Introducing the Branding Mix: The 4 M of Branding.

Over a decade ago, I wrote a blog post in Swedish, introducing my holistic yet useful model for brand-building ("Varum?rkets 4 S ") which has since garnered some attention. Today, with some help from my LinkedIn network, I've translated the post into English, introducing ?The Branding Mix? — or The 4 M of Branding. Now I'm eager to refine and perfect it further and would greatly appreciate your expertise and feedback.

So how should you go about building a strong brand? A brand that is meaningful to people in such a way that they want to choose it and/or are willing to pay more for it than for competing brands?

If you google, you will find plenty of models describing the most important components of a brand, but in my opinion, they are unnecessarily complicated and, above all, difficult to implement in practice.

When I work with brand development, I instead focus on four closely linked components. I call them The 4 M of Branding: Meaning, Movement, Matter, and Myth.

MEANING:

Guy Kawasaki, former chief evangelist at Apple, said it wisely:

"If you make meaning, you will probably make money. But if you set out to make money, you will probably not make meaning and you won't make money." — Guy Kawasaki

Author, Harvard professor, and board professional Bill George is on the same track when he claims that:

"The best-kept secret in business is that mission-driven companies create far more shareholder value than do financially driven firms". — Bill George

The meaning that your brand has in people's lives, its raison d'être, is oftentimes much more appealing and inspiring than the features and benefits of a product or service, or even how well the brand performs compared to competitors. By meaning, I refer to a larger purpose or belief, the brand’s ideology if you will. A cause or ambition beyond the good, service, or idea the brand represents.

The meaning of or purpose behind any activity touches us on a much deeper level than, for example, product advantages and USPs. They appeal to the parts of our brain where our emotions are, where our motivation is created, and where all our choices are made.

If we sympathize with the cause or purpose, very strong emotional bonds to the brand are created — bonds that make the brand meaningful to us in a way that the basic functionality and benefit of the good or service can never be. In short, we feel a kinship with the brand and, in the best case, make the brand's meaning, cause, purpose, or belief our own.

But don’t forget: The cause, purpose, or belief behind your brand needs to make meaning — both for your employees and your customers. Only then has it the power to create a movement that will promote and defend your brand wholeheartedly and beyond reason.

MOVEMENT:

We humans are social animals. Everything we do, every decision we make, is influenced by other people — whether they are present or not. Our species' survival has simply relied on us being able to cooperate and belongingness is a fundamental need in human nature.

"The need to belong is a universal human need, ingrained in our motivation as a species and stemming deeply from our ancestral roots." — Roy Baumeister & Mark Leary

Therefore, and oftentimes on a subconscious level, a sense of belonging or unity can be applied in various degrees to every choice of brand. In other words, what brand people choose to buy or not buy depends on how they relate to the crowd of people around the brand: those who represent it, those who sell it to them, and, last but not least, those who have already bought the brand and are consuming or using it.

In most cases (there are some exceptions) it is thus the people around the brand who, to a much greater extent than e.g. the advertising, influence how your brand is perceived. The corporate/brand culture that determines how the brand's representatives behave towards each other, towards customers, and towards the rest of the world determines to a very large extent whether we trust the brand and whether we experience a brand-to-person relationship with it.

"The more we perceive people are part of 'us,' the more likely we are to be influenced by them." — Robert Cialdini

And in a world where more and more brands in more and more categories have increasingly similar offerings, the movement that’s connected to a brand — that is, who the people are and how they act — is often both the most noticeable difference between different brands and what is hardest for competitors to copy.

Brands that are well-rooted in a strong culture are represented by people who feel belongingness to a community. The customers who find the brand’s meaning relevant — who can relate to and appreciate the brand’s purpose or cause — make the brand their own and feel a unity with the culture and movement. They become the brand's evangelists, your best salespersons, and will spread it further to their friends and acquaintances. They will unconsciously seek confirmation and positive experiences through the brand. Their tolerance level for errors and mistakes will be very high. And should anyone outside the movement dare to point out any flaws in the matter — that is, the product, service, or concept — they will defend it tooth and nail.

MATTER:

When Mark Parker took over as CEO of Nike, he asked Steve Jobs if he could give any tips.

"Well, really just one," Jobs replied. "Nike makes some of the world's best things. Products you crave. But Nike also makes a lot of crap. Get rid of the crap and focus on the good stuff."

