Obsessive Branding Disorder
Monday, October 17th, 2005This is not specifically about web marketing. But I wanted to talk a minute about branding. This article from Fast Company really helped clarify branding for me:
Obsessive Branding Disorder
Here are some of the more interesting snippets from the article:
“Branding doesn’t mean you have to be flashy or loud or scream your value proposition, but you have to know who you are,”
Remove the hype, and branding is just commonsense strategy, rebranded. To successfully build a brand, says INSEAD marketing professor Amitava Chattopadhyay, “is to communicate your key value proposition to the key customer segment, and do so in an integrated and consistent way.” In other words, Business 101.
Run a good business, and your brand will follow.
I feel that we all are being hoodwinked by branding experts a bit on this.
I would like to boil this down a bit. First, in English, what is branding? It’s a brand… that’s all. It’s Tide, Wal-Mart, Harley Davidson, Coke. It makes you feel something.
Everything that you have an emotional connection to is branded. It has a brand. People’s names have a brand. Some names people love. Some names people hate. If something makes you feel a certain way before you know anything about it, it’s been branded to you.
Branding is people’s perception.
The reason I’m telling you this is that a marketing agency can’t brand you. You have already been branded. If you are mean, and grumpy… not even the most flashy, happiest web site, brochure or anything is going to change that.
Further, you don’t need some expensive agency to tell you what your brand is. In fact, they probably shouldn’t. If you are warm and heartfelt and that’s how you treat your customers… tell them you are warm and heartfelt. Tell them of things you did that were warm and heartfelt. You are just confirming what is already there.
If you want to be something you are not, then I guess I don’t know what to tell you. Just stop it and be who you are.
You can’t make yourself into a brand because that’s what people want. It will never work. Everyone will see right through it.
Does this all make sense?
If Harley Davidson was run by buttoned up tight asses, they would be a failure. Harley Davidson is run by people who love Harley Davidson’s and everything that it’s about.
If you don’t know who you are, start asking people. Ask your customers, employees, friends. Ask them all why they continue to hang around you. Poof. There’s your brand.
Now I’ve just saved you a minimum of $10,000.