What is your Brand?

I was at a seminar not too long ago that was hosted by ADR, Automotive Dealers Resource, (www.buyadr.com) and Mike Morgan was the speaker there. ADR and Mike did a great job there.

The one thing that I took away from it and that caused me the most thought was this, "How does the public perceive your brand?" It's such a basic concept when talking about marketing, but I feel that it's also one that we get away from all too often.

As a business owner or employee of a business we know what our message is to the public and how we think the public is receiving the message, but sometimes we get so caught up in believing we're sending a clear message out to everyone that we forget to really look and ask if that message is the one they're getting. It can end up like the game we played as kids where one person whispered something to someone else and then they passed the message to the next person in the same manner until it reached the end. The only problem was when it reached the end it was something totally different than what it started out as.

This perception effects every business in every industry. So if you haven't thought about how people really perceive your business take a moment to do so, get out in the community and ask some people, ask some of the people working with you or for you, sit down and ask yourself and you might be surprised at how different every ones answers are.

So, what is your brand? What does it say about your company? What does it say about yourself?