The list of factors that affect a company’s brand is as long as Wharton’s wait list, but which will get you the most bang for your buck? For my money, it’s the invisible ones that pack more punch. “Invisible branding” refers to stakeholder touch-points that have little or no visual presence in the market, but still delivers what the brand promises. These are things like CEO vision, employee training, pricing strategy, sales-force communications, and customer relationships. Each of these items is an essential part of a company’s brand, but because they’re not visible, business leaders don’t consider them in the context of brand—or, worse, they overlook them entirely, assuming that a touch-point with minimal visual presence has minimal impact. To the contrary: A focus on these invisible factors can deliver huge value to stakeholders and, ultimately, a company’s own bottom line—for years.

A rep to protect

Brand means many things to many people. Yet, at the same time, it means very little, because the term has been abused and overused. If eyes start to glaze over (yours or your co-workers’) with the mention of the b-word, talk about your company’s reputation instead. Swapping “reputation” for “brand” is powerful not only because it’s a spot-on synonym, but also because it cuts the jargon. Everyone understands why a company would want a great reputation.

Now that we’ve re-framed, here’s the big question: What influences your company’s reputation? And the answer is: Everything—not just the visible stuff but the invisible, too. From business model to checkout, everything a company does affects its reputation, its brand.

Business strategy as brand, brand as business strategy

Some CEOs leave brand to the marketing department, some hire CMOs, but if we’re consistent with our definition of invisible branding, that is non-visible touch-points that affect the reputation of the business, then every strategic decision is a brand decision and every brand decision, strategic. If this is true (and it is), then the CEO must get involved with brand from the start. Here’s a great example I like to share with my clients:

A few years after online shoe retailer Zappos.com got its start, CEO Tony Hsieh made a difficult decision, one most business consultants would have advised against. He stopped drop shipping—the practice of taking an order, but then having the supplier ship it directly to the customer. With this one decision, Hsieh knowingly gave up 25 percent of Zappos’ sales. However, this strategic choice helped put into place one of the major building blocks that has helped Zappos reach the success they’re now seeing 10 years on—by over-delivering on their brand promise.

From the beginning, Zappos had done a huge amount of business via drop shipping, Operationally, this decision has a huge upside: no inventory, no time wasted on getting the product in and categorized. There’s also no space wasted on storage, and no one has to go find the product and ship it out again. There’s also a downside: no control over a critical touch-point—the arrival of the shoes to the customer. But for Zappos, that was a deal-breaker.

People would call to complain that their shipment was late or, in some cases, completely lost. A Zappos customer care rep would have to spend time to chase down the order, correct the mistake, and make it up to the customer with discounts. For a company that claimed to be “powered by service”, this was definitely not delivering on the brand promise. Hsieh understood that and, knowingly gave up a big chunk of revenue, to make the right decision.  It was a decision that was immediately good for the Zappos brand and, in the long term, great for the company’s profits.

Let’s go to the big invisible branding board and score this decision:

• It improved the customer experience and reputation with stakeholders.
• It positively affected the bottom line, even if not immediately.
• It had nothing to do with a logo or ad campaign.

Yup—definitely invisible branding.

Where else can invisible branding affect the customer experience and improve reputation? Whether sales rep, tech support, or shelf-stocker, for many companies, the highest-touch touch-point is the employee.

Visible branding is the promise of value, setting the customer’s expectations. When invisible branding delivers that value the customer has a good experience.

Branson promises, Joe delivers

Richard Branson and Trader Joe are both world travelers. They’re both successful business owners, innovation devotees, and, most would say, savvy branders. But which guy sees the whole picture, even the stuff you can’t?

Ever since Virgin America launched in 2007, I’ve been itching to try the new San Francisco-based airline. I had heard about the disco-style purple cabin lights and seen the sexy billboards, but when I finally got the chance to fly Virgin, all the investment in this well-managed brand went out the cabin door. What massive failure undid a multi-million-dollar brand launch? It came down to four little words. When my wife asked one of the attendants how much time was left in the flight, she got, instead of a friendly reply, an exasperated “Look at your watch.”

Who knows why the attendant responded this way—and I can empathize, I’ve certainly had my bad days—but all the money poured into the design of the interiors, a national ad campaign, even the great outfits (and they are fab) was undermined by one bad interaction. I’ve flown Virgin America since without trouble, but the incident underscores the impact one interaction can have. The choices employees make, including the way they treat their customers, affect one of the most important brand touch-points a company can have.

