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Brand Strategy
Hate to Break This to You. What You Call “Brand” Isn’t Really One.
Know this: a brand is not a logo, product or service you offer, or the business you run.
Most people don't understand the concept of a brand, let alone a personal brand. They refer to their company as a brand, as do their customers.
We sometimes get a little finicky about it as brand strategists, but the terms "business" and "brand" are often used interchangeably and mistakenly.
This confusion has sometimes caused trouble for our partners and clients. It is entirely understandable, though. The idea of a brand has shifted, so has its role in a business context.
The history of brand and branding goes way back (some say as far back as around 2000 BC). However, the idea started to evolve, transform, and modernize with the dawn of the digital age in the late 1990s and early 2000s, where many related practices and verticals differ from historic techniques in many ways.
What a Brand Isn’t
Let's strip away some of the misconceptions to begin with. Logical deduction works.
A brand is not a business. Entrepreneurs often confuse the two. A business is a legal entity established for a specific purpose, usually with the goal of making a profit.
A brand is not just a logo. Marketing people sometimes mixed them up. "Logo" is short for logotype, a very specific design practice. It is a trademark and symbol that a business is recognized by.
A brand is not a product (or service). Consumers often do this - “we purchase a brand.” What they really mean is the product a business is offering in exchange of their money. A brand can’t really be sold. Well, not at retail price.
A brand is not reputation. It is very close, but it is rather an outcome of having a brand, as opposed to being one itself.
What Is It Then?
There are probably thousands of definitions of "brand".
Again, when people talk about a "brand," they're probably referring to the products they buy, or the business that manufactured them, or sometimes the logo of that business.
But a brand is more than a physical substance or a business entity. It's an emotional mark, more specifically, an emotional and subjective experience, that is strengthened or weakened through every interaction with a business.
"A brand is a person’s gut feeling” - Marty Neumeier
As we like to say, a brand is the "expectation" that people have of your company through its messaging, actions, and experiences. When your tribes trust, value, and champion you, you have a strong brand.
What Is Branding?
Branding, on the other hand, is the process of creating the branded "expectation" and shaping how people perceive it - expectation management, if you will.
We all like to think that branding is typically about creating a unique visual identity and beautiful designs that go along with it, or even a beautiful story to “sugarcoat” a business.
To a certain extent, yes, these are all true and part of an integral process, but most importantly, you need the core substance: discovering and articulating what's unique and valuable about yourself before you get into the pretty stuff, your unique value proposition.
You want your brand to be memorable, stand out, and emotionally connect with people, without being seen as fluffy talk.
Effective branding creates a strong emotional connection with customers. As marketing guru Seth Godin said, “People do not buy goods and services. They buy relationships, stories, and magic.”
Admittedly, we are all emotional, intuitive beings. We have a feeling about something and then we retrospectively rationalize our actions around it. While we can’t control how people feel about us, we can influence it
Having the ability to engage people on an emotional level at scale is worth probably more than anything else. And this is the purpose of investing so much in branding.
When done effectively, this will lead to results that you will be more than happy to see: increased engagement, loyalty, and most of the time, profits. And the best part is that it makes competition irrelevant to you because your people just like you.
You Have a Business, Not Necessarily a Brand.
Because it is not for everyone. It often takes quite a bit of mindset work to get people’s heads around it.
All of these amazing things being said, never take your brand and branding as a shortcut for transactional revenue boosts, manipulating your customers for short-term gains. Backfire is almost guaranteed.
You will have to put your own benefits aside for a little while, because it is about the genuine value you deliver to the people you serve, making their lives better with you. Profits will then follow. (Don't believe us? Read one of our all-time favorites, "Sell Like Crazy" by Sabri Suby. You will then see why. Happy reading.)
However, if this appears to be what will take your business to the next level in a dynamic market space, it will be transformational and definitely make it into your company's history.
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