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Know where you stand, where you're going––and what all that means.

Not since the Big Bang has there been a moment's peace in the universe, so it's a given that your organization, the environments in which you operate, and your constituents are in a sea of change and uncertainty. But before you undertake a new brand or communication strategy, you need to know where you are, where you want to go, how you might get there, and what might be in the way.

Do you have a clear picture of your organization's strengths and weaknesses, and of the opportunities and threats in the marketplace? Is your position vis-à-vis your competitors clear and compelling? Does anyone else in this vast universe know or care? What brand signals echo back from the noise in the social Web?

Making smart decisions requires a mix of information: a clear and objective understanding of your offerings' value; close monitoring of how your brand is perceived; analysis of your position; empathetic sense of your markets' needs, motivations and decisions; and, of course, a clear read on your leadership's vision.

Consider what a brand is. It's more than your name, logo, and tagline. While those are valuable brand assets, your brand resides in the minds and hearts of your current and prospective customers, partners, and recommenders. It's what you promise them and what they expect of you. Your brand helps people understand how you fit in the landscape of competitive alternatives, and informs decisions.

It is an inherently intangible thing, and can be assessed somewhat indirectly—through research.

To develop a clear picture of your brand, research in four dimensions is useful: quantitative and qualitative, internal and external.

Four Dimensions of Brand-Focused Research

Quantitative research—traditional market research, polls, surveys, Web analytics, and the like—is great for measuring actions and seeing patterns. By definition, quantitative research is historical (it measures what's already happened) but it can yield powerful predictive intelligence when it's modeled well.

Qualitative research, on the other hand, could include interviews and focus groups—any format that allows people to express their ideas in open-ended prose. It's great for uncovering motivations behind actions, and is important for getting to the essence of brand-related beliefs and decisions. It can help you better understand who you are, who you might be, what might boost or impede progress, and what resonates with your target constituencies—because not everything can be modeled and predicted with statistical certainty.

You can learn a lot by looking inward, beyond executives and marketing and sales people, to experts with other perspectives: your engineers, product developers, customer service reps, and others responsible for design, delivery, and interaction with customers. They have highly sophisticated perceptions of your organization's brand value and competitive strengths and weaknesses––so listen to them.

If your offerings are broad or diversified, investigate brand qualities across lines as appropriate, and be mindful of the relationships between the parts and the whole. Xbox and Zune represent two examples of their parent company's brand (Microsoft, your father's Oldsmobile in terms of computer hardware and software), contributing different influences to their own brands with mixed results.

Looking outward, external research will help you understand who your audiences and customers are, what they care about, and how their interests align with yours. Apply the practices of both quantitative and qualitative research. It's critical that you undertake your analysis of your markets dispassionately. Take yourself out of the picture. Otherwise, you risk the mistake of assuming they are customers who know and care about you, without appreciating the breadth of alternatives available to them for allocating their time, treasure, and mindshare... including making no choice at all.

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Branding in the Age of Social: Gaining Insight Through Research

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Eric Norman is a strategist at Sametz Blackstone Associates (www.sametz.com), a Boston-based, brand-focused communications practice that integrates strategy, design, and digital media to help mission-driven organizations navigate change. Reach him via eric@sametz.com or 617-266-8577.