NOTES
Brand is not _________
There are dozens of books and articles that attempt to explain what “brand” is. Yet many people I meet are still confused about how or when to use that word. Let’s try a very different approach.
by Joe Grossmann · 7 min read
illustrations by Melanie Lindsey
First, brand is not a logo
Or a color. Or a typeface. Or a trademark. Or any combination thereof.
But wait: what about the logo and colors and fonts your organization received in the course of a “rebranding”?
Those visual elements are usually referred to as an “identity” or “identity system,” which is one possible output of a branding or rebranding process.
Understandably, people often confuse “identity” with “brand” because their organization’s visual identity system is described in a document titled “Brand Standards” or “Brand Guidelines.”
A complete brand standards guide, however, should go well beyond documenting details of the visual identity. Brand standards should also include recommendations for living and communicating the brand.
Brand is not a presentation or a website
Your PowerPoint deck might be thoroughly road tested and beautifully designed. Your website may have cost many thousands of dollars and required untold hours to perfect. But neither your presentation template nor your website is your brand.
Could you sustain your business development targets without these tools? Maybe not. If your site disappeared, even temporarily, would revenue take a hit? Almost certainly.
But just because you depend on them doesn’t make them your brand.
Brand is not marketing, advertising, SEO, or social media
Increasing awareness and engaging with stakeholders are good and necessary things. Most brands can only persist or grow by maintaining visibility and competing for the spotlight.
Increasingly, brands can seem a bit needy—constantly seeking your attention and doing their best to prompt commentary, regardless of whether it’s positive or negative. In the words of Oscar Wilde,
“There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”
This eagerness to stimulate and engage takes many forms. Cheeky emails. Exuberant Facebook or Instagram posts. Videos targeted at a specific generation or subculture. Provocative podcasts. Branded sponsorships. Influencer placements. Celebrity endorsements. Loud billboards. And, of course, over-the-top commercials with funny animals, kooky spokespeople, or both.
All of that put together must be a brand, right?
You know the answer.
Brand is not a style or an attitude
People sometimes describe certain brands as “edgy” or “trendy.” You might also hear brands described as “quirky” or “no nonsense” or “irreverent.” Are these descriptions the brands themselves?
Not really.
Brand managers employ styles and attitudes like these to create “brand personalities,” most often to make big consumer brands appear human and relatable. Social media celebrities and influencers do the same thing, adopting and projecting memorable personality traits to launch or reinforce their “personal brands.”
There’s nothing inherently wrong with thinking of a brand as having a personality. In fact, it can be a very useful tool for creating consistent communications. But reducing a brand to a one-sided, one-dimensional, or superficial personality trait is somewhat akin to summing up a person by their hair color, clothing, or ability to tell jokes.
A compelling and enduring brand should be much bigger and more complex than a trendy look, which can quickly fall out of favor, or a distinctive attitude, which is bound to become annoying quickly.
Brand is not an archetype
Clearly, brand can be a slippery and complex concept. Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a simple template for categorizing brands, so you could easily choose which kind of brand you had (or wanted) and what you should do next?
Many people are convinced that such a template exists: the 12 personality archetypes that Carl Jung derived from ancient mythology back in 1919.
Psychoanalysis isn’t my thing, but I recognize the popular appeal of such a simple, evocative system. Many branding and marketing professionals have adopted this model, which was inspired by Jung’s notion that these 12 archetypes are baked into our collective unconscious, shared by all.
Proponents say every brand can be categorized as one of these mythic archetypes (e.g., the hero, the outlaw, the creator, the magician, and so on). Once you choose your archetype, you design and market the brand accordingly in order to tap directly into the subconscious desires of your target audience.
Some people take this concept very seriously and believe that every brand can be shoehorned into one of the 12 archetypes, as though Jung (who has long been largely discounted in the field of psychology) were the father of brand strategy.
Presented with confidence and some showmanship, the concept of brand archetypes can impress clients and make everyone feel smart, but it does very little to advance anyone’s understanding of brand or brand strategy.
Let’s just say the 12 archetypes may be useful as metaphors—easy to remember and handy as an icebreaker in a group discussion—and leave it at that.
