So, what’s with all this “brand” stuff?
It’s a word that people often have an intense visceral reaction to, a concept that is both highly revered and reviled. The word “brand” is many things to many people, but one thing a brand isn’t is magic. Despite how it may seem, creating a thriving, business-sustaining brand doesn’t require a magic wand (or soul-selling Faustian incantation).
Nope, a compelling brand is crafted through a diligent process of insight, intentionality, and creative implementation. They’re actually a lot of good ol’ fashioned hard work. They’re also the very basis of how a modern business exists in the modern world.
To make this “brand” concept accessible, concrete and actionable for our real-world clients, we’ve developed four primary ways of thinking about brands:
Put most simply, brands are just businesses that people care about.
“Brand” is the label that people give to businesses or organizations that have earned a following. Whether conscious or not, it’s a sign that these entities are more exciting and relevant than their normal “business” or “non-profit” counterparts.
Brands are our attempts to find and assign meaning in the otherwise inconsequential cogs of business.
We can go weeks without food, days without water, but our minds can’t go milliseconds without attempting to make meaning out of our world. We’re wired for it. A well-crafted brand lets people know what your business, organization, or cause can mean to them. It gives them something to attach their attention to.
A brand is a an ownable, but collaboratively created network of ideas, experiences, and assets that define an entity.
Your brand is the cultural culmination of every point of contact the public has with or about your brand. It’s not something that can be dictated; your brand is what the people say it is. So it’s a give and take between your efforts, and their perception. Done well, a brand creates value for both the business and the customer, above and beyond whatever widget you might be selling at the moment.
Branding is the craft of building connections between rational businesses and relational people.
People don’t care about your business model, strategy, or sales goals. Your brand gives them something to latch on to, care about, and a reason to choose you over all the other options.
So that’s what they are, but how do you go about creating this remarkable thing that is a “brand”? What’s that look like?
Well, there’s no one right way to brand, but there are definitely good ways and bad ways to go about it. To help our clients with this, we’ve developed a number of systems to direct people’s branding efforts, providing organization for their concepts, communication, and touchpoints.
To start, you want to ensure your brand is:
