What Is A Brand?

People often come to us confused about what a brand actually is. Or perhaps they think they know, but they don’t actually know because they have only focused on the logo or the colour palette or some kind of visual element of what brand actually is.

Brands are a lot deeper than that. All that nice pretty stuff on the outside represents the stuff that’s going on inside. So your culture, your values, your personality, what you stand for as a business. That unique blend of what you do and how you deliver it, that makes you different from any of your other competitors, that’s your brand.

Do I Have A Brand?

Even if you’ve never done any work on your brand before, your customers have chosen your brand. Consciously or unconsciously, they have decided that what you offer fits better with their value set than anything else. So, they might have thought it made them look good or that it just made them feel great but you still have a brand even if you’ve not actually done that much work on it.

Internal As Well As External

Brands are not just an external thing that you show to the outside world they’re internal too. Your brand should be your business or product’s truth delivered consistently over time, through every aspect of your business.

So, for example, if you claim to be a really approachable and friendly brand and yet your credit controller is actually really aggressive and has no empathy when they talk to customers, your brand starts to ring false. This is because you’re not actually delivering on your brand at every touch point with your customer.

When Does The Fun Stuff Happen?

Once you’ve got a really authentic, meaningful brand story and you figured out what that is, then is the time that you start thinking about how you take that to the outside world. This is through all the fun stuff the naming, the logo, the colour palette, the messaging, tone of voice. All that good stuff comes, but only once you’ve figured out who you really are and how to make that more meaningful and more interesting for your core customer.

Right, I’m Ready, Let’s Do This!

If you’re up for deepening your brand identity beyond a nice logo and a flash typeface, give us a shout.