Branding unzipped: It's what's inside that counts

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A brand is in the eye of the beholder

A brand is how people remember it, explain it, feel about it - a culmination of their experience of a brand. “People” includes your staff, potential staff, partners, suppliers, competitors, customers, potential customers, and more - each with their own experiences of a brand. Logos, visual identity, design, messaging and dare I say it, advertising, are a very small part of the experience. The greatest impact on perception comes from the purchasing process, receiving and using the product/service, when things go wrong, price point, recruitment, day-to-day work-life experience, how suppliers are treated, who and how partnerships are felt (channel, retail, collabs, manufacturing, etc).

“It’s a person’s gut feeling about a product, service or organisation”
- Marty Neumeier

This all varies wildly by category, FMCG is heavily impacted by design, messaging & packaging, but the product experience can be marginally different; high touch categories like automotive are an interesting mix of both at different points in the journey; low commitment/risk (i.e. pre-paid mobile) is different to higher commitment/risk (postpaid, contract mobile).

You’re thinking about your brand strategy, a logo, visual identity, messaging or a website… So how does that all impact what you should do?

If your brand is in the eye of the beholder, what can you do to influence that? How do you ensure what you feel and value internally is accurately represented externally and in every touchpoint to influence those perceptions as you scale? It starts with getting really clear with who you are, what you care about and the purpose for existing. Not just ‘knowing’ it in your head and ‘feeling’ it in your heart - the work needs to be done to articulate and document as a guiding compass so others are empowered to reflect your brand appropriately in comms or the way they behave (e.g. staff).

If you try to be everything to everyone you’ll be nothing

Simply put: it’s about understanding your audiences and how your organisation behaves to find the key aspects that are distinct, different and matter to your audiences.

Article: Differentiation is not about uniqueness

Within each audience (customer or staff) there are segments who care about and behave differently, understanding those differences and who are most important to your strategic direction is essential. If you try to be everything to everyone you’ll be nothing. By focusing on key segments you’ll be more relevant, meaningful and attract more of the right people who value similar things, if you go broad you’ll find the organisation having to meet so many conflicting needs. Conversely a good brand should turn people away and that’s a good thing.

If you have more of the right people working for, buying from, partnering with you, things come into alignment and lead to more of the good stuff. It can lead to new products and services that make sense, people spending more, reducing staff turnover and effective/impactful collaborations that reinforce everything.

You don’t need to be something you’re not.

Don’t pretend, act, perform, obfuscate or complicate your brand.

Resource: The brand gap (book)

Start by understanding your audiences and how they perceive your organisation, the category and the world around them. Oftentimes this actually reveals your value, and it can be a lightbulb moment for many leaders. Sometimes it reveals there is no clear or cohesive value perception and that’s a separate challenge, but within it there are typically elements that if focused on can become core, distinct and different.

That special thing can be small, nuanced, philosophical, practical, but don’t underestimate the power of what people value. It doesn’t need to be something gloariously grandiose, wowzerly world changing, life alteringly enlightening, interstellarly innovative, and definitely not ‘best’.

In so many categories just doing a decent job, consistently at the right price point is a significant part of their value - and easier said than done.

A builder who has a plan, listens, builds on time, and doesn’t go bankrupt. An accountant who explains numbers in human language, doesn’t miss important details, will answer your call and not be condescending. A bank that has an app that works, efficiently receives and processes your loan application and has clear updates on rate changes. A healthy frozen meal that actually tastes good, isn’t jammed with preservatives and unnecessary packaging.

An important aspect of this is understanding what your audiences really value: so often businesses focus on things that really don’t matter, sacrificing what people really value.

So what does your organisation do well? Is that valued?

Do you need to actually change the product/service experience? In most cases we find it already exists but needs to be identified; and focused on. Focus across the organisation: From operations to produce/service delivery and brand/marketing to staff engagement - is everyone contributing to improving what your audiences value?

“At the end of the day, every touchpoint, every interaction or even an employee’s interaction on social media will impact the brand and therefore customer experience. So realistically, everyone in a company has a responsibility in contributing to superb customer experience. It’s like performing in an orchestra.”

Maggie Chan Jones, CEO and founder, Tenshey (Source)

To understand this it’s important to ask what each audience values - find the common attributes and outliers. Then consider what might change in the next 5-10 years, not marginal, minor changes, but seismic shifts - and more often than not what people really value doesn’t change wildly. Chasing trends, minor changes in behaviour or edge cases will lead to a confused strategy, brand and experience.

Stand the test of time

Core elements of your brand should stand the test of time, like values or purpose should be consistent for 5-10 years, whereas a logo or design style will likely evolve every year or two - incrementally or significantly at points in time.

“The fundamentals are always the same - in a new manner, using new tools - to answer only one question: The consumer, what does she want?”

Sophie Blum, CMO, Puratos (Source)

That’s a whole lot of theory… what should you do?

We use a brand model that covers the following topics, some will be straight-forward to answer, others might need some analysis and reflection and others could benefit from getting various stakeholders to contribute. Here’s our brand model slide template if you’d like to use it.

Template: Brand model slides

1. Quick audit of each section

Is it clear or does it need to change?

