I was recently working with a client who is a true entrepreneur. He’s successfully started a number of programs that have helped a lot of people. I’ve collaborated with him several times and it’s been a great partnership. I jump at opportunities to work with him, and when he approached me for his latest venture I was excited to learn more about it.
While he’s a creative conceptualizer and a savvy businessman, he doesn’t know a whole lot about marketing. So when he told me he had a designer working on his logo as one of the first phases of the project (before the work had been done to research his new program’s identity, value, or place in the market), I got a bit nervous. Then he started using the words “logo” and “brand” interchangeably and I tried my best to not throw my (or his) computer through the nearest window.
His misconceptions about branding aren’t his fault. Really, they aren’t a fault at all. Branding isn’t his area of expertise. He’s not invested in the business of marketing and brand-building. He’s good at a lot of things, but nobody can know about everything.
Many marketers, content creators, and strategists can probably share similar stories. We all work with people who are highly skilled, intelligent, and successful, but don’t think much about content, marketing, or branding. There’s nothing wrong with that.
But misperceptions like this can make collaboration with clients difficult. In conversations about strategies and priorities you’ll find yourselves talking past each other because you’re talking about different things. A lot of you have likely experienced this pain point. You’re talking about building relationships and awareness, and the person sitting across the table is asking if the logo can be bigger.
Part of our job as strategists and specialists is educating and informing. It helps both our clients and ourselves to have a shared understanding of everything that goes into a brand. So, without further ado, here are some things for you to think about as you have those educational moments with future clients.
Things your brand isn’t
Branding is a complex concept. I’ve found that sometimes people learn best through comparison and differentiation, so it’s often easiest to start by covering a few things that a brand isn’t.
YOUR BRAND ISN’T A LOGO
I helped with a rebrand for a private university a couple of years back, and this was the biggest battle my team and I had to fight when it came to misconceptions about what we were up to. The process started with stakeholder meetings to capture the unique aspects of the school so the agency we were working with could develop a brand platform (including personality, visuals, voice and tone, etc.) that reflected the heart and soul of the university. And a new logo was all anybody wanted to talk about.
“Make sure there’s a book in it. Probably pillars, too. We’re a university.”
“I like the old logo. Why are we changing the brand?” (Mostly they were thinking of the university seal, which is a completely different thing.)
“Which yellow will you use in the logo?”
It makes sense that a logo is the first thing that comes to mind when someone hears the word “brand.” The logo is the first thing we see. It’s a visual representation of many aspects of an organization. It can bring up a full set of associations, memories, and experiences without using a single word. The Nike Swoosh. The Macintosh Apple. Superman’s “S.”
Dispel this idea as quickly as you can if you want to make any progress in your branding efforts.
Logos are merely symbols that marketers use to represent a brand. They may hold certain connotations and associations in the minds of an organization’s audience, and therefore elicit powerful emotions, but the totality of a brand isn’t contained in a logo.
In The Brand Gap, branding expert Marty Neumeier asserts that “logo” isn’t even the correct terminology for the symbols often associated with brands. He wrote:
“The term logo is short for logotype, design-speak for a trademark made from a custom-lettered word (logos is Greek for word). The term logo caught on with people because it sounds cool, but what people really mean is a trademark, whether the trademark is a logo, symbol, monogram, emblem, or other graphic device. IBM uses a monogram, for example, while Nike uses a symbol. Both are trademarks, but neither are logos.”
Logos are symbols used to represent your organization’s brand, but they aren’t the brand. Everything that’s true of your or your client’s organization can’t be contained in a graphic. To suggest it could significantly minimizes the value of the organization. Use that as your tool to convince your client to see the light. “You’re doing amazing work here. A little picture can’t represent all of that.”
YOUR BRAND ISN’T COLORS AND TYPOGRAPHY
Second, a brand isn’t Pantone colors and typography. Your organization’s color palette and typography are used to evoke emotional responses and trigger memories in your audience by visually connecting new communication to past messages and audience experiences. By creating a consistent visual identity with frequently used colors and typefaces, you create a sense of reliability, stability, and relationship between organization and audience.
But the color palette and typography are merely tools to help establish a brand experience. They do the work of visually representing the brand and putting a face to the brand. Much like a baby will recognize her father by his beard and glasses, an audience will recognize a brand by colors and typography. But beard and glasses aren’t the father.
Colors and typography aren’t the brand.
YOUR BRAND ISN’T WHAT YOU SAY IT IS
Finally, a brand isn’t what you say it is. This might be confusing to some. The harsh reality, and the main difficulty of branding, is that a brand is defined by how your audience feels about you, not what you say about yourself. You can claim to be something, but if the audience doesn’t believe that thing to be true, then it isn’t part of your brand.
BP can claim to be environmentally responsible, but most people still remember the Gulf of Mexico oil spill in 2010. If the audience doesn’t believe that BP is environmentally responsible, then that’s not part of their brand.
Likewise, McDonald’s can claim to be heart-healthy, Lehman Brothers can claim to be fiscally trustworthy, and Walmart can claim to be labor-friendly. But if the public doesn’t believe those claims, they aren’t a part of the brand.
This reality demonstrates the difference between an organization’s mission and its brand. The mission of an organization is about the organization itself. It’s a concise statement communicating the goals, values, and vision that an organization aspires to. But your mission has little relevance for your audience, because your audience has no reason to care what you claim as your mission.
The brand’s job is to make your organization relevant to your audience. This means your brand has to share your organization’s essence with your audience in ways that are believable, relatable, and valuable.
So what is a brand?
There are plenty of resources out there that define brand, so I’ll be brief. I personally like Seth Godin’s definition: “The set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another.”
To strip away superfluities and start with the simplest terms possible, the brand is the essence of an organization—the truths it stands for, the promises it makes, the distinctive features that make it unique from other organizations. This essence is communicated to audiences through the things an organization says about itself, the way it says them, the pictures and colors and typefaces it uses, the personality of its employees, the products it delivers. But a brand is also based on reputation. Your audience has to believe what you say and how you say it. You instill this belief by delivering on your promises, by walking the walk, by acting in a way that’s consistent with the things you say.
Branding gives marketers a set of tools—vernacular, messages, symbols, visual cues—to communicate consistently with its audience. Consistent communication creates clear pictures, and clear pictures lead to powerful connections.
Your turn
I hope this can help you as you have branding conversations with current and future clients. Remember, your client’s misconceptions about branding aren’t their fault. They just need someone to show them the way. That’s why they hired you.