Are You Branding or Brand Building?

When it comes to your brand, there are two ways you can apply effort: cheaply or more thoroughly.

There aren’t official terms for these two different approaches, so I’ll suggest this: branding vs. brand building. Under this lens…

• Branding: actions that are cheap, short-sighted, and loosely connected to business strategy.

• Brand building: actions that are rigorous, thoughtful, and directly tied to strategy.

With these loose (self-declared, thank you very much) definitions in place, let’s look at their differences through some actions. We’ll start at the proverbial shallow end of the pool and then wade deeper.

Assets: fixed vs. dynamic

Your brand assets should be dynamic, flexible, and responsive. Fixed assets feel safe, but they lack impact. A dynamic point of view lets you create touch points across a variety of mediums without boring your customer.

Platform: locked vs. iterative

Your brand platform should be capable of evolution (and you should be open to that as well). No system is perfect out of the gate. Adjustments are necessary and should be welcomed. Hold on loosely and be willing to flex as necessary.

Messaging: trivialized vs. prioritized

This may sound elementary, but: people only act after reading or hearing words that inspire them to act. Messaging is central and critical but often tacked-on at the end. Don’t do this. Please. You’ll make me sad.

Pace: hasty vs. rigorous

If you’re racing to “just get it done” save the budget for direct response marketing. Effective brand building requires rigor and is a job never finished. It doesn’t have to be slow, but it does need thoughtfulness.

Effort: adequate vs. complete

If great ideas were easy, we’d automate our jobs and find another way to make a living. Brand building requires hard work with uncertain results. The result of your effort should be a singular idea that captivates attention, inside your organization and out.

Positioning: copy-cat vs. unique

Most positioning is borrowed from the competition and slightly adjusted. You deserve better and so does the market. Great positioning comes from a deep understanding of the customer and finding the white space your organization can fill.

Narrative: safe vs. disruptive

Every day it’s harder to stand out and grab attention. Disrupting a category looks different for every player—different rules to bend, different approaches. No matter the play, disruption needs brave leadership willing to make waves.

Strategy: marketing vs. CEO-driven

Brand building without an active CEO is futile. The strategy of your business should be the strategy of your brand. This unlocks branding beyond marketing. It should drive decisions in organizational structure, people, processes, and much more.

Customer: egocentric vs. customer-centric

Cheap branding is self-centered and usually misaligned with the customer. Brand building seeks to understand the customer’s journey and their job to be done. The result is a brand loved and championed by users.

Great things are hard.

I’m not on a mission to redefine the term “branding” but the idea I want to reinforce is this: easy things are rarely good and great things usually take hard work. This is true in branding and everywhere else in life.

Do you aim to build a brand that's steadfast, exceptional, and makes a significant contribution to the world? Or are you building cheap, selling quick, and happy as long as the customers support you?

Don’t be the latter, please.