March 2008
Building Your Consultancy's Brand Value
By Laura Hardy-Thompson, principal of Hardy-Thompson, a business law firm
As a consultant, your brand is much more than your logo. A brand expresses who you are and what you are selling. With the self-help tools that are readily available, you can find information on developing and protecting your brand identity. But to maximize your brand's value, you should make an attorney a member of your branding team.
Brand Defined
Your brand is a distinguishing symbol, mark, logo, name, phrase, product design or a combination of these items that distinguishes you and your organization from others in the market. “Branding” builds a company's value via the strategic application of these elements in advertising, positioning, culture, and people.
Brand influence in the marketplace can be more significant than pricing, distribution, sales, and even the product or service itself. A brand expresses who your company is and what you are selling. It carries your identity into the marketplace.
Effective branding creates a distinct identity. It forms a connection between customer and company that evokes emotion and/or stimulates memory of an experience that is sufficiently strong to influence purchasing decisions.
Increasing Brand
Successful businesses understand that a company’s most valuable property is the good will embodied in its brand. They know that the application of resources to create and sustain an effective brand pays dividends. These businesses build branding into their business plan, funding proposals, public relations, marketing strategy, company culture—and their budget.
Brand Legalities
The term “brand” is often too narrowly applied as a synonym for “trademark.” Trademarks, the distinct words, phrases, symbols, and other medium used to identify your company, product or service, are one important element of your brand—but brands are much more. Brands are the sum total of the various methods used to distinguish and disseminate concepts, images, reputation and features of your product or service. Consider the existence and value of the following to your consulting practice brand:
- Copyrights: What specific creative, intellectual or artistic material have you developed? Copyright goes beyond literary works to include motion pictures, audio recordings, artistic and photographic images, and designs in various forms.
- Trade secrets: What is unique and valuable about the way you do business? What gives you your competitive edge? Your trade secrets are your techniques, formulas, practices, “tricks”, information you’ve compiled to get the job done.
- Patents: Have you developed a useful process or tool, or had a unique idea about how to use existing ideas and tools together to make a new and useful improvement? Subject to certain requirements, you may have a patentable asset here.
Recognizing the value of these brand elements is a first step in realizing your brand’s potential. Consider the synergy of the brand elements you have:
- How do they work together?
- What makes them desirable or competitive?
- What is their life cycle, and how will they evolve over time?
As an example, your consulting approach, marketing collateral, client lists, and many of the tools you’ve developed and use again and again are made up of elements proprietary to you. By protecting the distinct identity of your business through thoughtful, strategic registration, dissemination policies, and/or agreements, as appropriate, you are building a portfolio of measurable assets that is attractive to clients, partners, and investors, and which may represent a valuable future acquisition for another firm. But without appropriate branding and protection this value may never be perceived.
Teambuilding
Harnessing the potential of your brand will involve skills that cross multiple areas of expertise. Your brand requires proper protection, use, maintenance, and defense if you intend to retain or profit from the investment you make in your reputation.
While as consultants we often wear multiple hats, branding may require judicious selection of a team of people for support. Introducing an attorney to our creative talent, branding experts, and media analysts helps to assure we have developed, protected, and maximized our brand. Such a team should be built to support and drive our firms branding objectives, exploit previously unidentified opportunities, and ultimately leverage success for the venture we’ve undertaken.
Involve a lawyer, or do it yourself?
Many resources are available to help you familiarize yourself with legal requirements and procedure for protecting your intellectual property. Here is a list of some good self-help resources:
With such easy access to self-help information, self-reliance can become so second nature that we fail to factor in the value added an expert’s involvement is likely to bring to your short- and long-term bottom line.
Gauging when to involve an attorney will be different for each business. It will depend upon your business goals, legal needs, confidence level, risk tolerance, the nature of your other commitments, the drawbacks of splitting your attention between your business and legal matters, and the degree to which enlisting an attorney’s services will bring cost-effective value to your venture. Here are some times you should involve a lawyer as part of your branding team:
- Starting or reinventing your business
- Preparing to launch a new product or service offering
- Before meetings with stakeholders and interested parties
- When you negotiate a new client contract
- Before you sign any agreement
- Before you are given anything to sign
- Asset audits (identify branding elements; protection strategies; use policies; agreements check; maintenance criteria; new opportunities consulting)
Here are a few of the less conventional ways you can get the most out of your attorney within budget:
- Lawyer as consultant (adjunct to your team)
- Lawyer as consultant (one-on-one brand counseling, you define the time limit)
- “On call” counsel arrangements
- Fee arrangements: estimate (always request); project-based; flat fee; capped fee
- To “spot check” the documents or forms you prepare before they are put to use
As part of a collaborative branding team, your branding attorney should be involved early in the process, even if you think you will not require substantial legal help early on. Keep your attorney part of the team; give them the opportunity to deliver a complete branding solution. This will maximize results and help you minimize costs.
Laura Hardy-Thompson is the owner and principal of Hardy-Thompson, a business law firm committed to responsible and creative solutions tailored to the needs of those seeking to position, protect, transact and maximize their entrepreneurial assets from inception to actualization, and beyond. Hardy-Thompson consults, negotiates, drafts and facilitates a variety of transactions with the benefit of more than ten years of intellectual property experience supporting portfolios and product/service launches on a global scale. Lori Hardy-Thompson is the firm’s Marketing Director and driving force behind firm visibility. The firm was founded three years ago to offer businesses access to practical, strategic, cost-effective and pleasant guidance to attract funding, growth, sustainable success and new opportunity. To find out more about the firm’s services, call (415) 829-3700 or email laura@hardythompson.com and lori@hardythompson.com. © 2008. L. Hardy-Thompson, Principal, 2008. All rights reserved.
This article is for informational purposes only. The information in this article does not constitute legal advice, or create an attorney-client relationship. The author specifically disclaims liability for loss or damage incurred directly or indirectly as a consequence of the use and application of any of the information in this article. Actual use of the information in this article may require application of professional expertise and legal judgment. If you believe that you may have a legal issue, you should consult a competent attorney licensed to practice in the appropriate jurisdiction. This article contains information believed to be reliable at the time it was written, but it cannot be guaranteed insofar as it is applied to any particular individual or situation. This article is not a solicitation for your business.
|
