Reilly Newman | “As the twig is bent, so grows the tree.”
— Alexander Pope, 1734
Whether you have been actively managing the brand of your business or you’ve been neglectful, the growth of your brand follows a particular trajectory. The investment and effort you have placed towards your brand will determine the angle of this trajectory. Like a tree that must continue to grow, it will follow the path set before it. Tending to this path is paramount to ensure your brand grows in the best path possible to the most ideal audience. As we’ve said before, “Whether you like it or not you have a brand” – the trajectory of this brand is your responsibility. The million-dollar question is how you manage and direct this trajectory as your brand grows.
When it comes to business, I have always thought of it like any other system in nature. Nature has one directive: to grow. This means it will find one way or another to reach water, reach sunlight, and grow larger/taller. Business as a system is no different. All viable businesses and their brands have the potential for growth.
This growth is to be directed. The saying “as the twig is bent so the tree grows” couldn’t be more true. When it comes to your brand, where the twig is bent so your brand grows. What’s a bent twig in a brand? Well, think of these as places the brand may neglect to fully integrate itself. This could be poor customer service or perhaps a mistake in marketing. It could be a poorly designed logo or advertisement that does not truly represent the potential of your brand. The point here is that any point along the customer’s interaction with brand’s experience influences the direction of the brand. This influence is possible because what creates brand is perception and what constructs a perception is largely our experiences. This is how brands grow.
For example, you can have the best-looking logo and storefront with an amazing interior, but if a customer is mistreated by an employee it can wreck the brand experience. As a result, this taints the perception the customer has of your business which depreciates the brand. This interaction “bent the twig” which then determined the “tree’s growth.”
Simply put, this is a matter of cause and effect that can create a spiraling decay of your brand. The remedy for “bent twigs” is found in proper brand strategy and management. As brands grow, their strategy and management adapts with them. This entails constant review and refinement of your strategy and ensuring that the brand is being well-maintained. The previous example could be avoided by properly training your employees on not just respectful customer engagement, but how to best represent the brand when doing so. Just as Disneyland does with their employees understanding that they are “cast members” putting on a theatrical production for the visitors. This means everyone and everything, whether stocking the restrooms or removing trash to serving food and directing crowds. This management of the brand’s experience is in harmony with the strategy of Disney and more specifically the brand experience of Disneyland.
The management of a brand is constant observation of the many touchpoints your audience may experience when interacting with your brand. This boils down to “how you do anything is how you do everything” and this is implied in all things your brand envelopes. Just as a poor customer interaction can “bend the twig” so can a poorly worded marketing campaign or a product label with a mediocre design. This may seem overwhelming to a degree, but the benefit becomes clear when you see what happens when the brand is maintained properly.
Just as a bend of a twig in a poor direction can harm the tree, the tree is also positively impacted by proper management. Managing your brand isn’t about avoiding all “bends” because these come natural with a brand. These bends make your brand unique and add character! It’s a matter of ensuring your brand is “bent” in ways that align with your strategy. When we don’t tend to the bends in our brand we get bends that lead to poor growth. When we prune the kinks our brand will inevitably face, we help the good bends direct the healthy growth of our brand.
Manage your brand based on your strategy — this is how brands grow in a healthy way. Tend to your business by tending your brand’s growth. How you do this will determine how it grows.
