Discuss and win agreement regarding how each executive’s department can tangibly integrate the brand promise into every aspect of the organization’s products and services.

   Chapter 13 includes a form for conducting a brand experience audit. Consider asking your executive team to use the form as they assess any brand contact points in need of repair and as they take responsibility for implementing change in their individual management arenas.

Launching company-wide

By taking the time to explain why you’re branding, rebranding, or revitalizing your brand and how your efforts link to your business mission and goals, you preempt internal resistance and kick-start the process of creating a team of champions for your brand. (Turn to Chapter 13 for information on turning your staff and business partners into your best brand champions.)

Your internal brand launch should be both an education process and a company rally. For a successful launch, follow these steps:

1. Make a case about the value of branding.

   If you can’t connect the idea of branding to your business vision, mission, values, and goals, you’re setting yourself up to hear murmurs of, “They paid how much for that?” Turn to the section “Putting your brand launch into context” earlier in this chapter for advice on developing a meaningful and inspiring brand story.

2. Present your brand strategy, putting special emphasis on the brand promise and the importance of a brand experience that’s reflected through every point of encounter with your business.

   Refer to the section “Checking your internal readiness” earlier in this chapter as you prepare for this step.

3. Unveil your brand identity.

   Show the logo, preview the slogan, and present prototypes of how the brand identity will appear throughout your business and marketing materials over coming weeks and months.

4. Give each employee a quality gift featuring the new logo.

   The nicer the item, the better the impression, so avoid anything cheap or cheesy unless that’s the image you want your employees to take away with them. Instead, accompany your internal brand launch with distribution of quality items that employees will like and want to keep. Please, no click-top pens with flaky metallic imprints up the side.

   Remind employees of the external launch date and ask them to keep your identity under wraps until that day arrives. If your staff is too large to control, consider distributing gifts or copies of the new identity until after the external launch occurs.

5. Ask each member of your team to personally embrace the brand and become an ambassador who delivers the brand experience to customers.

   Count on Chapter 13 to cover this step in detail.

Launching externally

Only when your company is ready to walk the talk is it time to take your brand message to the world outside your business by following these steps:

1. Time your external launch to coincide with public interest in your story.

   If you serve a particular industry, consider timing your launch around a major conference or trade show. If you serve a local market, coincide your launch with an annual economic development conference, regional business fair, or some other event that brings regional leaders and media together in one place.

2. Launch a public-relations program to carry your brand message into your community, market area, and industry arena.
3. Place ads presenting your brand and the promise it makes.
4. Unveil your brand promise and message on the home page of your website and social-media pages.

As you announce your brand outside your organization, use the information in Chapters 10, 11, and 12 to leverage publicity to launch your brand, advertise to put your stake in the ground, and put the power of digital communications to work to spread your brand message far and wide.