Building a Brand: What is a “Brand”?
If you dig into the roots of the word brand, you find it comes from old English and Germanic words for fire or burning. The use of the word to mean a mark left with a hot iron arose in the middle ages. In the 1800s, especially in the US, it was closely associated with the different symbols ranchers would use to mark their cattle. So perhaps it is unsurprising that, in modern usage, many people associate “brand” with “logo.” A simple, elegant, effective logo is certainly a part of good branding, but the word brand goes much further than just a logo. Your brand is possibly the most important part of your organization.
Why is my brand important?
A modern business will struggle to survive without a web presence. Growing a web presence requires developing a brand. Whether you are an aspiring author seeking representation, a small business seeking to reach new customers, a content creator pushing for “influencer” status, or a job-seeker trying to put your best foot forward, people want to know what to expect when they interact with you, and they will form these expectations based on what they gather about you from your web presence. One popular way to describe a brand is to compare it to a promise or describe it as your organization’s reputation. Although that is extremely useful, for me, it’s more helpful to think of your brand as who your organization would be if it were a person.
I don’t mean that your brand is the person within your organization who most reflects your organization’s values. I’m also not talking about a spokesperson. I’m thinking more abstractly than that. If your organization—complete with its values, products, goals, and strategies—were somehow transformed into a single human, what would that human be like? That’s your brand.
This week (and for the next two weeks) I want to explore this idea a little more, and hopefully help you figure out how to develop your own brand in a way that allows you to better reach the people you most want to reach with whatever message you have for them.
Why personify my organization?
“Brand” is a pretty abstract idea, and as with many abstract ideas, it’s often helpful to start with something more concrete and work towards the nebulous. It’s for this reason we usually begin children in math using physical objects they can manipulate, adding and subtracting rainbow-colored, plastic bears to grasp the idea of what a number is and how some can be bigger or smaller.
An organization can’t really have a personality, because an organization is not a person. But faceless conglomerate blobs aren’t helpful when it comes to interacting with an audience. Your organization’s audience has to relate to your organization, and until there’s a singular brand identity to define who “you” as an organization are, they can’t do so effectively.
Personifying your organization can help you to describe the characteristics you want your organization to display whenever a member of your audience engages, as well as any characteristics you may want to avoid.
For example, Wendy’s social media presence, especially through Twitter, portrays the restaurant chain as an irreverent, feisty millennial who grew up in the age of the internet; they roast fans, throw punches at their competitors, and use internet slang freely.
Coca-Cola, on the other hand, generally puts less effort into seeming youthful, instead focusing on appearing timeless, like a sophisticated uncle who’s aged so gracefully you don’t quite know how old they really are. And when they tried to appear young and connected to internet gaming culture, it was met with a lot of confusion and backlash.
So try this: Imagine your organization as a person. How old is this person? Is this person dignified or silly? Is this person methodical or spontaneous? Make a list of five or six characteristics you think would best encapsulate what other people would notice first about this person. This should give you a good idea about what you want your brand to be. Don’t be afraid to poll any employees you may have to get an idea about what they think your brand should be. After all, an organization isn’t really a person, but it is made of persons. If the people who form your organization are drastically different from or not sold on the kind of brand identity you want to portray, it’s much more likely your brand will come across as tone-deaf and disconnected.
I’m an individual; does that mean my personality is my brand?
Not necessarily. If you are trying to “brand” yourself, there will certainly be a lot of overlap between who you are as a person, and how you portray yourself as a brand, but I still think it’s valuable to make a distinction. The relationship you share with your audience will always be one sided. The individual members of your audience will virtually always know much more about you than you could possibly know about each of them.
The true, full story of who you are, with all your complexities and the mess that comes with being human, is often not something your audience is equipped to handle. And truly knowing each and every individual person that forms your audience is impossible if your audience size grows beyond 10 or 15 people.
It’s OK to have a “brand” that doesn’t include every aspect of your personality. Just as an organization’s brand doesn’t reflect a full human, your brand can be a slightly condensed version of yourself too. I’m not suggesting you be disingenuous, only that you set appropriate boundaries. Not every intimate detail of your life needs to be available for the public to dissect and comment on.
What about brand mismatch?
Brand mismatch, i.e. when the general public opinion of your organization doesn’t correspond to the brand identity you’ve tried to develop, can happen for a lot of reasons. It can come from bad licensing agreements, where logos or colors are applied to low quality products your organization has no control over. It can be the result of poor customer service that doesn’t reflect brand identity. It can be the result of low levels of employee satisfaction, leading to an organization that sends out mixed messages. It can also be the result of strategies designed to help the bottom line, where customers get caught in the crossfire. But if I had to venture a guess, one of the biggest causes is lack of clarity in what your brand identity should be. If there’s not a clear road map or set of guidelines, it’s easy to stray off brand.
Once you have determined what you want your brand to be, it’s important to develop documents that instruct everyone within your organization on those aspects of your brand identity. This includes things we often think of when we imagine branding, like colors, logos, slogans, and so forth, but even more important are elements like your brand voice and your brand’s target audience.
Conclusion
Building a brand takes time and effort, while damaging a brand is easy and quick. It’s important to think critically about anything your organization does or creates to ensure it fits in the brand identity you’re trying to create.
If you found this blog helpful, please share it with anyone you know who might also find it useful. If you think I’m wrong about something, I’d love to discuss it in the comments below! Be sure to come back next week and the week after to learn more about finding your brand voice and determining your brand’s target audience.