"Get rid of the crap and focus on the good stuff." — Steve Jobs

To build a strong brand, you must have a good product, service, or concept. (I can't think of any exceptions, but unfortunately, there are many good products and companies that do not have a strong brand.) But "good" is not necessarily the same as "high quality" and "nice design". After all, it's neither you nor your competitors who decide what is "good". The customers do. And sometimes "good" can be an iPhone, sometimes a Ryanair. And sometimes “good” is what you actually get, sometimes what you feel or experience.

The trick is to know which the right "good" matter is for your company and in your category. Is it a functional benefit? Is it emotional, maybe social, or self-expressive? Is it connected to what makes your brand different and special or is it more about what makes it typical and risk-free?

After finding out what your brand should be made of – its brand matter – you then need to “go all in”. The mistake many companies make is confusing what the company or brand can do with what it should do. Can is about what, should is about why. A business airline like Continental can also be a low-cost airline, Continental Lite. But it should not be. (The Continental Lite experiment cost half a billion dollars and jeopardized the entire group.) Dove can make "the first skin-caring dishwashing liquid" but that doesn't mean Dove should do it. And Apple can, as in the late 1990s, manufacture and sell 250 different products. But that's not what Apple should do.

"In everything from presidential campaigns to peanut sales – focus wins" noted positioning guru Al Ries. To that, I want to add Steve Jobs' words of wisdom: "People think focus means saying yes to the things you need to focus on. It doesn't at all. Focus means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that are out there. It means choosing carefully."

Only when you're truly focused on your matter, on what the core of your brand is all about, can you create a world around it that's both appealing and compelling. A symbolic narrative that has the potential to become the brand's myth.

MYTH:

Humans are a storytelling species. We tell about ourselves and about others. We tell about our view of the world and how we experience it, about our dreams and fears. And through all these stories, our identities are formed. Simply put, we are the sum of our own stories and others' stories about us.

Brands are of course no exception. People’s expectations of your brand and how your brand is perceived are the sum of the stories about the brand. And it is that myth the movement behind your brand uses as a kind of social and cultural lubricant; if the myth fits our view of ourselves and how we want others to see us, the brand also fits us. (Yes, this also applies to business-to-business brands.)

Not all brands have well-known myths that are frequently discussed. In fact, most are unknown to the broader audience, and many exist only in our unconscious minds.

Still, who the brand is is almost always more important than what it is. It is the brand's myth, not its specification, that makes the brand an attractive personality. It is the myth, not the specification, that gives the brand an inspiring soul. And it is the myth, not the specification, that places the brand in its proper social and cultural context.

“Future successful products are those that best tell about adventure, happiness, danger, and drama”, predicts Rolf Jensen in the book The Dream Society. He also predicts that:

“Future leaders are those who best tell the stories that give meaning and content to life.” — Rolf Jensen

The best stories and myths are those that stimulate our imagination, those that inspire us. The best myths flirt with our emotions, dreams, and desires — not with our logic. And the best myths are those that are true — but not necessarily in the sense that they reproduce actual events or conditions. They feel true because they are perceived as genuine and credible for the brand. But even more importantly, they are consistently told, in everything and by everyone who can be linked to the brand.

Your brand's myth is based on its meaning, consistently performed and conveyed by the movement, and always confirmed with the brand’s matter. And like all good myths, it consists of opposites, of good and evil, of courage and fear, of love and hate.

The myth not only tells what the brand stands for and wants. It also conveys what the brand is opposed to, what or who the enemy is.

A well-told brand myth is a powerful tool of persuasion. When we hear a good story, our brain lights up — the neural activity in our brain increases fivefold — which is why we more easily remember and can recall a story than a list of facts. A good story can also trigger the neurochemical oxytocin, which plays an important role in many human behaviors and social interactions, including recognition, trust, and romantic attachment.

When you can describe your brand's four Ms in an inspiring, compelling, credible, and perhaps also distinct way, you have an excellent starting point for your strategic brand work.

Individually, the M’s are mere puzzle pieces that only reveal part of the whole. However, if you manage to fit these pieces together, a complete picture emerges of how you should build, strengthen, and — last but not least — live your brand.

/// NB: Still work in progress. I would greatly appreciate any questions, comments, additions, and improvements. Thank you! ///