Understand Your Brand

Branding is the science of understanding your brand impressions, and leveraging them to your benefit. Branding is the foundation of effective communications. You must understand the core elements of your brand so that you can accurately define and clearly communicate your brand identity. There may be thousands of elements that you can speak to about your brand, but progress is about choices - it is about eliminating other options to reveal fundamental truths through an informed, measured process.

Defining this focus, more than any other step in the marketing & communications process, will determine your communications success in a manner that is sustainable and comfortable for you. You can’t be something you are not – but in a world of choices, articulating your “best self” is the best path to achieving clarity and growth.

A logo is not a brand. A “brand” is the sum total of all impressions that an individual has about a person, a product, or an organization. This means that overall impressions of a “brand” can be shifted by staff changes, design variations, shifts in physical location, and customer service – everything matters.

Your brand is so much more than a logo – all assets that a company, product, organization, person, or an organization holds will contribute to its “brand”. A logo is the icon used to represent and sell a brand, but a brand itself is both a conglomeration of impressions, and a promise that those impressions will be accurately provided. Your brand communicates expectations.

You can't always control the impressions others have of you, but you can set the stage to manage and influence those impressions. It comes down to how accurately you communicate your best, most truthful attributes. If you wish to "spin" a message about yourself, it won't resonate truthfully against the realities that people will see in the other facets of your organization. You don't need to focus on any negatives, but sometimes it doesn't hurt to acknowledge unavoidable facts ("Buckley Cough Medicine - Tastes Awful, But It Works").

Claiming ownership of the assets that define your brand, understanding how these assets relate to each other, and accentuating the most relevant, emotionally compelling elements will strengthen your brand communications.