1Building and Improving Your Company Brand © 2010 Avaya Inc. Proprietary, use pursuant to the terms of your signed agreement or Avaya policy.

Building and Improving

Your Company Brand

A Quick Start Guide for Avaya Partners

Visit Avaya Partner Marketing Central at avaya.com/partnermarketing for more Quick Start Guides and additional resources.

PlanUse this guide to begin crafting a new future for your company.

ExecuteContinue the Quick Start series to take your plan from concept to completion.

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Introduction Branding Basics Take Action

2Building and Improving Your Company Brand © 2010 Avaya Inc. Proprietary, use pursuant to the terms of your signed agreement or Avaya policy.

IntroductionWhat is a brand?

In simplest terms, a brand is the identity of a company. It’s far deeper than a logo or marketing collateral. It’s the overall impression of your company you build in your target audience’s mind every time they come in contact with you. An effective brand should be equally recognizable everywhere: at a sponsored event, on a billboard, on the phone or online.

World-class companies recognize the value of branding and have worked for years to perfect the art and science of branding. This Quick Start Guide provides a summary of those brand-building basics that you can apply to your business with or without outside assistance.

The Avaya Brand and Your Company

As an Avaya Partner, your success means our success. Our hope is that this Quick Start Guide will help you build or improve your company’s brand to be more competitive, consistent and customer-focused. As you progress, Avaya can support you with the products, services and marketing resources you need to further increase awareness, generate demand and grow revenue.

Introduction Branding Basics Take Action

3Building and Improving Your Company Brand © 2010 Avaya Inc. Proprietary, use pursuant to the terms of your signed agreement or Avaya policy.

Introduction

How Branding Can Help Your BusinessThe business benefits of effective branding include measurable results like marketing campaign success along with less quantifiable results like brand affinity or preference. Here are some common benefits of effective branding for your business:

1. Sales and Marketing Consistency

A strong brand can give your organization a consistent identity and message to broadcast from each department. This is especially important for sales and marketing since your company is jostling for attention with competitors. Effective branding and marketing can make sales calls more productive and shorten sales cycles. Over time, strong branding can also help build trust, preference and loyalty for your products and services.

2. Competitive Differentiation

It’s becoming harder than ever to cut through the clutter of media messages that saturate the marketplace. A generic or ineffective brand will simply fade into the background of competitors with equally weak brands. Establishing a strong and compelling brand message will help you stand out from the pack and begin customer relationships with confidence.

3. Brand Equity

Once established, a strong brand can lead to increased loyalty and purchase intent. For example, many customers only consider Apple technology products—all other brands are simply not equal. Even more importantly, how customers perceive your brand can be linked to their opinions of product and service performance. You can build a company “story” with your brand that your employees, customers and partners can not only embrace but also enhance over time.

Quick Start Guide Summary

This Quick Start Guide will explain the process and the elements that can help you move forward with a new or revised brand. Since it’s an ongoing effort, we’ll also give you ideas for institutionalizing your branding efforts within your organization and how Avaya can help you with full-service, self-service and templated marketing support.

Introduction Branding Basics Take Action

4Building and Improving Your Company Brand © 2010 Avaya Inc. Proprietary, use pursuant to the terms of your signed agreement or Avaya policy.

Brand Positioning

Your brand position is just that: where you want your brand to be positioned in the marketplace. It should represent the big picture of your brand in the context of your customers and in contrast to your competitors. How you position yourself will ultimately translate to how you present yourself to your audience.

Avaya is an expert and global leader in business communications. You could say our brand position is about expertise and innovation. It’s not about price or convenience or other product attributes. It’s about business leadership—ours and that of our customers.

Brand Attributes

Think about your brand and describe it as an entity. What comes to mind? Those are brand attributes. Explore the functional (easy to use), the emotional (makes me feel safe), the positive and the negative to determine a core group of attributes you want to reinforce as part of your brand strategy.

Over time, your prospects and customers will make their own associations about your brand so try to lead the conversation by reinforcing your brand attributes in every interaction you have with your audience.

