What is branding?
Your logo is not your branding. In fact even your logo, colours and fonts is still not your “branding”, these form your brand identity, a part of your “branding”.
The confusing thing is a lot of people refer to a logo or brand identity as branding, even designers (including myself as it’s so commonly used that way)… So if you’re left wondering what is your branding and what is your brand identity lets take a look at what the different aspects are and their function.
A brand is not a logo. A brand is not a corporate identity system. It’s a person’s gut feeling about a product, service, or company. Because it depends on others for its existence, it must become a guarantee of trustworthy behavior. Good branding makes business integral to society and creates opportunity for everyone, from the chief executive to the most distant customer.
Marty Neumeier, The Brand Gap
Why your brand is like a bush!
I know what you are thinking and I wanted to use a tree analogy but when I thought about how it’s the trunk mostly seen – my analogy didn’t quite work – so bush it is!
If you imagine your brand like a bush we can think of the roots as the foundations this is your why, purpose, values, vision (the parts people don’t see so much) and the trunk is the core of your brand the what and how so people will see this in the way you do business. We can think of the branches as the brand identity and brand voice, with the twigs and leaves being the more tangible copy, design, photos and ultimately all of the customer touchpoints. And whilst we want beautiful green, healthy looking leaves – the bush behind it needs to be healthy to survive.
For a business to be working at it’s full potential ideally all of these aspects come together and the customers can feel confident to purchase. Whilst it will be the twigs and leaves they mostly see at first, all of the other parts of the bush need to be there. Your branding is the whole bush. Ok enough of this analogy…
Everything informs each other. Your why, purpose, values and vision inform how you do business, if a value is accessibility then this will need to be considered in the way you do business (in this example defining what accessibility means to your business) such as price point and ease of use as well as how your brand comes across with things like clear copy and design that considers accessibility – easy to read, high contrast etc. Whereas if a value is uniqueness or creativity the more weight might be given to playful or experimental copy and unusual, rule breaking design choices.
So yes, of course design is important but a successful brand needs to have so much more in place than good design. Especially nowadays when many consumers are seeking out brands that they connect with, brands that are aligned with their values, brands that are purpose driven, brands that have a sense of community.
How can you offer them that?
