What is a Brand?

What is a brand? What’s the difference between a brand and a logo? What’s the difference between deliberate branding, and branding by default? Do you know? Well if you don’t, then you’re probably branding by default.

That’s not good.

OK, so what exactly is a brand? Because it’s not your logo. Your logo is a graphical representation of your brand. It’s the main visual ambassador of your brand, and the entire basis of your visual brand image, or your corporate identity.

Wow, that was a lot of big words, but what do they all mean? Well let’s see if we can’t make sense of all that.

Let’s start with the word brand.

Would it surprise you to learn that a brand is really nothing more than a thought? So in essence, it’s energy. A company’s brand IS what its best customer thinks of it. What its least happy customer thinks of it. What its prospects think of it. What its industry thinks of it. What its employees, partners, vendors, and contractors think of it. And perhaps most overlooked, what its CEO thinks of it.

When you combine all of those thoughts - all that energy - into one focused thought, or the average of all of those opinions, then you come up with the overall brand.

And here lies the magic.

The difference between branding your company deliberately, or by default. The CEO has the mental image of the company in its best light - as he or she sees it in reality, and its full potential.

Most of those other thoughts or opinions are based on the past. Someone’s experience with a company instills an image of the brand in their minds. It’s the past. It’s over. Good or bad, it’s done.

But the CEO sees beyond the past and present. He sees the future of the business. She sees beyond what is and can visualize what can be.

Nobody else is going to do that.

When you allow your brand to be determined by other people’s opinions, that’s branding by default. But when you project your future image so others can see it, and feel it, and believe in it - that’s deliberate branding. Being able to not only have a vision of your company’s future - it’s potential, it’s promise - but being able to share it with all interested parties so that they can get their energy behind it too.

That’s the power of branding.

The logo then becomes the visual metaphor of that image. And when people in your world see that icon, they don’t just recognize a company - they remember the feeling behind that brand.

It’s all energy. It’s all about making an emotional connection to people, and getting them to rally their energy behind your vision.