A brand is what you do
I always tell clients that "branding" is more about what you do than what you say. It is in essence the living persona of your company - but it is not the experience. I am often asked; "if brand is the living persona of your company, what is an experience?"
Well, I think we often make things too complicated for customers. The reality is that most customers don't know, or care to know the difference. Despite our best efforts to extract their thoughts through focus groups, customer satisfaction surveys, and on the spot interviews, we simply continue to fail in our understanding. Why?
Again, it is not that complicated. We as humans experience things - we experience sights, sounds, smells, and tastes. Our mind then catalogs those experiences and indexes them for future reference. We simply cannot isolate elements of our experience into rational thoughts, and rarely do they actually rise to the level of conscious thought - they just kind of happen. And when they do happen, they are good, bad, or neutral.
So, I define brand as the persona a company projects, and an experience as something that the customers has. See the difference?
In my simple world, the brand of a company can either be experiential or it can be graphical. Branding that does not extend into an experience simply will mean nothing to a consumer. However, a consumer's experience will remain in their memory for an indefinite period of time. Translation: If you just focus on branding, and leave experience to chance the customer will remember the haphazard experience over the expensive brand. However, if you brand your experience, you will have taken an active roll in staging an experience that you want your customers to have. Thereby, participating in the memory.
This is an ongoing topic, and I credit Kevin Briody for his post on the death of branding . So, in my opinion branding is not dead, but its definition has changed, and more importantly its role has changed.
More to come on this topic...
Well, I think we often make things too complicated for customers. The reality is that most customers don't know, or care to know the difference. Despite our best efforts to extract their thoughts through focus groups, customer satisfaction surveys, and on the spot interviews, we simply continue to fail in our understanding. Why?
Again, it is not that complicated. We as humans experience things - we experience sights, sounds, smells, and tastes. Our mind then catalogs those experiences and indexes them for future reference. We simply cannot isolate elements of our experience into rational thoughts, and rarely do they actually rise to the level of conscious thought - they just kind of happen. And when they do happen, they are good, bad, or neutral.
So, I define brand as the persona a company projects, and an experience as something that the customers has. See the difference?
In my simple world, the brand of a company can either be experiential or it can be graphical. Branding that does not extend into an experience simply will mean nothing to a consumer. However, a consumer's experience will remain in their memory for an indefinite period of time. Translation: If you just focus on branding, and leave experience to chance the customer will remember the haphazard experience over the expensive brand. However, if you brand your experience, you will have taken an active roll in staging an experience that you want your customers to have. Thereby, participating in the memory.
This is an ongoing topic, and I credit Kevin Briody for his post on the death of branding . So, in my opinion branding is not dead, but its definition has changed, and more importantly its role has changed.
More to come on this topic...
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