Value Proposition

A customer value proposition clearly states why your customers should choose your brand over another. It should be truthful, compelling and simply declare how and why your brand is superior at creating value or solving a customer’s problem.

Research and talk to your customers. Understand their perceptions and not just what you want them to think. Do the same for your competitors, the good and the bad. Then, brainstorm your brand’s value proposition and create a statement that clearly states your brand’s benefits in customer-focused terms.

Brand Ideal

As a brand, what do you stand for beyond profit? What are your “higher” goals as an organization that can enhance your success? The answers to these questions can be summed up in your brand ideals or brand purpose.

Having a brand ideal or purpose can help everyone, internally and externally, feel more passion for your company mission. It can also act as a rallying cry for a new or revised brand. So how could your brand make the world a better place?

Branding BasicsCreating or revising a brand is an important part of your overall business plan. It can help you evaluate who you are, what you stand for and how that translates into customer-focused action.

Plus, the more you learn about your customers (and yourself), the more effective your marketing can be. Here are some strategic and executional considerations for creating your brand:

Brand Strategy Your brand strategy can affect every aspect of your business—not just sales and/or marketing. As a company-wide road map, it can empower every employee to clearly demonstrate the core idea(s) of your brand to customers during every interaction.

Discussing the topics below as a company can help you create an effective brand strategy. The information in the Avaya Quick Start Guide “How to Write a Marketing Plan” can also help guide the marketing-focused discussions you might have at this stage.

Brand StrategyBrand Visual ElementsBrand Usage

Introduction Branding Basics Take Action

5Building and Improving Your Company Brand © 2010 Avaya Inc. Proprietary, use pursuant to the terms of your signed agreement or Avaya policy.

Branding Basics

Brand Strategy

Naming

A company, product or service name may seem simple but is often the result of a lot of brainstorming, research and legal assistance. However, the right name can become a powerful part of your brand when successfully chosen and cleared. Whether you work with creative professionals on naming or do it yourself, here are some suggestions:

+ Use your work on brand positioning, ideals and values as your foundation for naming. A name can sometimes reflect strategic goals.

+ Brainstorm as many names as you can, including words you invent. Generate hundreds, if possible. You will inevitably need to dismiss many names once you begin researching them.

+ Narrow your list and begin basic research against those names to see if they’re already trademarked or used by others. If all of your names are already being used, brainstorm again and repeat.

+ Once you have a likely name, begin to “use” it in examples. Say it, print it, ask employees about it. See how it feels for your company.

+ Finally, have your legal counsel manage or conduct a thorough trademark search to clear it for ownership and use.

If your company name is already established, make sure that you use it frequently in print and in discussions; also be sure to speak to your legal counsel to conduct a thorough trademark search. Remember, a name is just a word until you make it meaningful through action. Choose your name carefully and then bring it to life in the context of your overall brand strategy and tactics.

Tagline

A tagline (aka slogan) is a verbal expression that sums up the idea of your brand. One of the most famous is the Nike tagline “Just do it,” which embodies the spirit of determination and dedication to performance of all athletes. A tagline probably can’t say everything about you but it can help your audience understand more deeply why they should choose to do business with you.

+ Keep it short, simple and unique. Instead of using vague terms (solutions, synergy, etc.), limited promises (savings, punctuality, etc.) or generic statements, use your brand strategy work to find an emotionally rich way to talk about your brand overall.

+ Be open to change. Taglines rarely last forever. Changes in market, strategy or unforeseen developments might require a change in direction for your brand. Your tagline can be one of the easiest to change.

+ Don’t overuse your tagline. There should be strict rules about how and when to use your tagline, with your logo or without. A tagline doesn’t have to appear everywhere.

Brand StrategyBrand Visual ElementsBrand Usage

Introduction Branding Basics Take Action

6Building and Improving Your Company Brand © 2010 Avaya Inc. Proprietary, use pursuant to the terms of your signed agreement or Avaya policy.

Branding Basics

Brand Visual ElementsThere are several visual elements that, together, convey a brand. A logo is often the most recognizable but it’s only one part of a suite of visual tools that can help ensure consistent and effective communication of your brand.

