What Is a Brand: An Overview of Corporate Branding December 29, 2020 Find out what a brand is and how related concepts like brand image work.
What’s the Difference Between a Motto, a Tagline and a Slogan? July 1, 2020 I explain the differences between mottos, taglines and slogans using real-world examples.Quick Lessons
What a brand isn’t:
- How you write.
- The colours you use.
- Your visual style.
- Your typography.
Those are brand elements.
They signify your brand – like a name signifies a person.
What a brand actually is:
A mix of reputation, image, culture, people, and products and services that acts as an interface for an entity.
In other words, your brand is WHAT you are, what you SAY you are, WHO you serve, what you PROMISE, what you are SEEN to be, and what you THINK you are.
The takeaway?
A brand isn’t made by marketers.
It’s built by your whole organisation – from entry-level roles all the way up to the CEO.
Effective marketing starts at the brand level.
If you don’t have a clear ICP or if your offering doesn’t solve a high-priority problem for that group of people, the best collateral in the world won’t save you.
So, before you craft messaging, think about differentiation, or choose channels, ask:
- Does our ICP have the problem that our offering solves?
- If they wrote a list of all their jobs to be done, where would the problem we solve sit? Would it be in the top three?
- Do they have the resources to pay us for solving the problem?
If you answered ‘no’ to any of the above, your marketing won’t work.