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The Importance of Brand

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2012logo.jpg

I was taught that your ‘brand’ is what your customers, employees and other stakeholders think of you. And if you are wise your ‘brand investments’ ensure that their ‘experiences of you’ mean that your brand (as it exists in their collective heads) is a strong one. Whatever a brand is, it is not a logo on a piece of corporate paper.

Over time, the experiences that we have of the 2012 Olympics will get to be associated with this logo. And when we see the logo those experiences will be re-kindled. Will the experiences be positive – excellence, community, potential, sportsmanship and passion; or negative – expensive, corporate, drugs cheats, marketing, spin, consumerism and so on.

When we see a new, expensive and very public brand like this it is easy to mock. But what kind of experiences can the 2012 organisers build around the logo that will really become the brand?

What experiences for stakeholders do you create around your brand?

Jigsaw Cities – a challenge to regeneration orthodoxy

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At the book launch for Jigsaw Cities its author, Professor Anne Power and John Houghton, emphasised the importance of understanding cities as made up of a number of different jigsaw puzzle pieces with no picture on the cover to help put it all together. For physical regeneration there was discussion about renovating existing stock, using micro-spaces, and developing mixed use communities.

I find it depressing that the presumed starting point for regeneration is still physical – rather than psychological.  In my experience it is when individuals find confidence and hope that a community can start to regenerate.  It takes more than uPVC windows and doors to bring a community hope as this article by Sue Townsend so brilliantly illustrates.