Brand Central Station

… and what it’s not.

The Media Orchard blog has an interesting post about brands and branding.  They take on Jeff Bezo’s comment that “a brand for a company is like a reputation for a person.”  And rightly so.  As the Baradels’ team at the Orchard point out, branding is a little more complex than that.

Instead, they say, branding is much more:

Branding is all about personification — giving human traits to things that aren’t human … Branding communicates the continuity of a company’s business model — to shareholders, to customers, to employees. It says, “This is the kind of person we are — if we were actually a person.” 

But here’s the hard truth to the matter:

Corporations are not human. And that’s a good thing, because if they were human, they would be sociopaths. This isn’t a cheap shot. A sociopath is a person who is interested only in their personal needs and desires. By definition, corporations are designed expressly to serve the interests of their shareholders — and only those interests.

Now, these are important facts to bring up when discussing brands and branding, but they only tell part of the story.

Branding is not all about personification.  Brands are representative, that’s all.  They are emotional shorthand for a relationship an individual has created between a thing (a product, a person, a company, etc.) and the values, ideas, emotions and knowledge associated with that thing.

Personification, the process of creating a “human quality” for a brand, is one way of establishing that relationship – but it’s not the only way.  There’s nothing wrong with that approach, it just may not be the most direct route to establishing brand equity because its path may be impeded by secondary concerns or prejudices.

The second part of the first observation offered – that branding communicates continuity – just scratches the surface.  Continuity is communicated through practiced consistency.  What really needs to be communicated are the values associated with the brand.  And those need to be congruent with the brand’s proposed position to the market.  Failure to continuously make your case through all lines of available communication upsets your brand’s continuity and tears away at your brand’s equity in the mind of the audience.

Good branding work builds continuity and brand value.  But failure to do that work will still result in a brand impression. 

The wrong kind of impression.

You see, branding happens whether we want it to or not.  It’s part of how we, as humans, learn, understand and organize information.  Failing to understand how it all works – or, worse yet, dismissing it as “warm and fuzzy” marketing of little to no value – exposes your venture unnecessarily.

Finally, I can’t point out how important it is for people (professional communicators, clients and consumers/customers) to realize the relevance of the last point made in the Media Orchard post.  Corporations might be “good citizens” – but they are amoral.  They don’t care.  They can’t.  They’re not human.

That is why branding, as a discipline, can never take a day off.  Professional communicators, business owners, managers and employees have to work every day to infuse some element of humanity into the operation of the amoral enterprise they operate.  That’s okay.  If it’s done right, organizational might can multiply the effect of the individuals involved.

But to ever think you’ve “finished” establishing a brand is perilous.

Great post.  Got me thinking on a cold Monday morning.  Thanks to Scott and Cathy and the rest of the folks at Media Orchard.