dreamerstoleaders
An Interview With Minling Chuang: The founder of brandfameschool.com
Q: If you could share with our audience more about you and your branding company?
A: I started my career in corporate branding I worked at Nestle on the Lean Cuisine brand and the Toll House brand and launched a 54 million dollar product that won product of the year for Lean Cuisine and things were going well in my corporate career, but I had a big epiphany when I went to Nepal, I went to this orphanage where I was volunteering and helping and supporting and met these children that were basically sold into indentured servitude and later rescued there are some kids that had parents that couldn’t take care of them and at the orphanage when I met these kids they were the happiest kids that I ever met in my entire life and one of the things that struct me was that they had all these dreams of, one little boy wanted to be an astronaut, another girl wanted to be a teacher, another little boy wanted to be the doctor, and they had so many dreams and aspirations, and the thought popped in my head “when did I stop dreaming?” And there was this pivotal moment in my life where I was just like oh my gosh I’ve been living my life for everyone else, so I ended up a year later deciding to part ways with Nestle move on to my own journey and my path, I actually started an inspirational blog that I did for a little bit and then I fell back into branding and consulting because so many people loved my inspirational blog they were like oh my gosh Minling you’re really good at this and I realized that, you know the reason why I stepped away from branding was more so because I was burnt out than not loving branding, I love branding, I love doing what I do, and so I fell back into working with clients, doing consulting, I also consulted for Fortune 500 companies and just started my business and career out of realizing that I wanted to make a bigger purpose or difference in people’s lives and helping them build brands and really stand out and help entrepreneurs who are making a difference get their voices to be known and heard.
Q: With regards to companies that have experienced some nasty, reviews that are really hurtful for the brand, and lets say they’ve received a slew of that, or maybe to bad publicity or really something that has gone wrong with the product of the service, so on an d so forth, do you think branding has a way to do a little bit of that damage control, and what would be your suggestions in kinda overturning that type of damage to a company or a brand.
A: That’s a great question, I definitely feel like one, the company needs to first fix the issue whatever it is and own up to it I think a lot of companies try to pretend it’s not there or try to skirt around the issues and blame it on somebody else and even in my Nestle days you know when we had recalls and stuff like that we need to face things head on because we knew that if we just let it linger people will start questioning the brand and saying like do you really care about us, remember at the end of the day he customers want to know that you care about them. And so one quickly fix the issue whatever that is, two share what steps you’re taking to fix that issue as soon as possible and come up with an action plan, three share what you’re promising like what do you promise from here on out to do as a brand, as a company and then stick to that and continue to go ahead and follow the new promise so that rebuild the trust. The reason why you get bad reviews and people start disliking brands is because the trust has eroded just like in a relationship, if you wanna even just take out brand for a second, and just think about one on one relationships, lets say we were best friends and thats how some people feel about brands and then I broke your trust in some way, you have to repair the trust, you A you have to own up to it, and be like oh my gosh I was such an idiot I did not mean to do that you know and B like I will never do that again, this is how I’m gonna take steps to make sure that doesn’t happen, and C your gonna have to still and show up as that new version of you, as the one that promised those things that to your customers and consistently show up and that’s how you start to repair the trust, because if people don’t trust your brand and people are giving you negative reviews because they don’t trust you anymore thats how the brand gets eroded so continue to look at how you can repair the trust between you and your clients.
Q: Is there like a DIY tip or like a do-it-yourself advice that you could give to our new entrepreneurs or those that are kind off cars strapped and kinda want to do it on their own first?
A: It is really to focus on the fundamentals of branding before you spend money on a website you have to get your messaging straight and how you position yourself in the market that is the make or break of any kind of branding because that’s going to dictate how you share your message and what kind of message you share. I think 1 you really need to understand your niche and who you are here to serve. A lot of people think that they can help everybody. While that’s great you’re not gonna be talking to the right person you’re not gonna be talking to that one person and connecting with them on a deep emotional level, so you really do need to niche down and understand that customer on a deep emotional level of what issues they’re facing, how they’re not being served right now in the market, what kind of solutions that they’re seeking, and going deep to your customer analysis. And then I always tell my clients to look at the marketplace, look at what the competitors are doing right now what is happening in the industry that you don’t believe in, that you were like wait there’s a better way to do this so you wanna start to understand what your competitors are doing and saying in the market because then, you can map it against what your customers want and see where the empty space is and see also where you are really good at and bring that into the equation. So it’s kind of like, I’d like to think of it as triangulation of, you know, and pinpointing where it is that you are the best fit for your ideal client and that’s what you really have to do because then you’re able to say now I know how to position myself because I know what the customers want, I know what the competitors are doing, I know my benefit and why I’m better than everybody else and I know where the white space is in the market now I can say like I have X, Y, and Z product that can help my customers get their real desired results and it’s better than competitors because I offer this value and that’s going to start to help you craft the message that you need to craft in order for your ideal clients to want to potentially with you and buy from you.
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