Why It Matters That You Read This
How you answer the following question will tell me more about you than you might think.
What is a brand?
In fact, after years of asking this question, I can usually predict how someone will respond based on their experience with business and marketing.
If you’ve never been particularly interested in business and don’t know the terminology, you may refer to a particular product, ie. your favourite ‘brand’ of toothpaste, or yoghurt.
If you’re a new business owner, the association in your mind is probably with logos, colours, fonts, packaging and taglines - how you look and feel to others.
If you’re a business owner with an established and successful business, you may say something along the lines that it’s your story. It’s the ways you communicate that story with customers, your messaging, your tone of voice, and how you appeal to your target market.
A brand strategist consulting to the company I worked for described it as a promise you make to your customer.
If you’re the Oxford dictionary, you define branding as “the promotion of a particular product or company by means of advertising and distinctive design.”
If you’re renowned marketing guru Seth Godin, you’d probably say branding is the “set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer's decision to choose one product or service over another.”
If you’re Marty Neumeier, you’ll say that branding is "a customer's gut feeling about a product, service, or company.”
Perhaps you’re starting to see the problem.
As much as the new business owner may be wrong to say a brand is a logo, they’re not completely wrong, are they? Because your logo is in fact a part of your brand.
And while the successful business owner may be wrong to say that your brand is the story you tell, they’re not completely wrong either. Your story is no small part of what makes up your brand.
Though Seth and Marty may have a much more complete understanding of branding, undoubtedly better than mine, you can see that even they don’t define it the same way.
In fact, for every brand guru you can find, you’ll find a new definition for branding.
This presents a challenge for those in the branding space because we’re asking business owners to invest in something which is intangible, mysterious and seemingly indefinable, and yet absolutely crucial to the success of their endeavours.
So why exactly am I telling you this, would be a pertinent question right about now…
There are two reasons.
- Because whether you’re a business owner or not, your understanding of branding—or lack of it—has, and will continue to have, a profound impact on both your professional and personal life.
- And because there is an important, and absolutely fundamental brand principle that most businesses haven’t considered which, when understood, will completely change the way you operate, change your preconceived ideas about branding, and make the value of investing in brand absolutely irrefutable.
Branding And Its Impact In Your Life
Let’s start by diving into the first point before I share the crucial brand principle in the second point by answering the question I indirectly posed in the beginning of the article.
What is a brand?
The answer is of course much closer to what Seth and Marty outline in their definitions. I like to define it as “the sum of past experiences and future expectations people hold about you or your business.”
This is the first thing to understand about branding. The reason it’s difficult to define and the reason it seems abstract is because it’s the sum of a large group of activities and every possible touchpoint. It's not just what you say you are – it's what others believe you to be.
Your logo, your story, your promises – they're all tools you use to shape these perceptions, but the brand itself exists in the minds of others. It's why two companies can have similar products, similar prices, and similar marketing, yet one becomes the clear favourite. The difference isn't in what they do – it's in how they're perceived.
So, the way your receptionist answers the phone contributes to your brand.
The image you use in your advertisement contributes to your brand.
The stance you take on a particular social issue contributes to your brand.
How easy your website is to navigate contributes to your brand.
The way you reply to comments on social media contributes to your brand.
How long it takes you to respond contributes to your brand.
Every unanswered email shapes your brand.
Every rushed conversation with a customer shapes your brand.
Every inconsistent message shapes your brand.
Every generic design choice shapes your brand.
There are innumerable ways people will interact with your business. And the collective impression of these is your brand. This means that while we like to think of branding as something we do, it’s actually the result of everything we do, and sometimes - frustratingly, even nothing we’ve done.
Perhaps someone misattributes something someone else has said to you or your business. Someone misinterprets an advertisement. Someone confuses your brand with another that they dislike because of a similar colour palette. Branding as a business process is important because it’s an attempt to create or influence a particular impression of your business.
This also means it can be very difficult or impossible to accurately measure. How do you measure perceptions in the minds of a collective population? This is a topic for a separate article, but in short, there are particular data points that we can measure to provide some insight into your brand’s position. It’s not a perfect science. But should the inability to measure brand ROI accurately be a reason not to do it? Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman of Ogilvy doesn’t think so saying “the biggest problem in business… is the finance function is extremely unwilling to invest in anything which has the slightest degree of speculative value. And so we end up…with an efficiency-driven race to the bottom rather than an opportunity-driven race to the top.”
The reality is companies that understand brand and do it well see a wild, even unbelievable return on that investment.
The Part With The Stats
Half of all shoppers are more likely to buy from a company whose logo they recognise. This initial familiarity evolves into something deeper over time.
80% of customers develop brand loyalty through their accumulated experiences with products, services, and reviews. This loyalty transforms into advocacy, with three-quarters of loyal customers actively telling their friends and family about brands they love.