Logo

The term “logo” describes the core visual representation of the words (name, tagline) and/or symbols that represent your company in a unified design. A logo is more than simply selecting an appealing font. It should be a well researched and expertly designed signature that’s distinctive, meaningful and on-brand.

+ You should at least have a logotype for your brand that presents the name in a unique type treatment. The font (serif vs. sans serif), case (lower vs. upper), letter manipulation (changing shapes, spacing, etc.) and more should be well thought out to represent your brand.

+ If you’re considering a mark (a symbol like the Nike “swoosh”), be sure you’re not using existing art and that the mark has meaning in the context of your brand. A logotype and mark usually appear together.

+ If you’ve created a simple mark, you should then define its usage across all types of media (online, newspaper, apparel, etc.) and at all different sizes to help maintain its clarity and effectiveness in all cases.

Color Palette

The colors of a brand can convey emotion and set a “mood” as part of a brand’s identity. Effective brands use a color system that specifies one or two main colors (such as the use of red and white for Avaya) plus a palette of complementary colors.

+ Your brand color(s) will say a lot about you so work with a professional designer to define an appropriate set of colors that will accurately represent your brand to your audience.

+ Once you’ve approved primary brand color(s), have a designer create a palette of complementary colors that can be used across communications to give your brand design flexibility.

+ Colors appear different across media (for example, on a business card vs. on a website). Make sure you’ve defined colors across all media but also realize that some differences may persist.

Brand StrategyBrand Visual ElementsBrand Usage

Introduction Branding Basics Take Action

7Building and Improving Your Company Brand © 2010 Avaya Inc. Proprietary, use pursuant to the terms of your signed agreement or Avaya policy.

Branding Basics

Brand Visual ElementsTypography

Font selection and manipulation are as important to your brand as color. Think how different the headline of a New York Times article looks from the name of a heavy metal band. Font selection and treatment make all the difference.

+ Again, you should work with a professional designer to define the appropriate font(s) for your brand across media. There are thousands of fonts and variations to choose from, some more professional than others.

+ The right type selection will have personality, complement your logo signature, work in different sizes and colors and be flexible enough for use across media (or choose a separate font for web use).

+ As with color, you may want or need a set of fonts (for example, serif, sans serif, web) that all work together. Your brand standards guide should detail the approved fonts and rules for use.

Standards/Guidelines

Once all of your visual elements have been defined and approved, you should create a single guide that gives clear direction on brand appearance and usage to help everyone who works with your brand stay on-message.

+ A brand standards guide should provide all the direction necessary for someone unfamiliar with your brand to be able to produce materials that accurately reflect your brand: logo, tagline, typography, colors, etc.

+ The brand standards guide should include examples of proper and unacceptable usage of all brand elements, plus examples of all brand elements in different media (business card, letterhead, website, etc.).

+ Be sure to include strategic guidance to your brand in the guide. Knowing the background of your brand might help someone better communicate your brand on her own.

Brand StrategyBrand Visual ElementsBrand Usage

Introduction Branding Basics Take Action

8Building and Improving Your Company Brand © 2010 Avaya Inc. Proprietary, use pursuant to the terms of your signed agreement or Avaya policy.

Branding Basics

Brand Usage Once a brand has been created, the real work begins. Through disciplined application and monitoring, you can help ensure that any time and money you invested in creating your brand will continue to deliver a return on investment through brand awareness, customer loyalty and purchase preference.

Regulation and Monitoring

Branding begins at the office. Once you’ve created or revised your brand, you should launch it internally and communicate everything your employees need to know about its intent and its usage. A brand standards guide is crucial at this stage to give everyone the same reference and materials.

Next, identify individual(s) within your organization who will manage and monitor your brand. It could be the head of marketing for your company, since they handle the materials and relationships that use your brand the most. Keep in mind, however, that maintaining a consistent company brand should be everyone’s business every day and not limited to one person or department.