Let’s take a walk over to Trader Joe’s, the quirky supermarket famous for its inexpensive, innovative private-label products and wry attitude. While I do love their five-seed almond bars (if you haven’t tried them, you must) it’s the “crew” (their term for employees) that keeps me coming back.

I was surprised how friendly Trader Joe’s employees were when I started shopping there a few years ago, but my experience there is so consistent I know I can look forward to it. They’re not only willingly helpful (which is rare in itself), they’re also genuinely fun. A few months back I knocked a couple of apples to the floor. A crew member looked over and mock-threatened me—with a big smile, she said, “You’d better not do that again.” I quickly mock-apologized: “I’m sorry—it’ll never happen again.” That was fun and would never have happened at a run-of-the-mill grocer like Safeway. If TJ’s loses a few bruised Fujis I know it’s not a big deal to them. They’re human and so am I and they’re cool with that. It sounds inane, but it makes such a difference.

How does Trader Joe’s deliver such an amazing shopping experience and earn tremendous customer loyalty in a low-interest category like groceries? The company clearly understands the importance of the invisible, building a culture that encourages levity and helpfulness in its employees. Creating a great shopping experience requires great employees, and Trader Joe’s has done this with more than just an excellent training program, although that’s definitely part of it.

Everything from knowing what kind of person will thrive at the company to earnestly supporting their employees “to assure their health and well-being” adds to the mix. Medical and dental insurance? Company-paid retirement plan? Free Trader Joe’s shirts? On their site they go :  ”We top it all off with the potential for upward mobility and a rare chance to—and we know this may be a foreign concept to you—look forward to going to work!” Sounds like fun to me.

What about the TJ’s logo you ask? It is ugly, but as long as the crew makes my shopping fun, I’ll keep coming back for my almond seed bars

Treating your customers well may be obvious, but how to make it happen isn’t. From the lack of even satisfactory employee interactions out there, I’ll go ahead and say it’s probably one of the biggest invisible branding challenges a company will face.

Is anyone else doing well on the invisible branding scoreboard? It might not be obvious to them, but there is a whole category of companies that have caught on to the importance of invisible branding—if not by choice, then by necessity.

The digital brand

As more companies deliver their principal value through the Web, old business assumptions are disappearing faster than you can say “venture capital.” Business operations and brand management in separate buildings? Not anymore. What is offered (meaning the “invisible” business strategies, owned by the execs) and how it’s offered (meaning the “visible” brand strategies, managed by corporate marketing) not only come out of the same place, but also have to work together to get the job done right. Those separate functions aren’t separate any longer; the visible and invisible elements are intermingled. In effect a site is the marketing, sales funnel, product, and after-market support—all at once, all the time. To ensure a great brand reputation, each “department” must know intimately what the other is doing and cooperate with it. Compartmentalizing is so 1994.

This fusing of brand and business strategy, resulting in visible and invisible tactics, has forced digital businesses to come to quick terms with their reputation now that it’s directly affected by one primary touch-point. Those deep in the digital swamps refer to the whole concoction as “user experience,” and that confluence of elements makes the importance of invisible branding even more apparent. Looking for a role model? Keep an eye on Google; they seem to get it right nearly every time.

Early in 2008 Google launched the Android mobile phone operating system. Although many of the technorati proclaimed it would never touch Apple’s iPhone, one major decision is poised to make Android a big contender in the smartphone market—an open platform. Unlike Apple, Google allows anyone to create and upload programs for the entire community to try. This brand decision differentiates it from its main competitor, and by enabling the development of more apps has created greater access to data that supports Google’s mission: to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” In addition to all this, it supports Google’s good-guy image. A great ad campaign could never hope to do all that for a brand.

In trust we trust

Whether it’s a well-thought-out business decision or simply finding the right people to join your ranks, invisible branding is the set of choices a business makes that supports its brand promise through action. Without a conscious focus on the invisible, that promise is just a facade. However, when a company does deliver, it builds what every company wants: trust.

For years, advertising and marketing has been built around promises meant to get you in the door. “Lie big” was the secret to success on Madison Avenue. Now, the effectiveness of those methods is waning as consumers get wise, with access to more information than ever. Customers know full well if a company delivers on its promises before they even touch their Tivos.

Trust is the benefit of a well-executed invisible brand. The degree to which a customer trusts a company, product, or service determines if he or she will engage with them or their competitor. If a company makes a promise through visible touch-points and then delivers on that promise through its actions, the customer by definition, has had a good experience. As more individuals have good experiences with a business, its reputation strengthens, and the company builds trust with its customer community. This trust earns them loyal brand advocates. Without invisible branding you can’t build a good reputation, and without a good reputation you won’t earn trust.