Most tellingly, 77% of consumers make purchase decisions based entirely on a brand name, and the same percentage return to their chosen brands again and again. This loyalty even extends beyond customers - employees are highly influenced by brand perception, with 92% saying they would leave their current job to work for a company with a better brand reputation.
It’s compelling, but not in the least surprising when we actually stop and think about it. The fascinating part of this is that when we reflect on our own purchasing habits and decisions, we will notice that we fall into these same patterns of behaviour.
My First Promise
I made a promise earlier about explaining why your understanding of brand will have an impact on both your work life and your personal life. The reasons it affects your work life should be becoming clear, the most consequential being that a failure to interact with it is at the very least, an enormous missed opportunity, and in its most extreme form, an overlooked or invisible but insidious form of organisational negligence.
The reason it impacts your personal life is that the more you come to understand branding, the more it becomes visible when companies use these tactics on you.
The only reason someone would buy a watch (the function of which I’ll remind you, is to tell the time) which costs $100,000, is branding. I once saw a plain white t-shirt priced at $600. What would convince someone to buy that? It can only be branding.
Or take bottled water. While we are sold the idea of clean, pure water, the biggest water brands in the world, essentially sell municipal tap water at a markup of up to 4000%. As of 2017, nearly two-thirds of bottled water in the U.S. came from public tap water systems. The stories these companies tell us about their products build future expectations in our minds. They give us things that only exist in our perceptions.
In a purely logical sense, the only value the $600 shirt is providing, is being a shirt. You can wear it. Exactly the same value as a $25 shirt. But in the customer's perception, we see more value. Status, exclusivity, identity. All of this value is created only in the mind, and only as the result of branding. The same goes for the watch. I can see what time it is on my phone. But I can’t silently communicate my success, my wealth and my power by checking the time on my phone.
This awareness of how branding shapes perception and creates intangible value isn't about judging these purchases – it's about understanding the psychology behind them, including our own. Once you start seeing branding at work, you can't unsee it. You'll notice how luxury car commercials rarely talk about horsepower or fuel efficiency, instead selling you a feeling of sophistication and achievement. You'll see how organic food brands don't just sell food – they sell peace of mind, environmental consciousness, and a sense of making better choices for your family.
But here's where it gets really interesting: even when we're fully aware of these branding mechanisms, they still work on us.
I know exactly why that coffee shop with the carefully curated playlist, exposed brick walls, and baristas in denim aprons charges $6 for a coffee that costs them cents to make. I understand precisely how they've branded themselves to make me feel like I'm not just buying coffee, but participating in a culture of craft and expertise. And yet... I still want that coffee. I still value that experience.
This is the fascinating paradox of branding: its power doesn't diminish when exposed. Instead, this awareness gives us choice. When we understand that we're not just buying products but buying into ideas, we can make more conscious decisions about which brand stories align with our values and which ones we're willing to pay a premium for.
Take a moment to think about your own purchasing decisions. What brands do you consistently choose over others, even when there are cheaper alternatives? What stories have these brands told that resonate with you so deeply that you're willing to pay more? Understanding this isn't just about becoming a more conscious consumer – it's about recognising how powerfully perception shapes reality in every aspect of our lives.
My Second Promise
Understanding how brands influence our personal purchasing decisions gives us a crucial insight into how they affect our businesses. Because while we might be conscious consumers who recognise these branding mechanisms at work, we're often blind to how the same principles affect our own businesses.
I made you a second promise. To share a principle of branding that would immediately and irrefutably demonstrate the value of investing in your brand. It’s been implicit in everything I’ve explained so far. Perhaps you spotted it.
When we engage in branding our business, we make choices about who we want to target, how we want to communicate, or what images or colours we use.
But when we choose not to engage in branding, when we invest no time, money or thought into who we target, how we communicate, what images or colours to use - we are still making those choices. You are still communicating to a particular group of people, in a particular way. You are still using particular images or colours. You are still creating an impression in the minds of your customers and potential customers. The only difference is that these impressions are forming without your guidance, without your input, and without your influence.
This is the brutal reality of branding that most business owners miss: You don't get to decide whether you have a brand. That decision was made the moment you opened your doors. Your only choice is whether you want some input into what your brand stands for, or whether you want to let others decide that for you.
You're not avoiding branding by not investing in it. You're just surrendering control of it. It’s not something you can get to later. You're letting your brand be defined by accident instead of intention, by default instead of design, by everyone except you.
The good news is, understanding this truth about branding is the first step to taking control of it. Once you realise that your brand exists whether you nurture it or neglect it, the path forward becomes clear. Every business decision you make from this point on can be an intentional step toward shaping how people think and feel about what you offer.
The question isn't if you should invest in your brand - but how much is it already costing you not to.
