How to Forge an Ironclad Brand for your Business – Lindsay Pedersen, Brand Strategist and Best-Selling Author

Every business owner knows that building a company brand is more than choosing a color scheme and logo. Truly effective branding creates distinction among your competition and occupies valuable real estate in the mind of your customer. To learn more about brand building strategies for your business, we spoke to Lindsay Pedersen, brand strategist and best-selling author of “Forging an Ironclad Brand“.

According to Lindsay, a brand is the meaning that your company stands for in the mind of your audience. It’s the idea that you own space inside the head of your customer or whoever makes up your audience of consumers. The idea of branding has been around for a very long time. It signifies “I stand by this, this is what we mean”.

While your logo is an important visual reflection of your brand, it’s merely the outward-facing expression. Effective branding extends far beyond that superficial representation and encompasses everything that you do, and everything that your customer experiences.

While working as a brand manager at The Clorox Company, Lindsay’s clients had large brand equities but many similar products, making the packaging element of the product very difficult. In order to make the brand compelling, she spent around five years developing criteria for what separates a generic brand from being an ironclad brand. Her criteria includes the following:

1. Big
2. Narrow
3. Asymmetrical
4. Empathetic
5. Optimally distinct
6. Functional and Emotional
7. Sharp-Edged
8. Has Teeth
9. Delivers

When your brand meets all nine points, then you can be confident that it’s ironclad. To find out more about Lindsay and her book, “Forging an Ironclad Brand”, be sure to watch our entire interview.

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