Tactical Suggestions

Once everyone in your company has absorbed the new brand, you should begin to launch it externally to your partners, vendors and customers. Your launch strategy will depend on your business and marketing goals. Either way, here are some tactical suggestions that may be appropriate for your new brand launch:

+ Consistency is key. Be sure that all communications about your new or revised brand have the same look and message. Again, your brand standards guide and diligent monitoring are important at this stage.

+ Be enthusiastic and repetitive. Get your employees excited, make your new brand tangible through premiums or promotions (t-shirts, prizes, etc.), find the right mix of targeted media for the most effective reach and measure your results to improve.

+ Be integrated in your approach. Align paid media placements, customer service, public relations and digital presence (website, social networks, etc.) to seamlessly support your new brand and/or campaign.

+ Invite sales to participate. A new identity creates an ideal opportunity for your sales department to contact leads and communicate the change—a conversation that might create new opportunities, contacts or relationships.

+ Take advantage of social media to “listen” to any conversations happening that involve your brand. Consider taking appropriate action as needed to clarify or address issues as they’re posted or discussed online. Remember, every interaction is part of your brand.

Brand StrategyBrand Visual ElementsBrand Usage

Introduction Branding Basics Take Action

9Building and Improving Your Company Brand © 2010 Avaya Inc. Proprietary, use pursuant to the terms of your signed agreement or Avaya policy.

Take ActionNow that you have some basic guidelines for developing or improving your brand, you can start working on your brand today. We’ve included additional resources below to help you on your way with examples, opinions and even customizable templates for Avaya marketing materials.

Links to Additional Branding Articles, White Papers and Wisdom

Bloomberg Businessweek

Articles on brand strategy, marketing trends, design and more.

Entrepreneur.com

Articles on branding topics, How To guides, pre-screened vendors and more.

Brandchannel

Robust blog by Interbrand on all branding topics and trends.

Brand New

Design-focused logo and identity opinion blog.

Guidelines and standards manuals

Links to online and PDF examples of brand standards guides.

Forbes

Blog for Advertising Marketing and Media.

Introduction Branding Basics Take Action

10Building and Improving Your Company Brand © 2010 Avaya Inc. Proprietary, use pursuant to the terms of your signed agreement or Avaya policy.

Take Action

How Avaya Can HelpOnce you’ve firmly established your new brand, Avaya can help you market your company. After all, you’re on the front lines of lead generation and customer service while we give your prospects and customers access to world-class products and services. Together, we can do more successful marketing than we could alone.

Avaya MarketLeaders 2.0

On-demand, full-service marketing program for Avaya Partners.

Build brand awareness, generate leads and drive sales—regardless of your level of marketing experience—with guidance from specialized MarketLeaders consultants.

Best of all, MarketLeaders programs are reimbursable via Avaya Business Development Funds. Promote your brand and drive demand with turnkey solutions like these:

+ Marketing Strategy and Consulting: Leverage the power of Avaya’s marketing expertise to build your business without adding resources.

+ Marketing Intelligence and Lists: Get information about your market and potential customers.

+ Banner Advertising: Customize professionally designed online banner ads with your logo and contact information.

+ Email/Telemarketing Programs: Run two-touch e-mail campaigns combined with telemarketing that deliver twice the impact.

+ Media and Advertising Support: Leverage Avaya’s relationships with media partners to develop a customized media plan that includes accountability metrics to measure ROI.

Put the power of Avaya marketing to work for you with MarketLeaders: www.avaya.com/partnermarketing

Partner Marketing Central (PMC)

On-demand, self-service marketing tool with hundreds of ready-to-use customizable templates for sales and marketing deliverables.

All materials are free of charge, including our instructional “how-to” guides, to help you generate demand while reducing costs through:

+ Free marketing materials: Create your own emails, .OFT’s, posters, telemarketing scripts and much more! Assemble entire multi-touch campaigns and get help if you need it.

+ Free educational guides: Avaya Quick Start Guides give you the basics on branding and marketing topics from building a marketing plan to using social media to effectively market your business.

Learn more and launch your own campaigns at Partner Marketing Central: www.avaya.com/partnermarketing