What’s Your Brand? It’s Probably Not What You Think It Is

What’s Your Brand? It’s Probably Not What You Think It Is:

No matter if you are a company that sells to businesses or a company that sells to consumers, you have a brand. What is a brand? According to Wikipedia:

“The American Marketing Association defines a brand as a “Name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller’s good or service as distinct from those of other sellers.

The word brand has continued to evolve to encompass identity — it affects the personality of a product, company or service. It is defined by a perception, good or bad, that your customers or prospects have about you.

But what we want to explore today is to answer this question. “What truly makes a brand?” Look again at the final sentence above – it is defined by the perception, good or bad, that your customers or prospects have about you.” Too often this aspect of brand is overlooked.

Companies invest a massive amount of time and effort into their brand:

• Getting the words just right
• Crafting the logo with the right colors and graphics
• Identifying competitive approaches so you can strive for differentiation

Hate to break the news to you, but as Scott Stratten, author of the book Unmarketing shared, all that work does not mean a hill of beans. In a recent webinar, Scott displayed the Hilton logo and told the story of a breakfast gone bad. The food at the end of breakfast was “old and cold” (which is not a good thing.) His point – your brand is made or broken on the front lines – on the day to day interactions between front line people and your customers.

(This experience when the other why when the chef, Mr. Forbes, approach Scott and explained why it happened and how he screwed up by not cooking a fresh breakfast. Scott explains that he built the brand by “giving a damn.”

Scott explained how hard Hilton worked on that logo. Ensuring the best typeface. Carefully selecting the color. Discussing the curvature of the swirl. But as Scott said, that is NOT your brand.

This brings us to what I consider the gold standard of branding – You are what your customers say you are.

What we suggest is that you get out of the office and away from those high paid consultants. Go visit customers, ask great questions and listen.

You just might leave with far deeper understanding of what your brand really is.