Hi and welcome to BrandStrat
A newsletter dedicated to understanding brands and what makes them work!
This first instalment will take a look at what a brand is, as this is a subject that can often cause some confusion.
Takeaways
Your brand is the identity of your project. Think of it like your brand personality.
Your brand is what can sell your project over those of a competitor selling the same or similar products.
Your brand transcends your products. Your brand is a feeling people have when they think about you.
OK, let’s get into it.
When many people hear the word brand their first thought is often about elements like logos, fonts, colour palettes, and websites. While these things are tools to help you communicate your brand and do fall under ‘branding’, they are only one part of the story.
There are two core sides to branding, you have your brand assets which are the more physical, tangible, and visible aspects of your brand that I mentioned above, and then you have your brand personality while consisting of those tangible assets, it is more focused on your brand values, brand story, the tone of voice when communicating, and more elements that I will discuss soon.
I want you to learn how you can influence market perception and take control of how people perceive your brand and how they feel about your brand. Your brand is who you are and what you represent, it’s your identity and personality, and it’s the parts that people develop an emotional connection to and attach themselves to.
Ask yourself, what do people think of when they hear a brand name or see a brand's assets? That feeling in the pit of their stomach, the instinct that kicks in, the emotion a person feels when they walk into a store or watch an ad.
Take a moment to think about how you feel when you’re exposed to advertising or marketing from certain big brands that you’re familiar with, or maybe when you use their products.
Nike – Maybe inspired and motivated.
Apple – Maybe cool and innovative.
Louis Vuitton – Maybe sophisticated and aspirational
H&M – Maybe trendy and youthful.
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Nike and Louis Vuitton both sell clothing and footwear, but people feel very differently when they see either brand's marketing, or brand assets, or have any other exposure to these brands.
You see, your brand is a feeling, it’s the personality behind the logo, not the logo itself. Although, the logo is still a way to communicate that feeling.
Many people believe that if they distribute enough messaging that says their project is the best then over time people will start to believe it. That’s not how it works, there is so much more to consider.
It doesn’t matter how much you tell someone you’re the best, if your actions don’t align with your messages and a person’s experience with your brand doesn’t align with what you say then your words mean nothing.
One very important point to consider while discussing this is a quote from a great thought leader and author on branding, Marty Neumeier. He says,
“We tend to look at branding as … this is something we’re doing, we’re telling a story … but that’s not what a brand is, a brand is a result of that and if you don’t start there you don’t know what you’re doing!”
What he means by this is, it doesn’t matter how strong a brand strategy you create, you’re still dealing with the public and each of the people exposed to your brand has a different way of seeing the world. The best we can do is create a strategy to guide people in the direction we want them but always understand that your brand will mean something slightly different to each person based on their life experiences.
When he says “if you don’t start there you don’t know what you’re doing!” he’s saying you need to begin your strategy by trying to understand your target audience and build your strategy with them and the “result”, in mind.
My job in this newsletter is to provide you with the framework on how to build your strategy, your job is to keep the ‘result’, and your target audience’s perception in mind while developing it.
Let’s have a little history lesson to understand how branding came about. I always like to look back before we look forward.
The term branding refers to the practice of branding livestock, which dates back more than 4,000 years. Farmers branding their livestock was a way for them to show ownership of their product.
Fast-forward to the 1800s and the time of the Industrial Revolution, another type of branding was born to solve a new business challenge.
For so long, consumers were accustomed to buying local products from local vendors as a way of life as this was often the only option. Mass-produced products weren’t as appealing to people at that time, and this was a problem for bigger companies.
To solve this issue, factories producing goods on masse looked to the wine industry for inspiration and borrowed the winemaker’s approach by branding logos onto the containers they would use to transport their wine. They started to cover containers with their company logos, and it wasn’t long before this evolved into marking the individual products too.
This is when the world was introduced to brands such as Campbell’s Soup and Coca-Cola and people began to connect with mass-produced products in a way that hadn’t been seen before.
By the late nineteenth century, companies had invested so much in branding and building relationships with their consumers that they needed to start protecting their investments. In 1875, the Trademarks Registration Act was passed.
At that point, a brand had become an asset that a company could take ownership of and create a story with. This opened a whole new world.
The evolution into the modern era has seen business owners claiming more than just their products. Branding is now about owning your project’s personality and reputation, and with that comes a lot of responsibility.
