The Three "Cs" Of Success: A really obvious guide to building brands well.

Don’t you wish that things were a little simpler? 

Well, you’re not alone. 

Good strategy makes complex things seem simple. 

Focuses you on what matters. 

Keeps everyone on the same page. 

That’s what this is about. 

Turning the hot mess of brand building into a simple, easy-to-follow set of priorities. 

As an industry, we’ve created a thousand ways to do this. 

But really, there are only three simple building blocks that you need to think about. 

The three Cs of success:

CLARITY.

COHERENCE.

CONSISTENCY.

That’s it. 

That’s it, really. 

Focus on those three things, and you will increase your odds of winning. 

Nice and simple. 

It can’t really be that simple, though, can it? 

Well, if your business model is built around selling your time, then no, you’re incentivised to make things sound a lot more complicated than that. 

You need people to think it's a lot more complicated, because you’re paid to make it seem simple. 

Throw in some buzz words or claims that a shiny new thing is going to change everything, and the bills are paid for another five years. 

Because that’s what the industry has always done. 

And the result is everyone seems to think this is more complicated than it really needs to be. 

So, let’s try to simplify it a little.

First, let’s start by being clear.

CLARITY.

Are we helping people comprehend the value of what we do and choose us?

Are we helping them do that by being simple and easy to understand? 

They are pretty straightforward questions, aren’t they? 

People rarely say yes to them, though. 

In fact, they rarely agree on what value they provide. 

Or use the same or similar words to describe it. 

And it's rarer still that disparate groups of people out in the world (your audience) will use those same words. 

Yet, that is what your brand actually is. 

Not the words or shapes on the slide titled “brand strategy”, but the averaged-out, accumulated associations that a bunch of strangers loosely agree upon. 

In order to be clear, you must find ways of grabbing their attention. 

There are myriad tools at your disposal to help you do so.

Appealing to their emotions can grab attention and help them remember you. 

If you get their attention, you need them to loosely agree on the same things. 

Being militantly single-minded can increase the odds of them agreeing. 

Hopefully, you’ll get them to agree on things they’ll remember when the need arises to want what you sell. 

There are times and places where conveying the benefit of what you sell will also help them understand your value, but don’t let it get in the way of being remembered. 

Above all, you must be memorable. 

Being clear requires us to consider all of those things to some extent.

Once you’ve figured out your value and how best to express it, you can then further increase your odds of being chosen by making your value felt across what you do.

COHERENCE

In order to be coherent, we must ensure that everything points toward the same things. 

Everything we promise should be noticeable in everything we do. 

A unified experience where things start to feel expected.

In doing so, you create resonance.

Coherence can be fostered through shared planning.

And as we know, coherent sets of actions form coherent plans. 

However, businesses often slip into silos and goals become shaped in isolation.

Inevitably, effort doesn’t overlap or accumulate against shared goals.

You need to find ways to get disparate teams to share in delivering clarity.

Shared goals create shared actions. 

If we are clear about our value and how best to express it, then we can be clear about what needs to change across the business in order for that to be felt in everything we do.

Clarity helps us bring about coherence and increases the odds of success.

So, you know your value, how best to express it so people remember you, and you have a plan for how it can be realised across everything you do. Now you need to stick to the plan.

CONSISTENCY

This is the boring part that everyone is probably sick of hearing about.

Because it's the one that causes the most frustration.

Brand building takes time.

Repeating yourself over and over. 

Sometimes reusing assets. 

Sometimes refreshing them. 

Rarely starting again.

Doing the same things well.

Again and again.

And not getting distracted.

But everyone also knows that bosses don’t tend to stick around for long.

And that new bosses bring change.

We could talk about C-suite incentives and how they shape C-suite decision-making, but that’s a different conversation for a different day. 

And frankly, you have absolutely no control over executive politics.

The challenge then becomes maintaining consistency across the teams you advise when leadership becomes inconsistent. 

Or for agency teams to focus more on the good that already exists before getting distracted by the things they feel are absent. 

If you’ve established long-term plans around shared goals in service of bringing clarity to your business, then you will hopefully have already increased the odds of success. 

So much so that a significant course change would be blatantly unwise. 

The longer-term your plans, the more ambitious they will become.

A 3-year transformation programme printed big and wallpapered across the walls of every department that needs to know about it. 

Launch your plans with cross team events. 

Create annual conferences to chart their progress. 

Use the same tools you do to be clear to your customers. 

So, that’s it. 

Three simple things to focus on. 

Be clear.

Be coherent.

Be consistent. 

If you fight the urge to go do something else, you might stick around long enough to see that your grand plan is working.