Every business has a brand except for those who don’t. And everyone is an expert of branding except for those who are not. What’s all this fuss about branding?
Branding originally meant marking by burning a symbol into the skin of the livestock. The aim was to differentiate one from another and to prevent stealing. Later on the meaning was complemented by a kind of assurance of quality the brand incorporated. Today brands have values and purpose and can make a difference in business performance.
Consider a brand as a frame. Products of the same benefits and features can be differentiated by their brands, and the better brand creates some surplus in profitability.
Although the functionality is the same (the colour codes of the insides are the same), yet the value is perceived differently (but they seem to be different as the different frames create different contrasts). Brands fulfil their role if they add extra value.
Also, a brand can be the immune system.
If it works poorly, a temporary problem (virus) can ruin the whole system and cause disease and even worse. While if it works well, the temporary problem in the relation between the consumer and the company is not perceived as a disease, it solves the problem unnoticed.
A lovebrand creates such strong emotional bonds that customers associate values that are not inherited from the functionalities of the product itself, so the brand has transcended its commercial role. You don’t buy these brands, you join them. You use them to express something.
Just in every aspect of the business, the key is consistency. You can communicate your values if you do it consistently. When you blow hot and cold, you’ll get a blurry picture and customers won’t get to know you. And when you show the same every time, the pattern will become your identity and you’ll get understood the same way. This is how you build trust with your brand. As James Davis describes it, a brand needs three elements to get consistency.
The lack of any of these will undermine consistency and ruin the trust.
Many think that branding is only a logo, but it is far more. Actually the logo is just one of the last assets in the process. Alex Antolino explains the three pillars of branding in the same video:
So a good brand clearly articulates in which case you can count on it, how it will treat you, and expresses the whole experience in verbal and non-verbal communications for reassuring.
Brand purpose is the reason for the existence of the company beyond making money. It is supposed to be the very essence the company stands for and what problem it solves.
As more and more companies try to ride the wave, brand purposes can get more and more empty, hypocritical and pathetic at the end. Tom Fishburne had a cartoon about it and he collected some thoughts on the topic. The quest for the purpose can be a lie, a joke and the biggest bullshit. Why are so many marketers obsessed with the idea then?
The answer goes beyond branding. Many critics believe that the search of and the very existence of a brand purpose is only the sign of the missing company mission-vision. The vision is the aspiration the company goes for, a wanted end state in the future, it is why the company is born. While the mission is how the company contributes to this vision. These notions are pretty similar to how we described the brand purpose, which suggests that they aim at the same. So when marketers feel the urge of defining a brand purpose, it actually shows that the fundamentals are just not there.
But having a brand purpose does not substitute the proper strategy. Seeing things through rose-coloured spectacles is not a solution to any business problem. It can only work properly, if it is the tool of a well defined strategy and not the target itself.
When you feel that something just doesn’t feel right about a brand that seems to be elevated and lofty, you have just probably met with a distorted interpretation of the purpose which the company never really lives by, it remains just in the communications. Many telecommunications companies have purposes about digital optimism, however, they do little or literally nothing in developing digital solutions that are tangible for the end user. Yes, they are close to it, because you need access for it, but being a door and being a room are not the same. And customers subconsciously get it that money comes first which is spilled with a fancy wording and not the other way around where mission is the basis which, by the way, gains money.
So everyone knows that brand matters. There are tons of models that help you build up your own brand: brand identity, brand personality, brand ladder, brand archetypes, positioning, strategic sweet spot and many more.
But in practice, theories are useful if you can read them properly. Because they miss some essential, yet soft part, the substance of it sometimes gets lost along the way. And you try to find the right fit among your business goals, a real social matter you can resonate to via your offering and your brand. Easier said than done, of course.
Let’s take an obviously bad example. Tobacco companies could stand for a medical problem, but that would not be too credible. Yes, it’s a social matter, yes, it’s very noble to fight for something of that kind therefore that would build the brand. So the logic is there, it’s all true, but being true is not enough. You need to be authentic.
And you are authentic if your personality fits right. So here are some good examples:
They work right, because the business (the target group and the product), the social and the brand parts fit together perfectly. Always and Dove are great to show that there are many options and you don’t need to panic that someone in the same or similar industry has already taken a decent position. Social matters vary and change over time.
What does your brand stand for?
