I choose to write about this after series of conversations I’ve had with small business owners and youngsters who are starting out in the marketing space.
Prior to my knowledge in the marketing industry, I’ve always heard people say: Hey! have my card, that is my brand. Contact me when you need xyz. I have also heard others say: I have a clothing brand on the island and I want to make a design for my brand. Can you help me out? Another one that irks me most are the so-called businesses with names like, xyz cakes, confectioneries and more. They’d reach out to help “brand” a face cap, t-shirt and call cards. When they use the word “brand”, the question that rings in my head is “Do you even have a brand?” How do I even determine the look and feel, not to talk more of whom the design is aimed at. Sighs!
One illustration I love referencing is a situation where you’re asked to provide a referee. Or you give out your referee information to the investigative body. It is not a joke when they request for this piece of information. At every point of our lives, there’s always a point of reference.
A brand is classified as one when it has passed the test of referencing. We all have our perception of what a brand means. These perceptions are a result of the experiences, connections and emotions we have shared with it. My friend reached out to me at a point in time and had requested for my email address, he had mentioned that he’s at the process of being confirmed at his workplace and that his HR would reach out to me. He was confident I knew him and would say much about him – He is practically someone I can vouch for.
I have to paint this picture because this is entirely what a brand is to people. It is a series of experiences and impression an individual has about it. In most cases, these impressions cannot be altered, it just happens from a plethora of variables. As Investopedia puts it:
“A brand is the collective impact or lasting impression from all that is seen, heard, or experienced by customers who come into contact with a company and its products and services. In creating a brand, or “branding,” a business is managing the effect that the product or service is having on the customer.”
Jeff Bezos opined that “your brand is what other people say about you when you are not in the room.” A brand cannot boast of its offerings when the consumer is experiencing the reverse. So, it takes conscious efforts to keep passing and refining the definition of the brand by the brand drivers.
From a sociologist perspective, brand drivers should adopt the looking-glass self-theory as it describes the process wherein a brand base its sense of self on how they believe others view them. Brands endures, not businesses! The key to enduring brands is those that emotionally affects the lives of the audiences.
In the light of the foregoing, Branding refers to the actions geared towards reminding consumers about the “why” of the brand. As Steve Jobs puts I “Branding is storytelling, and storytelling is a creative work.” Branding involves a whole lot of work, right from how you engage with consumers, communicate their language to how well you can leverage their emotions. Successful brands engage in this act and attain significant number of loyalists and in most cases increase their market share.