Clear or pretty clear
Needs a bit of work/clarification
Very unclear or missing

From there you can decide how to tackle each section: if a section is already defined, great - just populate, if they’re really unclear - do some homework, workshops or surveys.

2. Get input from audiences

Define your audiences and get their input. Don’t get too academic or stereotypical (like 35-45 women) any generalised group of people are usually so different - focus on common attitudes, behaviours, values and engagement with your category. Defining can be tricky in itself, do you care about donors, specific customers, potential customers, existing staff, new staff, etc. In theory they all matter, but you can’t understand everything, so choose a starting 2-3.

Depending on the group conduct 1-1 interviews, workshops or surveys seeking answers to these questions:

What is their relationship with you? Customer (past, recent, ongoing?); potential customer; staff; partner; follower; etc
If you have various aspects/brands: Which brands/services do they engage with?
What 3 words first come to mind when they think of you?
What’s most unique or valuable about your organisation?
How likely are they to recommend you to family, friend or a colleague? (0-10)
If they want to share a testimonial - It could be what we did, why it was good, what makes us different? We can refine it with you before we use it.
If your brand was a person/friend you know, how would you describe them?
Value perception: Do you think we are: too expensive, too cheap or good value for money?
What products/services do they think you do?
Give a set list of terms/descriptors and ask them which best describe you
How can you improve?

Here’s a brand insight example survey we ran for The Sociable Weaver. (We use and recommend Typeform for surveys)

Template: Brand Feedback Survey, Typeform

3. Seek inspiration

Look outside your category, region and comfort zone to find organisations who’re doing things that align with your values. Don’t fall for the typical: Apple, Patagonia, Tesla, or brands that are completely irrelevant or out of reach from your situation or category. What can you specifically learn from and apply to your business?

4. Workshop

Bring together a small group (2-6) people who can meaningfully contribute to your strategy. That could be client/customer facing people, new or older staff, founders or leadership.

Everyone prepares answers to thought provoking questions

We find workshops are most effective if every person attending has prepared, so we provide homework to each person. Here’s our template (for brand and websites) so take and use if it’s helpful.

Template: Homework for brand and website

(Again, only focus on sections/topics that your organisation needs to work on).

Consider each aspect of your brand

Who you are - Describe your business to a friend. Think of this as your 30 second to 2 minute pitch.
Your audience - Your stakeholders - the users, influencers, gate keepers, or funders. Describe them as people and their roles. What are their needs/wants/concerns?
Differentiation - What makes you stand out from your competitors? This could be the make up of your team, your approach, your services, your awards etc.
Perception - Choose 5 adjectives to describe how you want your brand to be perceived.
Defining values - What does your brand stand for? What 3-5 values are important to you and define who you are as a brand? Give a value then a 1 sentence description.
Personality - If your brand were a known person, celebrity or influencer, who would they be and why? Include an image, link to any info you can.
Prove points - What are the reasons to believe? List out the top 5 behaviours, facts, products, features, data points, etc. that deliver on those messages.
Inspiration - What are some great examples of others solving the problem? It could be organisations, governments, charities, campaigns, people. What is it about their approach you like? It could be their design, copy, business model, marketing strategy, quality of service/product, anything?
Impact Inspo - What are three impactful brands that you admire and can take inspiration from? Include screenshots/ web links for reference if appropriate.
[Optional] What gets you up in the morning? - What is something you’re personally passionate about? Describe the current problem and why it’s an issue?
Brand & website improvements - This section is more about the tangible/practical aspects of your logo, design, website, copy, etc.

Try a 10 year look back

Everyone or a sub-set (i.e. founders) create a PechaKucha presentation “a storytelling format in which a presenter shows 20 slides for 20 seconds of commentary each” where they talk about “It’s December 10 years from now, you’re tell people about what the organisation achieve, what you’re proud of and what you’re looking forward to”.

Article: PechaKucha

Running a good workshop is an art - do it intentionally.

Here’s our template in Mural which is heavily tailored for each session.

Set a very clear agenda & timeframe for each section
Ask people to write and contribute one at a time
Don’t let things go off in free flow conversions for more than 10 minutes
Don’t let one or two people dominate
All ideas are welcome, debate and criticism comes later
Group and prioritise ideas as you go

Template: Brand workshop

5. Draft and refine

Pull together those aspects into a brand model that suits you, and summarise on one page - this process is essential, by compacting it down you cut out the fluff and figure out what matters most. But don’t lose the detail (have an expanded paragraph for each of the elements of the brand model), a 5 word phrase will never be fully understood by everyone without the detail.

Don’t be too tricky, smart or ‘creative’ - get to the point and capture the essence of each element.

6. Engage and rollout

A brand strategy is just the starting point, now you need to evaluate every channel and touch point and see how well it aligns, and how important it is to update/change. Depending on your size, that may mean plenty of team engagement, if you’re small it might mean changing your own habits and behaviours.

It’ll impact marketing & comms: how you talk, where you show up, design, photography.
It might impact what your products and services are, how they’re bundled, channels of delivery.
It’ll probably impact your recruitment, team engagement strategies
And how you engage investors, donors, partners will likely change.
The list goes on.

Here’s an example audit template - focused on key message, purpose and values - yours may be different.