The problem with branding is …
When I work with people on their business or personal brands I inevitably end up sharing a variation of this quote.
“A brand should strive to own a word in the mind of the consumer.” Al Reis and Laura Reis
The problem is, for people not used to working in branding and marketing, this is actually quite a hard thing to grasp. Once you’ve worked with many brands and wrestled with this problem, you have the benefit of hindsight. And the trouble with hindsight is that it makes everything always looks so obvious.
I think the problem with identifying the idea is that it’s just too simple. And simplicity is difficult to achieve. Simplicity requires some brave decisions. It requires you to eliminate elements and ideas that dilute and distract. It’s far too easy to try too hard. The result of this is trying to appeal to everyone. And you know what Simon Manchipp said about that. “A brand trying to be all things to all people = blanding”.
Making a decision on what idea you are going to own can happen in one of two ways. You can either plan on the idea that you will own, or you look back and ask your customers what it is that they think of when they think of your brand.
The first route can come from the gut, or from lengthy reviews and analyses of what else is happening in the market. Either way, once you’ve identified your idea, you need to build your whole strategy around it.
The second is more interesting. You might have been doing X for a while, but when you finally get round to asking your customers what they remember you for, they tell you Y. Depending on what Y is, it can be a great opportunity to start building on what you’ve already established without realising.
This article by Brand Strategy Insider sums up the whole issue quite nicely, as well as showing what happens to big corporates when they ignore this simple piece of advice. And you’d think that they would know better!
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