Give me a B, a bouncing B.

I love sneakers. Have way too many and am 100% brand loyal to Nike. So much so that I would never even consider wearing/buying a pair of Adidas, I don’t hate Adidas and admit that they do some stuff exceptionally well, but loyalty is loyalty, and I am fascinated with it and how to create it in brands.?

I mention all of this because I read an interesting article over the weekend where a Sr. Executive from Adidas explained that to build a brand from scratch, you should not focus on the brand at all but instead focus on your product, and the brand will come.

This is not a shot at this person (the reason why I am not calling them out)? or the brand, but I see versions of this advice all the time, and I always get a little twitch under my eye when I do because in my opinion (an expert one, if you ask me) it is wrong and here is why.?

Everything Starts With The Brand

Brand and product are two different things because you can have a brand with no product. People think that the Tesla pickup truck is cool even though it is three years late being delivered. Zune didn't take the world by storm even though there were aspects of it that were better than the iPod...but man, Apple is cool. A great brand lets you make mistakes or make people wait for something that a crappy product doesn’t.

A company can have fans with no products, but where brand and product do cross is with the end user. Great brands are built for people, as are products, and both start with a deep understanding of the person’s needs. When you start with the product first, you end up playing catch-up. There is probably little difference between Nike basketball shoes and Adidas ones, so you are not buying a pair of shoes. You are purchasing an identity. I know that sounds shallow, but that is branding friends.

Personal Brand and Brands Brands

People make a big deal about personal brands, and they should, but they also insist it is different from building a brand for a product or a company. I am here to tell you they are the same. Branding is about what makes you different from the other person or brand. The thing that starts conversations and is memorable. In personal branding, people talk about the self-awareness aspect, but this is no different from a big brand. Every brand needs to look inside and out if they are going to last and be great and needs a personality.

The five main types of brand personalities are excitement, sincerity, ruggedness, competence, and sophistication. Customers are more likely to purchase a brand if its personality is similar to their own so it is important you know the customer so you can build your brand around one personality or at least the right one.

Brands are living and breathing things; products are objects. You birth brands and make products. It takes lovemaking to birth something, so you should always start there… cause lovemaking is fun.