Brand is not your personal tastes or your preferences
Founders—especially first-timers—occasionally conflate their startups with themselves. That is, they fall into the trap of trying to create brands based on their own personal quirks or public personas.
It’s a strange twist on the old Pygmalion myth, in which a king sculpts his idealized version of a woman and then falls in love with the statue. In this case, a modern-day Pygmalion attempts to create a brand in their own image, presuming that everyone else will fall in love with it.
That kind of self-centered shortsightedness is stifling and is likely to backfire in the long run. A brand can be inspired by its founder but must soon take on a life of its own.
Perhaps you’re trying to think of some exceptions to this rule? What about those founders who are so clever or charismatic that they become synonymous with the brands they launched?
There’s certainly a case to be made for having a leader with a strong personal brand that dovetails with the organization’s brand, thereby complementing or enhancing it. But an organization brand created in the likeness of a single individual—or completely overshadowed by a charismatic leader—is likely to have a relatively short and possibly unhappy life.
Brand is not products. Or services. Or a technology. Or a platform.
This is true for everyone, but inventors and entrepreneurs especially should take note: the thing you want to sell is not your brand. It doesn’t matter how amazing your product or service or patent is, it’s still not a brand.
Even if the name of your company is the same as the thing you’re selling—and, oh by the way, now is a great time to think twice about that!—the thing you’re selling is still not your brand.
What if you’re launching the next big innovation? Like a cloud-based backup for personal memories? Or an appliance for regenerating organs and limbs? Sorry. Those inventions may change the course of history and make you billions, but they are still not brands.
Maybe you have a more mature business, with highly differentiated product lines or a full menu of service offerings. Surely something that big and complex is a brand? Nope. Alan Watts, a prolific self-styled philosopher with zero interest in brands, captured this perfectly:
“The menu is not the meal.”
To sum it up, your brand is not for sale. Or rent. It’s not licensable. And it’s not available as a monthly or annual subscription.
Brand is not about building consensus and managing risk
For some, the intangible and seemingly elusive qualities of brand make it an unavoidable annoyance that must be wrangled and tamed through bureaucratic means.
Rather than embracing and celebrating their brand as a living, breathing asset, they choose to process it through workgroups, run it up and down flagpoles, smooth out annoying edges and wrinkles, PowerPoint and focus group it, and then freeze-dry it in a formal mission-vision-values statement (which may or may not be revisited every three years, as decided by the board).
Don’t get me wrong: building authentic internal buy-in and enthusiasm for an organization’s brand position is a very good thing. A truly inclusive process can even mitigate some risk.
But truly vibrant brands are seldom designed by committees, improved by boards, or vetted by the legal department.
Brand is not static
Your organization’s history and milestones might be utterly fascinating and noteworthy, but they are not your brand.
If anything, your brand is your present—as fleeting as the present always is—and your future.
Bottom line: your brand can’t be nailed down, carved in stone, or frozen in time. Brand moves and mutates constantly.
So what is brand?
The concept of “brand” may seem difficult to grasp. But brand becomes quite obvious once you strip away all the distractions and potential misdirections outlined above.
Brand is reality. It’s a lived experience.
Brand is often earned with great effort and all too easily squandered. Brand is very fluid and often a bit chaotic. Brand is a web of real relationships and all the desires, delights, disappointments, and other perceptions those relationships engender.
Brand can be trust or mistrust. Brand can be joy or satisfaction or mere grudging acceptance. Brand can be mutual respect or mutual hatred. Brand can be fancy pants and premium-priced, or it can be down to earth and deemed a bargain. Brand can be constant striving for excellence or satisfying basic human urges.
Brand is what your employees experience and feel and say. Brand is what your customers (or clients or supporters) experience, feel, and say.
Brand is what happens when employees interact with customers, or when employees interact with each other, or when customers interact with each other. Brand is actions and consequences. Brand is what people say behind your back, whether that’s good or bad.
Brand is the nexus of you, your organization, and everyone you interact with. Brand is an ecosystem, which means it can grow, thrive, dissipate, and die.
If you want your brand to grow or thrive, don’t take it for granted.
Pay close attention. Study your brand. Listen closely and watch for clues.
Above all, nurture your brand obsessively. You can’t control every aspect of it, but you can steer it in the right direction.