From your core values to the purpose behind your idea, showing people what you stand for and represent has become an integral element to the success of a company or project’s long-term success. It’s important for brands to embed their values and overall brand image into the subconscious thinking of the people you hope will buy what you’re offering.
When I was a kid growing up in the 80s and 90s, it was a lot easier for brands to grab market share as there was less competition, and even easier in the decades before that, the internet era changed a lot of things.
The internet was only common in homes by the time I was around fourteen or fifteen years old, and that was dial-up, which meant slow and very limited, anybody old enough to remember the brain-piercing sound of dial-up internet will probably shudder at the memory.
I think there were maybe one or two kids who had a mobile phone at my school and that was only in my last year at sixteen years old, nobody could use them though as the cost to call or text was expensive back then, it was more for parents to contact them in an emergency.
This meant that if we wanted to buy something or watch a new movie, we had no choice but to get dressed, get out of the house, and quite often travel to another town to go and complete the task. I’m sure that seems crazy to some of my younger readers. This of course was good for the stores as they knew people had less choice and they were in a position of strength.
These days, Amazon will get anybody, pretty much anything at the touch of a button within a day or two making it harder for those stores to compete. Unless of course, that store has developed a strong brand in the eyes of their local community.
Think about brands like Harrods, Harvey Nichols, Selfridges, Bergdorf Goodman, and so on. These stores do very well today because they’ve developed such strong brands over time, that said, there are many brands that were popular in the past that have since disappeared.
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In today’s marketplace and since the inception of eCommerce, a company can’t rely on just having a good product, they must put in a lot more effort to compete because the market is far more saturated due to the internet. If a competitor launches the same or a better product for less money, they’ll steal customers. Unless of course, the original company has a much stronger brand perception in the eyes of consumers.
Your brand is what can sell your product or service even when you have competitors offering the same product category, sometimes you can sell even if what you offer is inferior. That’s the power of a strong brand.
Your brand transcends what you’re selling. Your brand is a feeling people have when they think about you and your product, it’s how they feel when they wear your logo, and it’s how they feel when they meet other people representing your brand.
Think about your own feelings for a moment, think about how you feel when you wear your favourite shoes or that jacket from one of your favourite brands. How did you feel when you first sat in a coffee shop with your new Macbook or pulled out your new iPhone for the first time in front of friends?
Think back to when you were younger, and you finally got the item of clothing that was popular in school and now you felt like you fitted in with the other kids who got it before you.
Your brand is not what you tell people it is, your brand is how you make people feel!
The goal for you as a brand owner is to have what you say about your brand aligned with how people think and feel about your brand.
Your goal should be to get people to connect to you and feel a certain way. It’s the perception in people's minds about your brand that you have to guide, over time you make decisions that help you tighten that connection, and we do this by ensuring your values, purpose, vision, mission, messaging, and daily actions align with our target audiences values and interests.
There are some great minds who have developed huge global brands that have shared their insights into what a brand is.
Here’s what they have to say about it.
Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO
“Your brand is what other people say about you when you're not in the room.”
Elon Musk, Tesla CEO
“Brand is just a perception, and perception will match reality over time.”
Howard Schultz, former Starbucks CEO
“If people believe they share values with a company, they will stay loyal to the brand.”
The last word from the Editor-in-Chief of the business magazine Forbes, Steve Forbes.
“Your brand is the single most important investment you can make in your business.”
A strong brand can turn investors, consumers, and collectors into brand advocates and help you to attract more investors, consumers, and collectors without you having to ask.
There is a well-respected branding expert who goes by the name Denise Lee Yohn, I like the take she has on her formula,
Brand = Culture + Customer Experience + Communication
All three of these elements generate a feeling within people about your brand.
The culture of your brand is what people see you as at your core, it’s a combination of all the elements in this book.
The customer experience is how you make people feel when they interact with you.
Your communication is how you translate your values and brand personality to people and make them feel something.
Get any of these wrong and you have a huge weak spot in your brand strategy that can leave you vulnerable.
Thanks for reading, David Skilling.
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Disclaimer: None of the content provided by BrandStrat should be considered advice. The thoughts and ideas presented are personal opinions and are for entertainment purposes only. The ideas presented here are my opinions at the date of writing and may change in the future.
Great read 🙏🏻