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Why branding is too important to leave to big business

Small businesses are often better at brand building than they know, Gerard Tannam from Islandbridge Brand Development tells Dentsu’s Dave Winterlich

Some companies assume that brand building means spending a lot of money to promote it. That's not the case. Photograph: iStock
Some companies assume that brand building means spending a lot of money to promote it. That's not the case. Photograph: iStock

The experience of starting, growing and in some cases failing with his own small business endeavours prompted Gerard Tannam to set up Islandbridge Brand Development, an agency that specialises in helping small businesses to build their brand.

His move into branding was circuitous, given that he started out, after graduating from UCD in 1988, as an inspector of police in Hong Kong. He stayed ten years, taking the opportunity to open a number of businesses, including an event management company and a gallery.

On his return to Ireland, he worked in brand development with big corporations such as Diageo and Unilever, largely in a planning role, before setting up Islandbridge in 2004 with the aim of bringing big business brand strategy to SMEs.

The appeal of smaller firms to him was the ease access to the decision makers they offer – the Moms and Pops. He was also attracted to their vision. “They’re really invested in their business. They don’t see it as a career, and because I’d been a small-business owner myself in Hong Kong, I felt I had a good understanding of their concerns,” he says.

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His years in business had taught him a key lesson: “Nothing happens in business unless two people form a relationship – a commercial relationship usually, though not always – in which they can exchange some value. When you have a strong brand, you’re in a better position to build good relationships in your market.”

Building relationships

Tannam’s definition of brand is simple: “It’s a business tool we use because it reflects the relationship between the person buying, the person selling and the value they exchange as a result of that relationship.

“If you are clear in your own mind, and in the customer’s mind, about how that relationship works, you are well on your way to beginning to build a great brand.”

The brands of big business – “celebrity brands” such as Guinness or Budweiser – offer little to SMEs looking to learn from them, partly because big brands are so often wrapped up in sponsorship. Other than sponsoring a local sports team, that’s not something that applies to SMEs. Worse than that, it skews their thinking, encouraging them to assume that brand building means spending a lot of money to promote it. That’s not the case, he points out, and it inhibits small business owners from leveraging the fact that brand building actually comes naturally to them.

“I find they actually understand better than anybody else what their brand is about, not because they see it as something exalted, but because they are so close to their customers. If they’re not at the ‘shop counter’ themselves, they are usually only a couple of steps from it,” he says.

Gerard Tannam, founder of Islandbridge Brand Development
Gerard Tannam, founder of Islandbridge Brand Development

Tannam, whose book Branding for SMEs: A Guide is available to download from islandbridge.com points to the late Fergal Quinn of Superquinn, and Louis Copeland, as exemplars.

“Business owners have the [better understanding than anyone] of the relationship they have with their customers. But as the small businesses starts to grow and scale, and add people to their team, the difficulty they have is in relaying that sense of ‘value add’ to their own team, and also sometimes to their customers,” he says.

Brand building is not one off exercise but a constant. “It’s about finding out what are the additional things we might do? What could we do better? What are the things we might stop doing? For example, for a while everyone was told they had to be on TikTok, before that it was Twitter, and before that Facebook, regardless of what their product or service was. It’s about asking is there anything we can do to strengthen the relationship we have with our customers,” he says.

It is precisely because it is ongoing that brand building can be so helpful in effecting a smooth transition of a family business from one generation to the next.

To work well, however, brand building in an SME must be a collaborative process and a shared concern of everyone in the business, from the boardroom to the factory floor.

One mistake that undermines good brand building, which is typically found at start-up stage, is trying to sell to everybody, he points out. It’s much better to have a clear understanding not just of who your customers are, but who your best customers are. “A best customer is the one who will add value and the greatest benefits to you, in your market,” he explains.

In any marketplace there are people who might buy and people who would buy if they had no other alternative. “What you want is to get as close an understanding as possible of the people in your market who are really well suited to what you have to offer,” says Tannam. “Your best customer in any market, wherever you are, or they are, is the one who most needs, wants and values what you have to offer, is willing to engage with you and is able to pay.”

Procurement policies

Be aware that every shopper has a procurement policy, he points out, right down to the humble shopper in a supermarket. “They may always buy own label, or the cheapest available, or their favourite brand. That’s their procurement policy, they just don’t call it that,” he explains.

“Once we can define what a ‘best customer’ means for us, we can profile them clearly and then go out into the marketplace to see how many there are in the market. From there we can see how many of these might be persuaded, encouraged, or influenced to change their behaviours and become a best customer.”

Here the exemplar is Apple, he says. In the 1970s the company faced a marketplace distrustful of technology, “which was seen as dull, boring and grey, and turned people into best customers who needed, wanted and were willing to engage with Apple – and critically, pay [a considerable premium],” he says.

In small business, the equivalent is ensuring everyone in the organisation understands how their actions impact directly on the brand. It’s about understanding that in some cases your actions are the brand. “If you walk into a shop and the shopkeeper turns around to you, smiles, and says, ‘How can I help you?’ they are already communicating a huge amount of information in there, in terms of establishing rapport, the sense that they care about you in some way, and by identifying themselves as somebody who is likely able to fix whatever problem you’ve come in with,” says Tannam.

It’s why, regardless of your business activity, getting out and meeting customers is so vital to brand building. “It’s a relatively low-cost opportunity to really establish who you are, and to communicate something of what it is you represent or stand for.”

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