What is Branding? There is a myriad of definitions, but it boils down to this:
Branding or Brand Management is the discipline that involves all aspects of marketing of a product, service, or organization. It includes such areas as positioning, image and recognition.
Brad Cathy, president of Highgate-Creative in Wheaton, Illinois, says it like this: “Branding is all about what the public thinks of you. It used to be that organizations were only concerned about their visual identity. But their equity is not in their identity; it’s in their brand. They can change their name, logo and Web site, but their brand is still intact. I will support them because of their brand – all they offer and how they offer it – and not just their logo. Brand is the person, identity is the clothes the person wears.”
Many organizations approach Branding from the bottom up. That is, they start by preparing a brochure or a logo without even thinking about what they want to communicate.
A better approach is to start with a game you all probably know – dominoes. Not the game as we normally play it, but the “domino theory” type – stacking up the tiles so one falling triggers the falling of the next one.
Instead of stacking dominoes, though, let’s stack subjects.
We’ll start with the subject of tangible communication. For example, let’s say we want to produce a new brochure. In order to design the brochure, we have to know what we want it to look like. So we have to understand the subject of Visual or Corporate Identity.
But Identity is only one part of the whole subject of Branding. So we have to step back from Identity and understand what our Brand should be.
But before we can really look at the subject of Branding, we have to understand if we have the right Name. So we need to determine by what name – or names – we will be known.
And how can we determine if we have the right name until we know who we are? So we have to look at our Mission Statement, our Vision Statement, our Values, our Distinctives, and the Position our Brand will take among all the other similar brands.
Click on the links above or the page titles on the right for a more thorough discussion of each of these “dominoes.”
After reading all this material, you may have questions. The Branding FAQ answers many of your questions, but please contact Dave for any other questions you may have.