Think about the last time a company surprised you. Maybe they responded faster than you expected. Maybe they solved a problem without making you jump through hoops. Maybe someone just treated you like a human being when you were bracing for the opposite.
That moment shaped how you feel about them. It changed what you believe about who they are.
Now think about the opposite. A slow response. A careless mistake. The sense that you were just a number. That changed things too.
This is how brands are built. Not through advertising. Not through clever messaging. Through the accumulation of moments that either reinforce or erode what people believe about you.
Most businesses spend significant energy crafting what they want people to think about them. The website says the right things. The marketing sounds good. The values are written on the wall. But none of that matters if the experience tells a different story.
When someone visits your website and can't find what they're looking for, that's your brand. When they send an email and wait days for a reply, that's your brand. When they buy from you and the product doesn't match the promise, that's your brand.
The gap between what you say and what people experience is where trust goes to die.
People don't remember one interaction. They remember patterns.
If every touchpoint feels the same, if there's a consistency to how you show up, people start to know what to expect from you. That predictability creates comfort. It builds trust. It becomes the foundation of loyalty.
But if every interaction feels different, if the experience depends on who they happen to talk to or what day it is, people can't form a clear picture of who you are. And unclear brands don't earn trust.
Consistency isn't about being rigid. It's about being recognisable.
Your brand isn't built by your marketing team. It's built by everyone who interacts with your customers.
The person answering emails. The person handling complaints. The person packing orders. The person writing invoices. Every single one of them is shaping what people believe about you.
This is why brand can't be siloed. It's not a department's job. It's everyone's job. And if your team doesn't understand what you stand for and how that should show up in their work, the experience will be inconsistent no matter how good your intentions are.
The experiences that shape perception aren't always the big ones. Often, it's the small things. How quickly you respond. Whether you remember details from previous conversations. How easy you make things when they could be difficult. Whether people feel seen or processed.
These moments might seem insignificant in isolation. But they compound. Over time, they become the story people tell themselves about who you are.
Building a brand through experience takes time. It requires patience and consistency and a willingness to care about details that might seem minor in the moment.
But brands built this way are resilient. They're not dependent on a clever campaign or a trending moment. They're built on something real, something people have actually felt.
And when someone asks a friend for a recommendation, they don't describe your logo. They describe how you made them feel.
That's your brand.
