Branding is a word that is thrown about a lot in advertising and marketing. Some think it is the visual "style" of your logo and how you look and act. Some think it's an expression of your values and beliefs.
Honestly, I don't think much of that matters. In the end, branding is about what goes on in the heads of your customers. It's an equation... this brand equals this outcome. So what outcome do you create for others?
I have worked with companies who had hundreds of millions of dollars to spend on branding. You can make a made up word like "Clorox" and have that outcome equal "bleach" if you're prepared to spend $100-$200-$300M or more in advertising every year on television, in print, in shelf marketing, and more.
(By the way - if that is you, please contact me immediately. I have significantly more effective media channels for you than television advertising.)
It used to be that you could develop a product, call it "Bubaru," and put a zillion dollars of media weight behind it and make people want it. But the world doesn't work that way anymore. For one thing, you're often not more than ten dollars a month from never being heard or seen by your target market. People PAY money to not listen to you - Hulu, Netflix, Amazon, and YouTube Red, are just a few of the avenues people get their content without ever watching commercials. You can't easily buy your way into people's minds anymore with hundreds of millions of dollars in television advertising to "build a brand."
Being fixated on logos and signs, colors and shapes, and hoping you can find a magic logo that will suddenly draw people to you is folly. Well it's worse than that - it's plain STUPID. It may have worked that way once - back in the heyday of television. But it certainly doesn't work that way anymore.
It's becoming increasingly harder to "fabricate" a brand equation from nothing. Most ads on TV really do two things now - remind people they like the products (like fast food and luxury car ads) and remind people they need to buy the products (like cleaners and other household goods).
I'm guessing neither of those situations pertain to you - thus, what traditionally counts for "branding" is utterly worthless in your case.
In the end, consumers buy outcomes. That's the secret of a great brand, and it won't cost you a dime if you do a great job.
Over time, we associate those outcomes with a company's identity. That's the basis of a brand. It's built nowadays through thousands of transactions and experiences of customers and the curious, over time creating that equation of "your brand = this outcome." A brand is more than a logo or website. It’s a story weaved together from ideas and transformed into experiences.
Great brands don’t actively promote themselves. Instead, they express a genuine belief system that inspires them and they act on it every day. Online customers, especially millennials, are keenly aware of inauthentic brands. You're just one Instagram or Snapchat away from being train wrecked if you lie online. In the digital era, purpose-first marketing is paramount.
As a digital branding expert, I combine the breadth of a diligent quantitative strategy with the depth of true qualitative understanding. I will help you understand how your brand is perceived by the world, and from there, we can work together to build something that is irresistible to customers who will come and seek you out because of the greatness of who you are, today...
... not some logo or clever slogan. People buy outcomes, they don't buy iconography or copy writing.
Branding is about who you are, what you do, and the value you create. Let's explore that together.