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Diana Kautzky thought she understood her company’s brand when she set out to retool its marketing efforts three years ago. But the owner of Deaf Services Unlimited got a different interpretation from Drew McLellan, the “top dog” at McLellan Marketing Group.

“We were looking to have a stronger presence in the community,” said Kautzky, whose Des Moines-based company contracts with more than 100 sign-language interpreters. “We always thought one of the most important messages we needed to impart to the people who need our services was the quality of our interpreters, but it turned out that wasn’t the most important to the customer.”

Whether it’s branding a new business or rebranding an existing enterprise, a company must thoroughly understand its culture in order to effectively identify its brand and consistently deliver on that brand through its employees, McLellan said.

“A brand should not be something that you’re not,” he said. “It should call out what you do best.”

After taking Deaf Services through an extensive three-day branding process, “we discovered the brand really was all about being a hassle-free experience for the organization hiring them, because it’s something that’s mandated by law,” McLellan said. That realization led to the company’s new tagline: “Go ahead, expect too much.”

To match the theme of putting the customer at ease, McLellan also softened the colors used in the company’s logo, which had been bold red, yellow and black.

Effective branding requires hard work on the company’s part, but yields impressive results, McLellan said.

“I think one of the truths we’re seeing is that companies that were well-branded prior to the recession are faring much better through the recession than companies that were not,” he said. “You either are well-branded or you have to compete on prices. Those are the only two choices you have, and unfortunately, most companies choose to compete on price, because to do branding well is an investment. It’s an investment in time and an investment in your employees, to make sure they all understand it.”

In many cases, companies skip the critical internal step of ensuring that employees understand the brand and know how to deliver on it, McLellan said.

“The reality is, most of the people who decide the brand are not the ones who interact with customers,” he said. “So they make this decision, ‘This is what our brand is going to be,’ but if they don’t really engage their front-line employees, there’s going to be a disconnect.”

An example of a company that has positioned itself well with its brand is Josephs Jewelers, McLellan said.

“You know what to expect when you walk in,” he said. “It’s going to be very nice, high-end stuff, and it’s going to be a little bit more expensive. And they deliver on that no matter what location you walk into.

“One of the things that’s great about a brand is that it not only attracts the right customer, it also repels the wrong customer. So if somebody is 22 years old and wants to buy a diamond for 500 bucks, they don’t bother going to Josephs. A brand is sort of a filter that allows the right customers to come in.”

Another Greater Des Moines family-owned company, Anderson Erickson Dairy, took its employees through an extensive branding exercise two years ago with The Richards Group, a Dallas-based agency. That effort led to a renewed emphasis on communicating the quality of its products.

“This process included extensive focus group sessions in both Iowa and Kansas City,” said Kim Peter, Anderson Erickson’s director of marketing. “In addition, our agency team spent time at the dairy interacting with both our management team and staff who make AE products.”

Along with identifying high quality standards as the best articulation of the AE brand, the agency decided to have a little fun and came up with the “ridiculously high standards” theme for its advertising campaign, Peter said. The company performs as many as 25 different quality tests on its products at its on-site, state-of-the-art laboratory to ensure freshness and consistency.

“The AE branding strategy has a direct tie to what makes each of our flagship products unique, and our focus on innovation which keeps dairy interesting and appealing,” she said.

Even a company whose primary product is providing branding services can rebrand itself. Mauck Groves Branding and Design is “taking its own advice” and changed its name last week to PUSH Branding and Design.

“We selected the name PUSH because it is forward-looking, edgy and creatively unrestricted,” said Eric Groves, the owner and creative director of the Urbandale-based design firm. Groves started the firm nearly 20 years ago and merged his business with that of designer Kent Mauck in 2004. The company offers brand analysis, strategy and implementation services.

“We often preach the value of a name to our clients, and now we are practicing what we preach,” Groves said.

Renaming a company to give it a well-conceived name can provide tremendous value to the business, Groves said. “In our case, it’s something I’ve wanted to do for a number of years, and it seemed like an appropriate time,” he said. “We now have an opportunity for more effective branding within our own company, and branding, of course, is at the core of what we do for our clients.”