Branding is about construction, not deconstruction
It’s only logical to break something down to its smallest parts to understand the larger whole. Brands do this all the time. They deconstruct their finances, their processes, and their marketing to be the most efficient and successful they can be. It mostly yields good results. I’m just not sure this is how branding works. Once you dissect the bird, you lose the song.
Many brands mistakenly bake value props into their name. The name Comcast says they provide communications and broadcasting. Simple enough. It makes sense to cut up your offering into small, easily chewable bites to show value and attract an audience. Your value props are the reason people buy what you sell, right? Not necessarily.
We buy specific brands because they make us feel a specific way. And this feeling varies from person to person. However once we start pulling on the threads to understand why, the whole damn thing comes undone. Let’s look at Levi’s as a test case.
There are many reasons someone might buy a pair of Levi’s jeans: the history of the company, their place in pop culture, the style, the fit, the quality, the marketing, what’s in fashion, the Ramones. It’s all of these combined elements that matter — not one isolated variable.
Data suffers the same hazards. Data can’t guide you to a meaningful brand. A company will pour over research to find holes in the market or zero-in on the latest trends, then try to glean a meaningful story from the numbers. What they don’t realize is there are always more numbers. There’s always more analytics and data.
The result is brands that go to where their customers are — not the other way around. When you have a value prop in your name, you’re telling your audience, “Hey, I heard you like this. You want to buy this, right? Please, please, please buy my stuff.” Rather than begging to your audience, let them come to you.
Data works the same way. Data is really good at identifying what people buy or how they buy or holes in the market. But data is a poor artist. Think about it this way: Imagine you want to write a song for your significant other, so you run the numbers on the 100 most popular songs on Spotify to see what they have in common and then write a song using the information you found. It would be the most bland, vapid, and soulless music you’ve ever heard.
So how do you avoid these common pitfalls? Start with art and build from there.
Branding is about creation and creativity. At the end of the day, your brand is making an artistic statement and the medium is the feeling you create for others. Like good art, this feeling is indescribable and turns to smoke the moment you start to analyze it. It’s about stepping back and looking at the entire painting — not contemplating every brushstroke.
