Some of the best advice I ever got from my parents was not to hang out with troublemakers because everyone would eventually assume I was a troublemaker as well.

In retrospect that was my first experience with branding.

I might have been the best kid in school (I wasn’t). But people would still judge me by the company I kept.

Fast forward a few decades and that’s still great advice. It’s important in school, but it’s also important in business.

From Pizza to the Post Office

If you order a pizza and it’s delivered by a guy in a beat-up car, wearing a worn-out grubby cap, ripped jeans and sneakers with holes in them, you may wonder about the quality of the pizza you’re getting. But if you order the same pizza, and it’s delivered by a guy in a nice shiny car, wearing a crisp clean shirt, your estimation of the value of the same pizza is high.

The driver’s individual brand directly influences the perception of value of the product he’s delivering.

We can take this even further.

If you own a company and you choose to partner with another organization that is perceived to offer high value products or services to its customers, you actually get a benefit from that association.

Just recently Deepak Chopra, President and CEO at Canada Post announced the following on his LinkedIn profile:

Canada Post is thrilled to be named one of the top 20 Authentic Brands in Canada. Only six Canadian companies made the top 20 list published by Cohn & Wolf, which makes this honour even more special. This is a remarkable tribute to our 60,000 employees who proudly deliver the online world to 16 million addresses in every corner of Canada.

Canada Post’s authenticity resonates with Canadians because people in all corners of this vast country associate it with timely delivery, historical and organizational quality and stability. It’s been here since the first official 3-cent stamp in 1867. That’s just the kind of great branding you want to rub off on you, no?

I mean who would not want a brand that was associated with the great outdoors. Trees, rivers, covered bridges and…a community mailbox.

The logo and its positive associations are everywhere if you drive around Canada. Think  about convenience stores, delivery trucks, mailboxes, not to mention newspaper ads and your incoming eCommerce packages.

Here’s the thing: All that goodwill and authenticity rubs off on you when you choose to use the mail too. Whether it’s a birthday card, a wedding invite or timely and responsive paper mail advertising, it will be imbued with the essence of the Canada Post brand, simply by being delivered through their platform.

One more reason to choose the mail as part of a multi-channel approach to marketing.