Why Care About Branding?

Contributing Editor

Brands are for the big guys, right? Proctor & Gamble, General Motors, Starbucks, Gap, Trump. Wrong! If you have a business, you have a brand. If you have a career, you are the brand. Anyone out there in any market of any kind has a brand. It may be making you money, or losing you money, but your brand is there.

So what exactly is a brand? Many people confuse branding with graphic design. I still have clients come to me saying, "Can you design us a brand?" They are asking for a logo, and my response is always what I call the First Law of Branding. Your brand is not your logo. Is your nationality a flag? Of course not! It is something deep within you that everyone who knows you immediately recognizes. The flag is just a symbol for that invisible but very important "something."

Your brand is what you mean to the people who know you. It's what first comes to mind when they hear your company name. It's the thought, the feeling, the image that you own in their heads. Brand identification happens in a split second. Just think of James or Julie or Diane or Pete. In other words, think of someone you know and watch how quickly you summon up their presence in your mind. The same mental imagery happens when you call to mind McDonalds or Porsche or Gap. Those brands are already installed in your brain, like cookies on your computer. When they are mentioned, they activate your feelings about them.

What happens in that split second is largely subconscious, nonverbal, and emotional. It is enormously powerful because most buying decisions are subconsciously and emotionally driven, even in the cold hard world of business-to-business marketing. That is why branding is so important.

The Second Law of Branding follows. The brand drives the buying decision. A great brand for any size of market forges a bond with its audience. It makes a connection deep inside people. That bond is in place for the moment when the need arises, and out comes the credit card.

Think of your brand as a magnetic force. It may attract, or it may repel. Designing a powerful brand strategy means building a force field around your company or product (or you!) that draws people in -- specifically the people most likely to buy what you have to offer.