Making the right impression
Image consultancy firm expects growth as brands seek to project the right image to enhance customer experience
FIRST impressions count. The image that one presents could well make or break a moment that will have a lasting impact. Whether you are a business, an organisation, or even an individual with a professional career, we increasingly deal with more consumers who value good brand experiences.
A good brand experience can play a big part in consumers’ spending behaviour as it creates a closer affinity with the brand’s products or services. And a growing middle class is creating a new generation of savvy and sophisticated consumers who value personal experience and image, says BrandImage International founder and principal Wendy Lee.
A Malaysia-based image and branding training institution, BrandImage specialises in soft skills training that helps position a person and the brand of an organisation or product.
Although still a niche industry, as a profession, Lee says brand image consulting is one of the fastest growing industry. Akin to how mass communication courses were once considered a niche field of study with limited career prospects, brand and image consultancy have the potential to be mainstream, she adds.
BrandImage offers two courses at the moment, namely, the Certified Image Consultant course, which costs around RM10,000, and the Certified BrandImage Consultant course, which costs RM21,000. The Certified Image Consultant awarded to BrandImage’s students are based on two professional diploma and certificate programmes, namely, the Certified BrandImage Professional and Certified Image Consultant, managed by BrandImage International Institute and validated by Open University Malaysia (OUM). The courses range from six months for the cer- tificate course to one year for a diploma.
These courses are mainly for working adults or entrepreneurs looking to build a reputation for their businesses.
“It can also be very useful in helping professionals to project an image that helps in their career advancements,” says Lee.
More recently, the company has set up a college, BrandImage College, the first of its kind in Malaysia, targeting students and those seeking alternative professional vocational training courses.
The programmes offered by BrandImage are certified by both the Malaysian and UK governments and is recognised internationally, says Lee. It offers training in individual developments including wardrobe and image presentation style, etiquette, communication and protocol skills. BrandImage also provides professional training courses in personal image presentation to working adults.
Regional outlook
BrandImage has grown well locally by tapping into the demand for image consultancy among working adults and organisations here.
The first batch of 30 students of BrandImage International Institute were conferred Certified Image Consultant awards in November last year.
With demand for such services also growing in other parts of the region, the company is now ready to establish its courses in other countries. Apart from Singapore, Lee notes that many countries in South-East Asia are lacking in awareness of the value and skills required for professional image strategies.
To grow in the region, BrandImage is open to potential interest from strategic partners to help scale its business and expand its courses overseas. The ideal partner would, of course, be private education-related companies with market access
to the South-East Asian region.
Lee says BrandImage could offer minority shares to the strategic partner in return for capital and market access. It could also explore the possibility of a joint venture with the partner for the regional market.
Lee adds that the company is open to approaches from advisors in its search for the right partner.
As part of its expansion plans, BrandImage recently signed an agreement with the provincial government of Chengdu, Sichuan Province, to establish a branding and image training course centre there.
“BrandImage is working in collaboration with our partner in Chengdu, China, who is also the president of Wuhou Association of Entrepreneurs. The aim of this collaboration with the Chengdu Ministry of Education is to bring our business model – both BrandImage Institute and BrandImage Consultancy services – over to China,” says Lee.
This, notes Lee, is just a stepping stone into the huge China market. BrandImage foresees big growth opportunities there as image consultancy and branding are becoming very popular in the fast growing Chinese economy.
This venture overseas marks another milestone in Lee’s quest to promote image consultancy training and courses to a wider audience. In time, she hopes to help promote image consultancy as a respectable career of choice.
Lee started dabbling in image building efforts back in 2004. Prior to that, she was a high-flying corporate figure attached to one of the largest biotech companies in the world.
Armed with only a vague knowledge of what an image consultancy company does, Lee started her learning curve in the business by trying out everything related to style and image. From selling accessories to giving out charitable workshops, Lee gained insights into the various aspects of image building as a brand.
Unlike in Western countries, where it is common for everyone – from actors right up to politicians – to engage the services of image consultants, the idea of learning from a professional on how to project an image was not widely accepted locally then.
But Lee was determined to make image consultancy a serious business.
She started Chapter One in 2007 as a fullfledged image consultancy services company. Over the years, as awareness on the value of a positive image grew, the smallscale business that Lee pioneered continued to grow and led to the establishment of BrandImage in 2011.
BrandImage is owned by Chapter One Asia, a branding and communication company that also provides branding consultancy services to corporate clients. Chapter One, in turn, is fully owned by Lee and her husband.
BrandImage currently has around 44 staff, including its external consultants.
The company is expected to continue on its growth path with revenues expected to hit RM9mil for 2018. And as plans for its China expansion takes off, Lee says the company is projecting RM20mil in sales within the next five years.
Increasing awareness
While more and more individuals are turning to consultancy firms for help to craft a professional image for themselves, BrandImage is also seeing a lot of growth potential in the corporate sector.
For most of BrandImage’s corporate clients and private businesses, the main focus is on brand positioning. Increasingly, many organisations are starting to see the value of training its workforce to project a uniformed corporate image.
Lee explains that many companies today have come to understand the importance of their employees portraying the right image, which can help enhance the brand experience as employees are the faces of the com- pany. This includes training employees in the ways of the company’s culture – including the way they dress, act and behave – to portray an image that reflects the values of a brand.
“When it comes to the corporate world, building a brand identity and corporate image is now an inseparable part of a longterm business strategy in the 21st century. This means another untapped potential as companies increase their focus on projecting the right image and experience for their customers,” she says.
This is particularly relevant to SMEs or traditional family-owned businesses, where branding strategies and corporate image usually rank low on the priority list. Many of these companies do not have a good idea on how to project the right image for their products, industry or customer base.
“Like corporate and product branding, the people of an organisation are a walking billboard that represents its message. You are either projecting a positive or a negative image. It is never neutral. Everywhere you go, you are advertising yourself. People judge you whether you like it or not,” says Lee.
One of the most difficult tasks in trying to project a corporate image and brand identity, says Lee, is to get everyone in the organisation to be in line with the stated goals and standard guidelines. This problem is made worse by the current Gen-Y who have just joined the workforce.
The Gen-Y and the millennials have very different expectations on image and branding, says Lee.
“In many organisations, big or small, it is a common problem to have a generational gap issue. The founders or the senior manage- ment team often don’t share the same values and work ethics as the younger generation. The company and brand will not be able to sync to represent the image that the business wants.
“How we bridge this gap is to ensure that in our trainings and branding strategies, those in the senior management come down to train together with the staff from every level to make sure they understand each other,” says Lee.
The idea is to ensure that they have an understanding of each other’s values, priorities and styles. This also helps different groups of people understand why, for example, some personal grooming choices do not jive with the company or industry.
“It is important for business owners to understand that, ultimately, branding is not a destination, it is a journey. So there is a need to constantly update the strategies based on trends and consumer behaviours,” she shares.
While the training courses and students’ demographics are skewed towards women at the moment – mainly due to the appeal of grooming and mannerism to ladies – there will be more involvement and interest from men going forward as branding strategies become more prominent among organisations, says Lee.
But more than just teaching the skills on how to project the right image for the occasion or overhauling their wardrobes, Lee says the main aim of its courses is to raise the awareness that having the right attitude and knowing how to interact with people from diverse background are the keys to image building.
After all, as the saying goes, style is temporary, but class is permanent.