Your Brand Probably Sucks, Here’s Why
Let’s be honest, your brand probably sucks. Your logo looks great, but your brand is not your logo. It’s not a quirky catch phrase, either. It’s not an inspirational mission statement. It has little to do with the products or services your company offers.
Unfortunately, most people focus on these things when they think of what it means to create a brand. The process usually emphasizes visuals and deliverables like the Pepsi logo redesign that lack substantive meaning. It also emphasizes writing large checks to branding and ad agencies. Is that the best we can do? Your company’s logo, your product, and it’s features, are expressions of your brand. They are touchpoints.
Your brand is the emotional and intellectual associations that people make with your company and it’s products. It’s subjective and it varies from person to person. We can’t dictate how users and customers will perceive a company. For that reason, your brand is constantly evolving. The brand design process is actually more similar to the product design process. It’s not about static deliverables and logo files, just like a product is not all about static mockups. Sorry if you already wrote that check.
The good news for brand people is that these emotional associations can be influenced. They are a result of the experiences that people have with your company.
So while you can’t really design a brand, you can take systematic actions to design experiences. Those experiences will influence those emotional associations. Positive experiences lead to positive associations that shape how customers view your company. This helps you build a brand that actually resonates with people.
It’s all about the experience
When you boil it down, brand experiences are about delivering a brand message. Your brand message is what you want to communicate to customers. Who are you? Why do you exist? What do you value? How will your product or service improve the lives of your customers?
To deliver that message, you have to be clear on what your brand’s values are. This is something that many organizations don’t explicitly state, but it’s important.
A brand’s values are directly tied to it’s vision.
Vision requires a deep understanding of the organization’s unique qualities and how they are relevant to the customer or user. Vision is the underlying personality of the brand. It’s both inspirational and practical. Vision is not just about what your company does. It’s also focused on the users and how your product or organization fits into their life.
Communicate the vision through awesome experiences.
Delivering brand experiences is about reinforcing that vision.
Look at places a user could interact with your company and compare them to the brand’s vision. This includes the logo, the website, the copywriting, customer service, and everything else.
The vision should influence every decision you make. Every experience that a user has with your company should reflect that vision.
Think about a company you love. Now think about why you love it.
For me, GrubHub comes to mind. I love GrubHub. Are they the fastest delivery service out there? No. Do they have the best looking app or logo? Not at all. The reason I love GrubHub is not because they’re the best delivery service out there. They might not be. I love them because they have awesome customer service, it’s a fun app to use, and because of this:
Every interaction I have with GrubHub is positive and that’s all by design. GrubHub’s vision is to move eating forward. As a user, I see this in every interaction I have with the company. Sure, their app makes online ordering a simpler, more pleasant experience. But the experience of using GrubHub is about so much more than online ordering. And they are constantly trying to improve the app and the service! GrubHub has plans to use its own delivery drivers, which would improve the experience even more. Compared to the ordering experience of five years ago, I’d say that’s a pretty big step forward.
Another company that does this well is Airbnb. When you think about it, Airbnb users are just renting rooms. It’s pretty simple. But Airbnb’s vision is to be so much more than a place to rent rooms. They’re about community.
In 2014, Airbnb unified every aspect of its product, marketing and customer service to reflect this vision. They had an explicit goal (vision) to create a world where users can belong anywhere. It’s a lofty idea, but it’s helped to shape every experience that users has with the company. Just take a look at the homepage.
Sure, the homepage is beautiful and functional, but it also communicates what the company is all about. And it does it two words, which is amazing. Welcome Home. It’s not a site that lets you rent a room from some guy. It’s a community of people ready to welcome you home anywhere in the world. Every experience with Airbnb reinforces that sense of community at the core of its “Belong Anywhere” vision. It’s a vision that resonates with travelers and hosts. (Obviously, its disrupting the entire hotel industry.)
We can’t “design” a brand any more than we can control someone’s mind. The best we can do is influence people’s perception of our organization by communicating a vision that speaks to them. This vision comes from what you value as an organization and why you exist. It’s communicated through experiences that reinforce those values and improve the lives of customers and users. This is what creates a strong brand.
So, it’s not a logo, a color scheme, or a website. It’s the way people experience not just your product, but your entire company. In order to build a strong brand it’s important to have a strong vision. Why does your company exist? How will your products improve peoples’ lives? What are you trying to do besides make money? Figure out what this is and make sure every experience a user has with your company reinforces that vision.
