What Is Branding?

I'm a branding professional. I have to admit, though, sometimes when I say "branding" people give me this blank stare.

I don't blame them.

There are two camps of people who hate the term branding.  One is the "I'm so bored already. Let's move on" camp. There are so much talk on the topic, it's like talking about weather. My partner, for one, is squarely in this camp.

The other half of people are, I think, confused. Sure, you hear a lot of people talk about "brand" but what is it? It's like "chaos theory" -- many people who uses the term really doesn't know what it is, how it's made, or whether it tastes good. You might nod and carry on the conversation, but really, there are questions you are afraid to ask. There are too many articles written about branding from inside the marketing circles, and not enough from outside.

So, I want to attempt demystify the term "branding" a little, explain the concept from a fresh, outside-in perspective, so talking about branding can be engaging again.

Granted, it _is_ a rather general, vague, unspecific word. It comes from the practice of farmers branding their animals, and it's come to mean a lot of things to a lot of people over time.  There's a general sort of consensus among the marketing and design professionals, but that doesn't stop people from defining it in their own way.

Now, I use "branding" because there just isn't a good substitute for a word describing what I do for a living. "Soul" might come close to it. Maybe "reputation" (you might disagree about these terms being anywhere near "branding". I will come back to that).

LONG-WINDED DEFINITION

What I can tell you right off, though, is what branding is NOT.

• It's not a logo, trademark, or a catchphrase. Not even when they are put together.
• It's not what you think about when you think about Apple, necessarily.
• It's not the benefits or the features of a product. Or what something tastes like.
• Let me try something else here. Picture a pair of sneakers in your head.

What brand is it?

You might say "Nike", "Adidas", "Puma", or any other brands that come to your mind first.

The question is: why that particular brand, and not others?

My guess is that unless you are a brand manager of one of these companies, you'd be hard pressed to explain why brand A should pop into your head. It's more emotional than a logical thought process, and I doubt it was their logo that popped in your head, though it probably was part of the picture somewhere.

Brand is that picture.  And branding is what put that picture in your head.

The operative word here is "your" head. Not mine. Not the head of the owner of the company that makes those shoes (or the collective head of the corporate brand management team, as the case probably would be for these sneakers).

The brand exists somewhere between the company that makes the product, the product itself, and you, the consumer.

This is why I think "brand" is like a soul, and also like a reputation. It's also like an image, and it can be like a good story.

HOW YOU CAN TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR BRAND

Let's step up now. We want to be talking about YOUR brand, not some huge corporate shoe-maker's.

So now. Where is your brand?

That's right.  IN BETWEEN YOU, YOUR PRODUCTS, AND YOUR CUSTOMERS.

Does that remind you of something? That's right. Your business model. We are all in business to create something for the benefit of your customers, so that they pay money to get that something. We all need to focus on ourselves, our products, and our customers to make this happen.

This thinking about yourself, your offering, and your customer, it's also called marketing. A good brand is a consequence of doing good business and marketing.

If you are starting out, you don't have a brand. No matter how fancy a logo you got made, or how great a product you have in the works. You need a customer who has a relationship with you first.

Does this sound rather hopeless to you? Sometimes it does to me. But, realizing that you have little control in what people think of you, is essential to ultimately controlling your brand.

Why?

This realization, for one, prevents you from obsessing about your logo, web site, or advertisement. If brand exists in the relationships, then each relationship creates a unique brand that exists between you and your customer, right?  So what if your logo isn't perfect now. It only matters that your current customer has SOMETHING to hang their unconscious thought on. More important is the message, well no, HOW your message is getting across to the customers.

It also stops you from separating branding (and marketing, for that matter) from your  other operations, like sales, inventory, staff training, and yes, customer relations. It enables you, instead, to think about your identity, image, and massage in a holistic way, that actually matters in all other areas of your business.  

Once you have everything working _together_ to create positive relationships with your constituents, then it's much easier to control the outcome: your brand. [incidentally, this is why I think the social media, like twitter and facebook, present huge opportunities for us small companies to brand ourselves, but that's a topic for another post]

Take an early customer of mine, who had a dog day-care service. He was a friend who gave us a leg up by asking us to design his startup's logo. We created the logo, the color scheme, and things like business cards, brochure, etc. But the gig turned out to be a lesson in branding for us both. You see, Larry is a smart guy. He saw a market where there was this tremendous needs and not much offerings at the time, and cornered it.

But if it's about just finding a good idea, then you wouldn't need branding, or marketing.

What we both realized as soon as he opened the door, was that it was all about the customers. Sure, he had a snappy logo and a bunch of schwags, but if it didn't match the business, the employees, the customers' experience, and the relationships that ensued between the customers and the business, then it wasn't going to help, at all.

Luckily, we had put enough thought to the business's image, message and Larry's personality when we created the identity pieces, that the logo was a pretty good match from the start.

And, Larry was smart and nudged the brand along, encouraging employees to adopt his style of dog-loving, creating an atmosphere for the place and events that matched the personality of the business, and keeping customers in a close loop by always talking to them, finding out about their dogs' quirks (he came up with a nickname for each of his customers' dogs, and posted pictures with these names on his web site), and staying in touch with them through newsletters.

His brand?  If you were in Portland between 2004 and 2007 (while BarkaLounge was in operation), owned a dog, it was the dog day care you'd thought of as a bit "cooler" than the rest. Definitely more masculine than "LexiDog" down the road.

Of course, it might be different, for you. If you didn't own a dog, or live in Portland, then who cares? The brand doesn't exist for you.  And that's okay.

After all, it's personal.