Brand Identity: Alignment with Your Team

#Bible: Jesus asked His apostles “Who do people say I am?”, later He asked them “But what about you, who do you say I am?.” Matthew 16:13-15.

When building your business brand, you start first by creating your brand identity. Brand identity is simply the visible side of your brand, such as brand name, logo, design, slogans, marketing messaging, communication.

In addition, brand identity can also be described as the message your target customers receive from your product or services. 

Brand identity is also the foundation to build brand loyalty as discussed in this article. However, to build brand loyalty you should start with your core team members. You need to ensure they understand the true identity of your brand.

As you begin to build your business brand, there are many misconceptions that may arise, and if you’re not deliberate to address them early on, you might find yourself building on those misconceptions unknowingly.

Alignment with the team was an exercise Jesus performed with His followers during His earthly ministry. There came a time when Jesus was interested to know what His followers knew about His true identity.

His goal was to ensure there was alignment with his core team(the 12 Apostles) on who He was before revealing more about Himself to them. In the book of Matthew, Jesus asked his disciples;

“Who do people say the Son of Man is?” They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”

Matthew 16:13-15

Importance of Team alignment in Brand Identity

Alignment with your team on your brand identity should come first before external stakeholders like customers. Even though before Jesus asked what was their opinion, He first asked His disciples ‘who do people say I am?’

I believe the aim is to know if they have been paying attention to what others have been saying about Him. It was also a form of an icebreaker to launch in the other part of the exercise.

As a business leader, there is a time when you need to seek brand alignment with your core team. In order to understand what they know about the business, and what are the customers saying about the business.

It is important you carry out this exercise with your team in the early stage of your business before expansion. Because your first team will be the ones to push the right brand identity to other new team members and to your target customers.

As you read further in the bible, Jesus instructed His disciples not to tell others about His true identity (Matthew 16:20) until the appointed time.

At the time, He was more concerned about aligning with His disciple on His identity. Because, through His disciples, the rest of the world will be aware of His true identity at the right time.

How to carry out brand identity alignment with your team

Team alignment on your brand identity is crucial in making sure all are on the same page. Here are practical steps to perform brand identity alignment with your team; 

1. Use one of your team meetings to carry this exercise.  The best way to organize such a meeting is to fix it like a regular team meeting.
2. Avoid including the questions you are want to ask them in the meeting agenda, you want their response to comes naturally not a well-memorized answer from the business archive that they may have dug up before the meeting.
3. Use sticky notes, share to each employee, so they write down their answers individually, gather, and sort the answers with a common theme. You can use a board or a table to paste and sort the notes to the theme.
4. Open discussion, allow them to share their answers and their reasons.
5. Share with them the accurate brand identity if none of the team was able to.

During this exercise, you would be surprised at what you would discover about your team’s opinion about the business.

In the end, the goal is to create a perfect opportunity to make everybody in the team be in alignment with what your brand identity really is. 

Takeaway: Building a great brand for your business is a process that takes time. However, having alignment with your core team on your brand identity sets a good foundation for growing your brand.