Take the long view

When you think about your company’s trajectory, can you see beyond Q2? To create real and lasting value, plan for 2, 5, and 10 years along with the next three months. While visible branding is great for creating awareness and making promises today, invisible branding is a tool that helps create the future value of a company. The return on your patient investment will pay big dividends in the form of trusting communities and loyal brand advocates long after your latest ad campaign has stopped running.

I’d go further and say it’s a critical moment and that business must reconsider everyone in their brand ecosystem—employees included. The downturn has touched everyone, and no one will be left unchanged when we come out on the other end (whenever that may be). To create a sustainable business, isn’t it time we take into account our entire community, not just the people buying the products?

4. Argue forcefully against your most dearly held hypotheses. Only then will you know if they stand up to scrutiny.
5. Make decisions, right or wrong. There’s nothing worse than waffling.
6. Take over the TV station. Airtime is everything. Reinforce your messages in everything that you do. Use every ad, press release, store, package, and event to tell your story.
7. Embrace thine enemy. Make a list of the people who could legitimately stop your big idea from taking root. Befriend them. Convince them. Make it their responsibility to improve on your vision.
8. Don’t hold meetings longer than two hours. (Otherwise they’re workshops, which require more planning.) And don’t walk out of a meeting without assigning a name to every item that needs follow-up.
9. Startle people. Break out of your comfort zone, and do something unexpected. Run an offbeat ad. Institute casual-dress Tuesdays.
10. Don’t throw anything out. Don’t kill ideas that won’t work right now. Someday soon, the world might be ready for them.

A couple months into an already beat up 2009, and things are looking grim. What’s a creative entrepreneur to do? Earlier this year I chaired a panel for the AIGA called Design Through the Downturn, and the discussion surfaced some big ideas about the challenges—and opportunities—this new economy brings.

Opportunities? Yup, a number of people at the event observed that demand for creative services like design isn’t down, its just different.

There’s many ways demand will be different in the next few years, but here’s the one that might affect the creative businesses more than any other: a shift from artifacts to solutions.

Designing artifacts solutions

Businesses are strapped for cash and axing most items that don’t directly contribute to the bottom line. First on the target list is inevitably “cost-centers” like marketing. I’m not the first to say there’s going to be a lot less work like catalogues, events, and posters this year, but I might be the first to follow with a little good news. Businesses are facing an onslaught of new, unconventional challenges and they’re uncertain how they’ll solve them, or who they can turn to for help. This is where creatives can step up and step in.

Designers are experts in creating new solutions for unique problems, which is what business needs right now. Want proof that business is looking to design for help? Over the past ten years creative agency IDEO has seen tremendous success shifting from a product- to solution-focused agency. Their clients consistently come seeking right-brain solutions to challenges traditionally assigned to the MBAs.

Let me be clear, I don’t mean to stop designing as we know it. As a matter of fact quite the opposite. I believe many of the solutions to this deluge of dilemmas may in fact require design artifacts like campaigns or events—the difference is that in the new economy the design will start much earlier with the solutions.

So how can you begin turning the tide, and making the most of changing industry?

1. BECOME YOUR OWN CLIENT

Start practicing today. Any companies in the business section that could use a little push in a new direction? You don’t need permission—start generating ideas. What about identifying challenges in your own work, life, or community that might be improved with a little right-brain thinking?

2. BUILD ON WHAT YOU HAVE

You’ve already have their trust, now add value to your existing client relationships. During your next project (or even before) put in some overtime and over deliver on a new idea—demonstrate what you are capable of, and the next time around you might get asked to do just that.

3. TALK ABOUT DESIGN AS THE HOW, NOT THE WHAT

You’d never want to give up your bread and butter, but you may want to put a new item on the menu. Reconsider previous work, and reframe how you talk about it. What problem did you solve? What business result did it achieve? Play up the strategy (the how) and play down the artifact (the what). Start showing the work you want.

4. GO WITH WHAT YOU KNOW

Target new clients, but go for what you know. Pick an industry or company you know and identify the problems you can solve. Done work for tech firms? Know a little bit about telecom? Are museums your thing? Whatever your focus, make sure you’re familiar with the company or industry—you won’t be as lost when you begin, and it’ll help build credibility with potential clients.

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Business and the marketplace are changing at an rapid pace. Just because no one is certain of the future, doesn’t mean there isn’t enormous potential. What’s a creative entrepreneur to do? What we’ve always done: see the opportunity and design a solution.

Josh

If you’ve got an example or two of how demand is trending different let us know with a comment below.