Corporate Brand Identity Case Study
Background & Challenge:
A client from the Food & Beverage sector (obviously, we are keeping details vague enough to maintain anonymity) with a brand built on “healthy / clean living” had negative Google results surrounding a specific regulatory issue; some brand confusion; and mixed online reviews.
Strategy & Tactics:
The overall strategy was to focus on promotion of (copious) positive content to demote negative content and enhance / clarify brand.
The game plan was to:
- Analyze data and peers
- Optimize owned content (company’s sites)
- Leverage google features (like Knowledge Panel and Questions)
- Enhance social presence so accounts showed up in search
- Leverage Wikidata to disambiguate brand identity issues
- Leverage Wikipedia by working with the editor community
- Leverage PR efforts / News in cooperation with PR company
Results:
After 3-6 months:
- Actively promoted desired content, improving online reputation for the brand across locations (USA, UK, Canada)
- Drastic improvements to Social Profiles (particular success with Twitter ranking) and Wikidata
- Optimized all company sites
- The right brand information appeared appropriately online
This in turn:
- Demoted negative content across the focus keywords across locations (NY, UK, Canada)
- Achieved similar progress on 70+ secondary terms as a result of our ongoing work
- Helped Google distinguish between the brand name and its products so that customers and stakeholders could find more accurate information that better served their needs
Special Notes:
Knowledge Panel: Brand clarity
- We ensured that the official logo was uploaded to Wiki Commons, legal formalities covered, and proper associations in Wikidata were entered
- As a result, the Google Knowledge Panel – for corporate queries – now features the most updated company logo, sourcing the image from Wikipedia
- The KP went from appearing as a local business with a map to featuring the national brand and its products
Google’s Answer Box (Now: People Also Ask)
This feature utilizes accordion expansion design. When users click on the questions, they expand within the Google search results page to show answers as well as the site from which the answers were sourced.
We ensured content optimization such that Google used the company’s content to answer common questions users have.
Wikipedia
We worked with the editor community to ensure accuracy about the product, corporate history, and nutrition.
Future proofing:
At the conclusion of the six-month program, we:
- Continued monitoring all keywords
- Did vigilant ongoing work to continue demoting negative content, increasing ownership of the narrative, etc.
- Focused on content that went beyond product, especially evergreen content e.g. working the PR company on positive media coverage and thought leadership in the area of health
- Acted as a force multiplier for all digital efforts – website, social, PR, video, content deployment, etc.
