The Problem with Branding

I’ve been on my branding soapbox before, touting all the power of branding.

BUT…

Here’s what I’m not telling you.

While I love branding / brand marketing… it has two major flaws.

1. In all my examples of showing you the “power of branding”, I always cherry pick companies such as Nike, The Walt Disney Company, Apple, ROLEX, Tesla…

These brands (unlike the brands I help) have billions of dollars, decades and decades of built up brand equity (visibility, recognition, association, recall… through both paid and earned media), the best athletes / characters / celebrities endorsement, and overall have a massive head start.

2. I personally don’t follow many brands on social media, don’t know their “brand story”, don’t know their values, their mission, don’t know where they came from, don’t know who is their founder or CEO, and would struggle to articulate much about them other then, “They’ve been around for a while, they’re expensive, they’re from Vancouver, they are recognizable, they have decent quality, etc.).

So how on one hand can I talk about all the benefits of brand, while struggle to defend it?

To address the first point – branding definitely helps smaller brands as well. It’s just harder to use those brands as examples since they are not universally known. So I use Disney and Nike as a shorthand.

Regarding point 2 – while we as consumers may struggle to put into words what a brand is about, what is their story, and why we love them – one thing is true, we have a feeling about these brands. We identify with them.

Something they’ve said or done along the way has connected with us in one way or another, consciously or unconsciously, and we have developed an affinity and loyalty.

– I wear this brand and not that brand.

– I drive this brand of car and not that brand of car.

– I want this product in my home, and not that product.

Brands communicate and reinforce values to ourselves and to the world.

They say:

👉 This is who I am

👉 This is what I’m about

👉 This is what I value