Step 4: Operations

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And finally, step 4, operations!

If this is the first time you're seeing this series, first welcome! Second, I hope ‘finally’ gave you some hint that you may have missed a lot but don’t fret here is the link to the first 3 steps.

If you have been with us since the beginning, congrats! We are at the final step of brand design: How Branding Should Impact Your Operations.

Let’s jump right right in!

Brand Design for Bold Businesses: How Branding Should Impact Your Operations.

Step 4 is the least obvious part of brand design and and this is where bold businesses stand apart. Because as we’ve been discussing throughout this deep dive, your brand is far more than just your visual identity. 

It is ultimately how your users, customers, and employees feel about your business. And while a cool logo and fun colors are great (we obviously love these) it is nothing compared to how your business operates. 

So this is the final step. Using your brand to inform your business decisions at the operational level. 

We will often tell businesses that the benefit of building a strong brand foundation is that you have a guiding principle for making all decisions. Your brand allows you to create a decision shortcut instead of having to weigh every possible option. Imagine your brand as your guide through an ever winding maze of decisions, strategies, and contradicting opinions.

Let’s dive into what we mean by all of this with some examples.

Say you are a consumer brand with a core brand tenet of sustainability and environmentalism. A simple brand decision is ensuring your packaging is environmentally friendly. You no longer have to weigh between the cheaper plastic packaging or the costlier compostable option. You may also look into reducing the amount of packaging needed, using things such as QR codes to decrease print materials, etc. But that’s just the start. 

For bold businesses, it goes beyond the core product and packaging and into everything from marketing to corporate responsibility to recruitment processes.

Maybe your brand swaps the annual catalog for a digital magazine, or starts selling exclusively through pre-orders to eliminate product waste. You may decide to remain permanently remote or hybrid to cut back on your employees commute or openly supporting legislation and candidates that are committed to fighting climate change. 

It is in these steps, the steps that go beyond vanity metrics and standard expectations that you’re able to deliver on your brand promises to customers and employees alike.

Your brand can guide you on:

• What social platforms to use

• Which influencers you partner with

• Your company culture

• Vertical vs horizontal growth

• New product or service offerings

• Payment or return policies

• Marketing & sales strategies

• Employee policies & benefits

• Growth strategies

Story Time

Today we’re talking Kwik Trip.

Let’s start with some cold hard numbers.

Kwik Trip started in 1965 as a single location, family owned gas station in Eau Claire, WI. Today, Kwik Trip has over 865 locations around the midwest with over 38,000 employees, with an estimated annual revenue of over $2B, is still 100% family owned, and growing.

And it’s not just their numbers that are impressive, but their cult following. A quick Google for ‘Kwik Trip following’ will lead you to an endless search documenting the cult following for the gas station.

This includes:

• A Reddit Thread with over 5,000 members

• A dedicated Kwik Trip Discord channel

• A Kwik Trip Enthusiasts Fan Club on Facebook with 147k members

• A Kwik Trip Instagram with over 127k followers

• Endless YouTube videos of influencers sharing their favorite Kwik Trip foods and locations

• Articles from nearly every local newspaper highlighting the phenomena

One argument for their incredible growth AND creating such a following? Their hyper focus on doing right by their customers and community.

Here's how Kwik Trip reinforces their brand mission through operations:

Focus on freshness

• Cookies, donuts, bread and more are baked in house and delivered daily

• They have their own dairy operation

• Produce is packaged fresh daily from their commissary in La Crosse

• A recent $151 million investment to help in the expansion of their central kitchen

Focus on their staff

• Quality benefits to part and full-time employees

• Opportunities to build a career at Kwik Trip

• Focus on company culture of teamwork and sense of belonging

Generous rewards program for customers

• Nearly 4 million people are enrolled in their loyalty program

• Their app ‘Kwik Rewards’ has over 285k reviews with a 4.8 stars overall rating

By living and breathing their brand mission, Kwik Trip has been able to scale quickly while improving their product and customer experience, reinforcing their customer and employee loyalty, which leads to more growth. The dreamiest of all flywheels.

TLC Brand Bites: Operations can make or break a cult following.

• You must consider your branding when looking at your growth strategies — which markets make sense for you? What new products reinforce your brand? What about expanded target audiences?

• If you don’t consider your brand into these growth strategies it is easy to alienate your existing customer base.

• Marketing channels matter.

• Misaligned sales and retention strategies can make your customer feel taken advantage of — if you preach customer satisfaction but make it hard to cancel a subscription, you will lose credibility.

• How your employees feel about your company will eventually get out to the public.

• Trust takes time to earn but can be lost instantly. This is especially true when it comes to brand trust.

Final Tips

The dirty secret when it comes to brand design? It’s never fully complete.

Just like everything in business and well, life, things are constantly evolving and changing. The goal is to be in charge of that growth — to be intentional so as you grow, you keep your mission at your core.

So while your logo, and website, and tagline will shift and change over the years, the reason your company exists and how it makes your target customers feel should not.

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