Branding is about creating a permanent improvement loop where we modify our assets to change customers to have the view about us that we want
What is our brand? To many businesses, it’s a a checklist of assets. The logo. The tone of voice description. The style guide. But these are just tools.
Our brand is a combination of identity and meaning. Identity is the part we control. Meaning is harder though, because it’s what our customers think. We should be pushing our identity into every campaign, but the audience still needs to ‘get it’. Remember, communication isn’t about broadcasting, it’s about being heard and understood.
What do our customers tell themselves after they see our ads, use our product, or read our ‘About’ page? We might have designed our brand to be all about ‘innovation’, but if the customers think ‘cheap’, that’s the brand. Perception is reality.
To summarise, we need to create a permanent improvement loop where we compare what customers think about us with what we intend, and then modify our branding assets to persuade them to change their views to what we want.