How many times have you seen businesses spend enormous amounts of money designing logo's for their company because they're being led that way from a brand design agency?
Whilst your brand and your business are connected, your business is NOT your brand. Of course a great logo helps you to stand out but if you had never come across 'Nike', or 'Google' before would you know who they are just by the logo, of course not.
A brand logo is a way of claiming ownership, that's why the term branding came from the branding irons used to claim horses, and cattle, and its still a process that's used today with with a more humane approach.
I spend an awful lot of time working with companies helping to the either define their brand position, sometimes we need to re-position them because it's gotten lost in the day to day of marketing, or another extreme is to redefine it as the world they once operated in has moved on, ergo if the logo was the brand we should just keep the logo - right?
The simple fact is, your business is based upon the personality and messages you subliminally, and consciously send out, and if you don't define and manage those messages then the consumer will define it for you. Scary Stuff Eh!
This is one of the reasons we gravitate to people, businesses, and yes brands that we can relate to, and steer away from those we can't.
In truth, a brand is more than just a logo because the word also covers things like customer service and how customers feel towards a certain company. Sometimes, it can be a gut feeling — good or bad — that we have towards businesses.
With this in mind, we could define ‘brand’ as the intangible assets of a company. Rather than a product that customers can feel, touch, and use, it’s completely intangible. For many experts, they describe it as the emotional relationship that a business has with a customer.
So when your customer, or prospects are looking to see if they can relate to you they are looking for reassurance messages in what we now call 'social proof', so if your competitor is better, more active, and on point with their brand message, and they have an aligned workforce that are also being checked out social media, chances are they will win more business than you.
The very best companies can convince consumers to believe in their company just as much as the owners and managers. If we look at the battle between Apple and Android as another example, the consumers of each are extremely passionate about which device is better. From a technological point of view, both devices are similar — they both have high quality cameras, they both allow phone calls, texting, and apps. Yet, users of each will defend their chosen company as if it were their own company…this is the power of a brand.
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