Why We Think Google Knows Everything
It’s a simple and not so weird reason and you can use it too.
Brand
The term brand is arguably one of the most confusing words in marketing, although, the problem may lie in what we have refused to accept.
A brand describes how your audience perceives your company, organization or you as a person.
In short, your brand answers the following questions, ‘How does my company make my audience feel? What comes to my audience’s mind when they think of me?’
Due to the general misconception surrounding this word, it is easy to think that your company’s brand is just a name, symbol, font or a color; all these elements are tools you use to build a brand (we will discuss these elements in a few minutes)
Think Google.
How does Google make you feel? What comes to your mind when you think of Google?
Google inspires the idea of an omniscient entity in its target audience.
This phrase answers the questions we asked above, and therefore identifies the Google brand.
Whenever you think of Google, you imagine an all-knowing website that provides the answers to anything you can think of. Uber? Now you can get a ride to anywhere, at any time with the click of a button…well, a few clicks.
From the above examples, we can see that;
A brand helps explain to your audience what your company offers.
Your brand goes beyond anything physical, instead, it talks about what your company represents. The idea of a brand goes beyond a physical concept but is rather a psychological one.
Like Jeff Bezos said ‘Your brand is what your customers say about you when you’re not there’
Branding
If a brand describes how your company is perceived, then branding is the act of building that perception.
It is the act of shaping how your audience receives your company.
What’s the point of branding again?
Good question!
Branding dictates perception and perception dictates customer behavior.
The way your audience feels about you will determine how they behave around and towards you.
This is very important and might be the difference between a killer brand and a ‘meh’ company.
Does your company inspire excitement? Does the mere mention of your company inspire trust? What is your company worth in the eyes of your consumers/target audience?
Think Apple.
Before Apple, the world of personal computing was confined within university walls and research centers. As a result, these universities and research institutes dictated what the tech company and computers should be; serious, unreachable and academic.
No one could imagine using a computer, much less owning one.
But!….with innovation, technology and a little bit of the Jobs branding magic, Apple came into the scene and the world of personal computing was born.
It felt like a door was opened up to the public into the world of ‘leisure computing’ Apple challenged people to Think different.
Now, Apple didn’t change the world’s mind using colors and symbols (even though the logo played a large role in this change) instead Apple spoke to the world through its branding.
It influenced its audience’s behavior through its branding strategies which has led to Apple leading the tech market from then till now.
Brand Identity?
When we think of Coca cola, we imagine its signature script text and red color. When we hear Nike, we imagine hearing the words ‘Just do it!’ in our heads, how about Amazon? We imagine a store that sells everything.
Each of these elements (logo, slogans) is only part of what makes up your company’s brand identity.
Branding pro Marty Neumeier defines a brand identity as “the outward expression of a brand, including its trademark, name, communications, and visual appearance.”
Your brand identity is the collection of tangible brand elements that work together create one brand image.
A brand identity is the sum total of how your brand looks, feels, and speaks to people (Sometimes that even includes how it sounds, tastes, feels, and even smells.)
Ultimately, your brand identity is a way to communicate with the world and make yourself stand out from the competition.
It creates a brand experience that encourages your target audience to engage with you.
It’s easy to assume that your company logo and brand color palette are what make up your company’s brand identity, this is because your logo and colors are the most prominent visual aspects of your company buuuuut….they are not.
Your company’s brand identity can be made up of various elements such as:
- Logo
- Colors
- Typography
- Design System
- Photography
- Illustration
- Iconography
- Data visualization
- Interactive elements
- Video and motion
- Web design
Each of these elements works to strengthen the idea of your brand in the minds of your consumers, and each of them can be applied depending on the nature of your company and the industry you work in.
How do they all work together?
As we earlier discussed, your brand is an intangible concept that describes how your customer perceives your company and what it offers.
From this definition, we can see that without a brand, your company melts into the thousands of other companies competing for your customer's attention.
In the same vein:
The process of actually creating a brand is called branding.
This process of branding involves multiple elements and all these branding elements are what make up a company’s brand identity.
The more distinct, specific, and cohesive these elements are, the more likely it is for your brand to be differentiated, recognized and admired.
