Mindful Mondays - Your Brand is What Others Say Who You Are

Hi, this is Leekei, and today is the second episode of our Mindful Mondays series. Every Monday I share with you a specific foundation idea, a small dose of inspiration to help you quickstart your week. The idea behind that is simply because I’ve noticed that many fashion business owners are often struggling with the foundation and the Mindful Mondays series is here to help you get over that struggle. These episodes will sometimes be about a sustainability issue, about a particular mindset, sometimes like today, about a business foundation concept.    

In today’s episode, I want to start talking about the concept of Brand and why your brand is so important to your business. This episode is just a start because it is such a broad topic. 

According to Jeff Bezos, Founder and CEO of Amazon, Your Brand is What Other People Say About You When You’re Not in the Room. So it’s so much more than a brand name, a logo or even a tagline. Your brand perception is what your customers and potential customers think about you. This is related to how you build trust in delivering the promise about who you are, what you stand for, and what are the unique and meaningful benefits you deliver.

You are building your brand by living up to your promise every single time someone comes in contact with your business, like your shop, your ad campaign or your customer service. And you need to strengthen your brand by consistently reinforcing your brand promise.

Strong brands create loyalty, a group of raving fans who talk about what they love. Your brand is not about what you say you are, your brand should be about what others say you are.

You can strengthen your brand perception by first deciding who you want to be as a business, then delivering on your brand promise, and giving your customers the visuals or the words they need to share your message.

To illustrate that approach, I’d like to invite you to spend some time and look at the US womenswear brand Eileen Fischer and see how this brand is living up to its promise. 

This brand has decided that “Our purpose is to inspire simplicity, creativity, and delight through connection and great design”. 

To understand how they deliver trust, go and visit an Eileen Fischer shop to feel the brand experience. If you don’t have a shop near you, visit their website. Look at their design, but also at the shop layout. Talk to a salesperson, read some pages of the website and notice the tone of voice. Pay attention to the messages in-store and on the website. How do they make you feel? What are your emotions when you are in contact with the brand?

If you want to go a bit deeper, go to their brand mission statement page and read in detail their practice. How are these promises translated in the way they operate the business? 

Now go to their social media and notice the art direction of the pictures. How do they choose their models? What is the setting and the surrounding of the pictures? How is the hair? And how is the makeup? What is the facial expression of the models? How looking at these pictures make you think and make you feel?

Did you notice all the events organized in the stores? Some of them are sales events but many of them are not related to sales but are designed to support the values stated in the brand mission statement.

My question to you is: How would you describe Eileen Fischer to a friend. Do you think that what you would say is in-line with what they want you to say?

And now, for your Fashion Business. What have you decided who you want to be as a business? What do you want your customers to say about your brand? How do you want to make them feel every time they are in contact with your brand?

Review all the steps of your business operation. Are all steps inline with the experience you want to provide to your customers? If not, what change do you need to implement? What can you improve? What can you do better?

Start making small changes. Like sustainability, brand building is also an ongoing process. Start now, today, so you can build a strong brand so your business can deliver value to people and to the planet. 

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Host: Leekei Tang

Contact: hello (at) betterbusinessfounder.com

Music credits: Mister Sunny Face by Wayne Jones / Blue Skies by Silent Partner / Happy Ukulele by Scott Holmes