Branding, Business & making them work
The branding mistake everyone makes (the basics)
I got a call from a prospective client yesterday and she so passionately explicated how bulbous she wanted her brand to grow. She actually meant her business. The word “business” is often replaced with the word “brand” but they are not the same.
What else do we often wrongly refer to as brand? A product, a name, a copyright, a logo, a person, a slogan, an identity.
So what is a brand?
Marty Neumeier probably has the simplest, most accurate thoughts on this.
A brand is a person’s gut feeling about a product, a service or an organization
— Marty Neumeier
What this means is that a brand is simply the idea or impression a person has about a business. The impression and not the business.
Daryl Travis says, “A product is made in a factory but a brand is made in the heart. Products might leave the factory by the thousands a day but brands are sold one at a time and they are sold by F-E-E-L-I-N-G-S”
Let’s tie it up
A brand is what people think not what you think or do.
A brand is what people say it is, not what you say it is.
Designing a logo, creating adverts, choosing a great business name, nice packaging, and colors are all branding efforts.
They are supposed to propose “an impression” to whoever is going to interact with them. The best they can do, however, is propose. It is within the prerogative of the client, the customer, or the public to define what the business or product means to them, hence the brand.
What this means is that a business or a product has multiple brands (because they may mean different things to different people).
The job of an organization or a business, therefore, is to design impressions and pay attention.
This means choosing what you want to be known for/as and creating elements that suitably enforce that impression.
Next is to pay attention to what people are saying because, to measure the performance of a brand, you must consider the aggregate impression.
Ask…what do most people think? Is it in line with our branding objective? Where does it lead us?
Let’s do a quick one
What do you think about BMW? Chances are, you are thinking… high performance, German wheels, class, expensive.
What do you think about Toyota? Probably affordable, moderate, and easy to come by
What do you think about President Trump?
Yeah… there you go.
Perception is everything! If you think a BMW is faster than a Mercedes, it’s true; whether it is factual or not. Because if you are at the point of purchase and you want a faster one, you’ll choose a BMW
I’ll write about why brands matter tomorrow. I hope you read it.
