A Clear Eye.

• Home
• About the book
• About Tom
• How Tom works
• Thought pieces
• Client area
• Contact
• Rants!

« Truth Four - From Interesting to Interested | Main | Truth Six - From Fact Telling to Storytelling »

Truth Five - From Branding to Bonding

A brand is not a logo, and branding is not a communication strategy. A strong brand is a strong bond, and branding is your business.

For the past 250 years, companies have leveraged their power to influence and - in many situations - control commerce. They’ve used various barriers to entry to curtail competition and grow significant mindshare and marketshare. The most common marketing related barrier employed was brand preference, created with mega spending on advertising and control of distribution channels. Building a strong brand was all about "top of mind awareness." I say "beer!" and you shout . . . "Budweiser!" And it's still that way in the case of habitual buying, which occurs when involvement is low and differences between brands is small. But for considered purchases - like choosing a new car or home - and ones involving a strong emotional connection - like deciding where to invest or donate hard earned money - building a brand requires much more than that. Today you’re competing for heartshare, not marketshare. Top of mind without goose bumps is a waste of money.

Of course to those with a dated, mass-market mentality, branding is still all about image and awareness. It's about tag lines, logos, cute little animal mascots or clever jingles. It's about spending megabucks on Super Bowl commercials, hiring celebrities to sing your corporate praises, and covering cars with advertising banners. Now don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that awareness is unimportant. In fact, not promoting your business is like winking at a beautiful woman in a dark room. YOU know what you're doing, but she hasn't a clue! But, does well-known equal strong? Not any longer. The rise of the global economy, the rapid adoption of the Internet, and unprecedented access to capital, have all ignited commercial innovation, and put an end to those days forever. Today, like just about everything else, brand logic has been turned on its head. Strong brand now equals well-known brand.

And please, don’t get hung-up on the word "brand." Schools, nonprofit groups, high-tech firms, and small businesses tend to fall into a camp that believes that branding is either too commercial, too expensive, or otherwise not appropriate or applicable to them. And that may have been true in the heydays of mass marketing, when branding conjured up ideas of spin, manipulation, and "in your face" corporate propaganda. But not any more. Today, the word "brand" is shorthand for the gut feeling people have about something, some group, or someone. It’s a kind of Platonic Ideal, which stands for the essence of a business, school, organization, person, or even place. If you add up the tangible and intangible qualities of something - the gestalt - and wish to represent the meaning and distinctive character this greater whole conveys to its audience, today we call it . . . "brand."

Think of your brand as a "file folder" in your audiences' minds (not a perfect metaphor, since memory is malleable, but stick with me anyway.). When they’re exposed to you (e.g., through advertising, design, a salesperson, word-of-mouth, etc.), a feeling is immediately filed away in that "brand file folder." As time passes, much of what your audience has filed away - the details - will become inaccessible. However, they will remember where they stored the folder: in the front (positive feelings) or pushed to the back (negative feelings). Given the sheer volume of brands trying to find a place in your audiences' overloaded "brand file cabinets," you must not only get their attention and be relevant (a file folder labeled with your brand name), but you must also get it placed in the front of their file cabinet (elicit strong, positive feelings of intense personal significance).

Now when I say intense personal significance, I’m not talking about "10% more real juice" or "Buy One, Get One Free." I’m talking all consuming, deep down to the bone marrow meaning. I’m talking spirit, mystery, and intimacy. Think Harley-Davidson. Harley-Davidson builds more than motorcycles. It manufactures an attitude. And once you purchase a Harley, you adopt that attitude. It becomes part of who you are. Harley viscerally understands - and expands - this reality. As a Harley executive once observed: "What we sell is the opportunity for a 43-year-old accountant to dress in black leather, ride through small towns and have people be afraid of him." Harley-Davidson gets branding. They have a strong sense of their own identity, a gut-level awareness of the feelings of their audience, and an intense desire to bond with - and enhance - those feelings.

Despite what the Madison Avenue folks may tell you, the strength of your brand lies not in the fact that you own a folder with your name prominently displayed on it. Repetition does not create memories, relevance does. The strength lies in your folder's position in your audience's file cabinet (the emotions that linger in their memory). The strength lies in the bond! So make your brand about feeling, not just familiarity. Make it about shared values and trust. About honesty, vulnerability and presence. Because a brand is not simply a promise. How can it be, with everything changing at breakneck speed? A brand is a living, breathing relationship. Revel in the messy world of emotions and create a brand that’s about leadership and differentiation; about customer insight and radical innovation; and about clarity of purpose, passion and a sense of humor.

Posted July 3, 2006
Email this post

Post a comment

Name:

Email Address:

URL:

Remember personal info?

Comments: