What is my Brand?
Your brand is not your logo. Or your website. Or your product. Or any other company asset.
Your brand is something far deeper. It’s something that can be felt, but not entirely explained. It can be recognized, but isn’t always realized.
Apple’s brand is not that beautiful Apple icon staring at you from the top of your laptop or the back of your iPhone. It’s the feeling you get when you see that Apple icon. It’s the subtle, but real, excitement you sense when walking into the local mall’s Apple store – the excitement that is rarely ever felt when walking into any other store in the mall.
Disney, the brand, isn’t Mickey Mouse or it’s world-class theme parks. Disney is the child-like exhilaration an adult gets when taking their kids to that magical world. It’s the overwhelming joy a child feels when the life-size Donald Duck walks up to them and gives them a high five.
A brand is not a company. It’s the emotion you feel – good or bad – when encountering a company or its products.
And thus, good branding isn’t measured in how pretty your logo is or how cool of a website you have. Good branding is determined by the level of emotional connection it creates with a customer – making them feel good, or cool, or charitable – by being associated with you.
Why should I care?
In the end, a brand is all you have.
Yes, you have your product and it’s patented. But there will eventually always be an alternative.
And yes, you have your beautiful website with loads of traffic. But what’s stopping the next competitor in spending more money on development and marketing to curve your analytics?
And yes, you have your loyal fan base now, but the second another company makes them feel better than you do, their loyalty will fade.
Decide how you want your customer to feel when they encounter your company. Find out how to get the right assets and message in place to make them feel this way. And don’t compromise at any touch point in creating this same experience for them.
Because in the end, this emotional connection is the only thing that will keep them coming back.
