Branding isn't Advertising

I love my job. I'm part of a small team that handles big projects, so each of us wears multiple hats. If that statement is a truism of professional life, so be it. I am a strategist, a writer, a manager, a saleswoman, a dog sitter, a coach, a student, an editor...and the list goes on. The fact that I can't responsibly fit my unusually shaped job into any square expectation on the other end of an introductory conversation is not a problem in my view. For me, "It's a little bit unshapely," is a fine response to the invariable, "What do you do for work?" asked at dinner parties. 

The more interesting question to me is its companion. "Oh, you're in branding. This might sound dumb, but what is that exactly? Ads and billboards?"

This is not a dumb question.

And this is a familiar scene. It's a summer evening and I'm somewhere downtown sipping an oaky chardonnay in a wholesome Midwest city. The person I'm talking to has already asked "Where are you from?" and "Why did you move to Ohio?" and "How did you meet (insert host's name)?" After "What do you do for work?" comes that follow-up invitation to talk about something I love so much I moved across the country for it: branding. 

The answer is that branding is not ads. It's not billboards. No. 

Branding is telling the truth about who you are with stories about your strengths using visual and verbal language that befits you. Branding is the place from which all the stuff we sense gets made. Branding is not only storytelling aimed at tapping into the psychological rhythm of culture—branding is part of that rhythm. Branding helps craft the truths we live by. Branding crafts culture. It's powerful. 

To build a powerful brand, the steps are simple. 

Step one: get the story right
Step two: express it
Step three: spread the news

Industry cousins, branding and marketing and advertising often get lumped together as one general commercial-ish thing to most people in other industries. A lot of people think that branding is the same as the swoosh on their sneakers (and they're not completely wrong, but not completely right) or the design of a website (again, not completely wrong...) 

It's true that the lines between these three categories of work are blurry and can cause confusion. In an effort to clarify what we do, (stay with me, I'm about to talk about hierarchy,) here's a definition of branding borrowed from Alina Wheeler's 2012 edition of Designing Brand Identity: "Branding is a disciplined process used to build awareness and extend customer loyalty. It requires a mandate from the top and readiness to invest in the future. Branding is about seizing every opportunity to express why people should choose one brand over another."

The understated key there is that branding "requires a mandate from the top." Branding requires the telling of the truth—the unequivocal, focused truth about who and how and why you are. Branding is the art of crafting well-anchored order in the chaos of being. Successful communication depends on that anchor. 

Step one: get the story right
Step two: express it
Step three: spread the news

Brand identity is the expression of that foundational strategic work. Brand identity encompasses the mark, the signature, the color palette. It's the stuff that often piques a felt need. But because it is necessarily subservient to that "mandate from the top," it must come second. To borrow more words from Wheeler, "Brand identity is tangible and appeals to the senses. You can see it, touch it, hold it, hear it, watch it move. Brand identity fuels recognition, amplifies differentiation, and makes big ideas and meaning accessible. Brand identity takes disparate elements and unifies them into whole systems."

Step one: get the story right
Step two: express it
Step three: spread the news

Step three is where the felt need, (i.e., our website is outdated or our advertising budget needs more dollars for it to work,) commonly but mistakenly drives the conversation. It makes sense that it would, considering the fact that marketing and advertising is often the place of first contact with audiences, but a conversation that starts and stays at the surface will never lead to a brand that thrives in the long run. 

Designers are often described as able to value both the logical and the intuitive. Science and art. Reason and emotion. If, like most individuals or groups, you want your project or business or corporation or institution to grow, start by investigating the core thing, the feeling people have about your brand, the big idea running the show. Start at the top.