Branding

It wasn’t all that long ago that the term "branding" was used to describe scarring an animal to denote ownership.  Now, it’s the buzz word of choice in marketing circles.

Branding is, in essence, marketing or advertising messages that work at conveying what your business does to the casual observer. The thinking goes that if you effectively  "brand" your messages, that consumers will be better able to recognize your ads as belonging to you and will then be more likely to do business with you.

That’s right, the reason people aren’t responding to your ads is they don’t know they’re yours!  Once you make them all look and sound alike, then customers will magically line up to do business with you!

SERIOUSLY!  Do you think I could make this stuff up?

Let me "de-mystify" the branding process for those of you who wish to be enlightened.

Branding is not something you choose to do either to or for your business.  It’s something that your CUSTOMERS do to your business.  Just as the unsuspecting calf is branded by searing metal pressed into it’s flesh, so goes the process of your business branding by your customers.

The branding is a process that begins deep within your company.  It is the process through which you imprint what it is your company is about upon the minds of your target audience and audiences return the message with a red hot poker.

Because branding is an ongoing activity, it occurs constantly.  Every interaction between your business and your customer (or potential customer) is building your brand, whether you like it or not.   With that perspective on branding, it’s easy to see that the task at hand is to control your customer’s perceptions of your company as much as is possible.

With this perspective, you may suddenly realize that the surely angst ridden teen who is running your cash register after school is helping to building your brand. Nancy, in accounts receivable is also building your brand as are your technicians who go out into the field. 

Every time someone you employ has contact with other people, they are in fact helping to build your brand. If this doesn’t frighten you, the business owner, then nothing will.

The "experts" want you to believe that branding is something you can buy.  Can you blame them?  It’s much easier to say, "Run your ads here and be sure to use use the right colors and font faces in those ads, and that is branding." Isn’t that much easier than it is to look beyond the ads and stare down the barrel at the business behind the ads.

Advertisements are simply invitations to your business. Invitations to strangers asking them to do business with you.  Implementing a methodical identity program (a.k.a. branding program) will allow you to determine exactly how you want to portray your company or product to the outside world.  However, what happens once those customers do business with you will, in the end, determine your company’s "brand."

In the end, your brand is merely the way you are perceived by your customers.  Branding is merely identifying the image you want to portray to outsiders.  Your goal should be to make certain that brand accurately reflects what your business does.  Once you’ve done that, then you can determine what promises you should make for your business to deliver.

Of course advertising plays a part in branding.  After all, you wouldn’t send out engraved invitations to the hog roast at Uncle Larry’s trailer over Memorial Day.  Likewise, an invitation to a black tie event probably would bear little similarity to the event described above.  An essential part of branding is knowing WHAT KIND of party you’re throwing…. but keep in mind that how you treat the guests (a.k.a. customers) when they get there plays an even bigger role in the branding process.

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