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Sports brands, business brands & personal brands
Define, create, implement
Sports teams have a more complex brand landscape than a commercial business. They need to mean something to their fans whilst standing out against their competition and being an attractive proposition to sponsors. Often, they will have individual sports people whose brand will equal or overshadow the team’s brand.
All of this needs careful brand management, based on a strong brand platform. And when things invariably don’t go as expected, a brand-led reputation management system will help navigate the storms of social media, press scrutiny and the court of public opinion.
We have worked with world-class, championship-winning sports teams to define and implement their brand models and help management their reputations.
Having a strong brand platform isn’t the first thing you might think a sports person needs to perform at the highest level of world sport. But when fans & media are watching your every move, both on and off the field of competition, it’s essential that you have defined how you would like to be perceived.
Your brand platform can then help provide clarity and consistency to the values you live by, the behaviours people see, the identity you present and the messages you say. This clarity and consistency then removes another variable that could get in the way of your focus on sporting performance.
We have worked with world championship winning racing drivers in F1 to help them define, manage and grow their brands.
Whether your business is a start-up, a small or medium business, or a global enterprise, brand plays a very important role in the success and value of your business.
Several things trigger the need for a look at your business brand. You may be a start-up needing to establish your company or product. There might have been a shift in your market that requires a re-positioning. You may be taking your business in a new direction and need a brand strategy that supports the move. Or it maybe that you simply feel that your current brand is no longer delivering what you’d like it to.
We’ve worked with small and global companies, creating new brands and revitalising existing ones.
CEOs have a particular challenge when it comes to personal branding. They have to be the external face of the brand they lead and to their internal audience, they have to be a role-model for the company values.
They are likely to have reached the CEO position because they have a strong personality, but it is imperative that they also deliver the company brand as well.
We work with CEOs to create a CEO brand model that takes the best of their own personality and the key elements of their corporate brand. The CEO brand model then becomes the platform during their tenure as CEO to deliver both themselves and the company brand with clarity and consistency.
Things don’t always go as expected and sometimes events can lead to adverse media coverage and negative perceptions with your audiences.
It is important to quickly understand the level of reputational damage. Surprise and disappointment are easy to recover from; disgust and outrage require a more robust response.
Key to reputation management is a solid brand platform that can act as the reset point during any reputational or PR crisis.
We have advised sport teams on some of the most high-profile issues in recent years, helping to recover the situation with calm feedback & advice at times of high stress.
We offer the following courses for businesses:
A course aimed at non-marketers and people new to marketing. It addresses many of the common misconceptions about marketing and helps people to understand use and when.
A course aimed at marketers who may be encountering brand management for the first time. It covers all aspects of researching, defining and implementing anew brand.
A course aimed at marketers and comms professionals who are wanting to learn more about how to manage their organisation’s reputation. It covers how to react toa reputational crisis, assess the severity and respond in a brand-led way.
dna-rB Ltd was founded in 2011 by David Robertson Mitchell after a long career in corporate marketing with companies such as Dell, Compaq, Intel & Xerox.
David recognised that high profile individuals need the same sort of brand advice as businesses, especially as social media has become more important. He took the principles and disciplines of corporate branding and applied them to individuals.
This quickly led to clients in the motorsport industry and from 2014 to 2022 David was the external brand consultant to the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 team, working on all aspects of the team and driver brands.
He has worked with the Brabham family since 2012 to help rebuild the Brabham brand, a brand with huge F1 heritage.
He has also worked with corporate brands, ranging from small tech start-ups to large companies such as INEOS.
David has also combined his experience of corporate and personal branding to offer CEO branding services, helping leaders of business make sense of the challenge of being themselves whilst also being the face of a corporate brand.
