As everyone takes a breath at the end of a crazed week where much of the clean energy industry was in Las Vegas for RE+, I’m looking ahead at the next few months. It’s common for the last three months of the year to contain a lot of planning for the upcoming year. Of course, it’s always fun to work on both planning for the coming year and keep the wheels turning with current efforts. And in the solar and energy storage space, the pace of growth is so staggering that we’re all racing to keep up.
I am constantly amazed at the clean energy space. I feel like we’re living through a new gilded age of energy evolution. Will my grandkids recognize what we think of as the energy grid as the energy grid? Or will it have evolved beyond our current imaginations? Will we solve for energy and climate equity? Will the whole clean energy industry embrace circularity as a common practice? Does what we think of as A.I. hold the key to a true distributed energy system? What is beyond DERs?
I spend a lot of time reading and listening to those who are shaping the answers to these questions. It is fascinating. And at the same time, it can be a lot.
If you’re in the same boat I and much of the industry is – racing to keep up, I encourage you to pause sometime over the next three months. Take some time to look at your brand. Really look. Is it serving your company vision? Do you have a company vision? What makes sense to keep going into the new year? What have you been doing for a while on autopilot but is no longer serving that vision? This exercise in examination is not fast. Block out a good chunk of focus time. This reinforced foundation will pay off as you start to plan for the new year.
Why Should Clean Energy Companies Invest in Branding?
In The Brand Gap, Marty Neumeier writes, “a brand is not what you say it is, but what they say it is.” No matter what you want your brand to be, the final arbiter of your brand is public perception.
If a brand is “what they say it is” why invest in brand strategy? The good news is that public perception is not completely out of your control. A good brand strategy, in conjunction with sales and marketing, can have long-lasting impacts on the success of your company.
As you look toward planning for 2024, take a few minutes to read this latest post on why clean energy companies should invest in branding.
September Joke
How do you measure the effectiveness of a pun?
With a “sighsmograph”.