Member Article

The Truth About Branding

Let’s get this straight, Branding isn’t marketing or advertising; it doesn’t exist to help organisations sell. So what is branding? More to the point what is brand?

A huge part of every day is educating people about Branding; about what it really is and what it really does. There’s no problem with this — it’s an enjoyable challenge — but wouldn’t life be easier and more productive if clients already understood something about branding and brand consultancies? Think how much more we’d achieve if we could skip straight past the ‘education’ and move directly into the ‘work’.

That said, here’s the first of many blogs on Branding; the first attempts to make individuals and organisations a little more aware of the world in which brand consultancies operate.

So, What is Branding? Well, to answer that we first need to understand what ‘brand’ is. A brand is the idea or set of ideas that an organisation or individual stands for. These ideas stem from the functional but are ultimately emotional.

Brand is to an organisation as personality is to an individual; without it you are merely the sum of your parts.

Every Branding Consultancy has their own ‘Process’ to help identify a brand, but at their heart all seek to answer two basic questions.

• What are the tangible, functional aspects of the organisation?
• What are the intangible, emotional aspects of the organisation?

The difference between the answers to these two questions is the brand; the intangible ideas that hold the tangible organisation together.

Branding & Organisations So, to put it in its simplest form, branding is the practice of identifying and aligning the ideas at the centre of an organisation with those in the minds of its audiences. (Notice I said audiences, not consumers.) Branding exists to help organisations understand, and then to be authentic to, themselves.

For others to understand you, you must first understand your self.

Who are you? What do you really do? When and where do you do it? How do you do it? And most importantly, why?

Once an organisation understands the answers to these simple questions it can begin to build emotional connections with individuals and organisations with whom it shares a common idea; its audiences.

Outside In, Inside Out So where do you start a branding project? With a professional. It’s imperative to the success of the project to seek external, objective help. A Brand Consultancy looking in from the outside of an organisation, always gives the best perspective. Let them in to the centre of your organisation, let them ask all the awkward questions and look at all the skeletons in all the closets; they need to understand you completely to best advise you.

And then once they’re finished, start from the inside and work back out. If change starts with those at the centre of an organisation and radiates out to all audiences and through all communications, it will be successful.

Wonder Stuff Studio.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Wonderstuff .