What makes a brand different to a business?
For our intents and purposes:
a brand story that creates and emotional appeal - a sense of kinship - if I may dare say so, with your customer.
FUBU's founder Daymond John leveraged his African-American heritage and associated FUBU with hip-hop artists and rappers like LL cool J and Busta Rhymes to position the brand into prominence. FUBU stands for For Us By Us - speaking directly to his core African-American audience. This does not mean that the brand did not have customers of other ethnicities. The FUBU brand found it's positioning in their "pride of origin". Nobody else was doing this in their industry at the time.
A business is not a brand – a business is a collection machinery, infrastructure and personnel, but it’s not a brand. You build a brand in the head of your customer. It’s the difference is between being Coke or Pepsi vs zillions of generic cans of cola that watch on lovelessly from their shelves as the customer reaches for their favourite brand of beverage.
Telling the brand story
A brand story is built by delivering a consistent narrative with a singularity of thought over time. Depending on the brand, the narrative could be inspirational, entertaining, educational or downright utilitarian, or a combination of things. It is this brand narrative that:
• Builds familiarity and relatability and
• attracts, aligns with and grows the right audience,
• attracts, aligns with and grows the right audience,
It creates a subconscious feeling of one-ness with the brand that draws the customer back to the brand each time even if the brand is more expensive than others or has limited product availability or any other seeming weakness.
Think of your market as a ladder in the mind of your prospects - with a brand on each rung. Just like any ladder you climb this one starting at the bottom. Instead of fighting an uphill battle with other more established brands on an existing product ladder, you want to bring your own ladder to play. The best way to do this is by being the first one in your space - by being a leader i.e. you have invented something new and have successfully gone to market before anybody else - you are the likes of Tesla or SpaceX or Viagra. Think hard, is there anything that you're doing that no one else is, even if you narrow down your focus?
Or you could reposition yourself in such a way that you create a space or a gap in your prospect's mind and then occupy it. 7Up repositioned itself as 'The Uncola' and found it's own one rung product ladder than competing with the established cola brands - not only that it also sneaked it's way up on the Cola ladder. Virgin Atlantic brought sexy, suave and style into the airline market. And marked their territory by adding the word 'Atlantic' to their name. And they didn't just reposition themselves, they live this repositioning which is reflected in their customer experience.
Imagine that you are a fashion brand with your own manufacturing facility along with two decades of experience running the plant and that you’re very good at what you do. This partially makes for a terrific position to occupy in the customer's mind. This also makes a fantastic brand story – not the whole story but an important part of it. This element alone communicated under one solid brand umbrella could put you in a completely different league to your those competitors who are simply intermediaries like brokers, drop shippers and white box operators.
Find your niche... your competitive advantage... the thing that makes you stand out from the other players in your space. Then - and more importantly - find that gap in your customer's mind that no one's occupied yet.
Here are some of the questions you'll need to answer to fully discover and position your brand:
• Who are you want to compete with i.e. are you playing college football or in the major league?
• Who are you categorically not competing with?
• Who are your top three customer groups?
○ what are their pain points?
○ how do you address them differently to the competition?
• What is your brand personality.
E.g. if the brand were a celebrity, would it be a David Beckham or Sporty Spice or someone else?
• What is your attitude to running promotions like sales, and discounting your products or services?
○ For e.g. Formula 1 would rather have empty seats on race day than discount their ticket price.
• What does the brand associate with and disassociate with?
○ Consider everything from climate and the environment to sex, religion and politics.
• What’s your tone of voice, define in detail
○ the words or not use
○ the visuals you use or avoid
○ your design language
• Who are you categorically not competing with?
• Who are your top three customer groups?
○ what are their pain points?
○ how do you address them differently to the competition?
• What is your brand personality.
E.g. if the brand were a celebrity, would it be a David Beckham or Sporty Spice or someone else?
• What is your attitude to running promotions like sales, and discounting your products or services?
○ For e.g. Formula 1 would rather have empty seats on race day than discount their ticket price.
• What does the brand associate with and disassociate with?
○ Consider everything from climate and the environment to sex, religion and politics.
• What’s your tone of voice, define in detail
○ the words or not use
○ the visuals you use or avoid
○ your design language
Build a brand. Then you can focus on building relationships, trust and loyalty with your customers, rather than making it a daily grind of promoting your product over and over again to the lowest bidder.
My name is Ben, I am a freelance creative director and designer. Here's a bit more about me and here are the services I offer. I operate in London and areas of Berkshire including Reading, Bracknell, Crowethorne and Wokingham. To discuss your requirements, drop me a line at ben@bettercallben.studio.