The term branding people use it interchangeably with logo design, identity design or even sometimes typography and maybe we need to set the record straight. Yeah so let’s start with what branding is NOT, okay it’s cuz it’s not a lot of things people say it is.
What Branding is Not !!
It’s not a logo okay. A logo is a very useful tool for business but it’s not the brand. It’s a symbol for the brand. A brand is not a product, some people talk about this brand buying this brand of that brand. They’re really talking about buying one product or another product. The brand is not that people say. The brand is a promise the company makes to customers and there’s some truth in that, yeah it does end up acting as a promise but that’s not what it is either.
Advertising people like to say well it’s the sum of all the impressions that a company makes on an audience. Well you know if you’re trying to sell a lot of impressions I can see where that might be useful to you but in front of businesses point of view why do they want that. Creative people understand what they’re doing so none of those things are really what branding is.
What is a Brand Then ?
A brand is a result, it’s it’s a customer’s gut feeling about a product a service or a company it ends up in their heads, in their hearts, they take whatever raw materials you throw at them and they make something out of it. But it’s they who are making it they’re creating it and so in a sense when you create a brand you’re not creating one brand, you’re creating millions of brands.
Like however many customers are people in your audience, each one has a different brand of you. So brand is like a reputation right, so it’s your business reputation and everyone’s going to be a little bit different about what that reputation is. That’s okay as long as you have it controlled mostly where you want it and that it’s beneficial to the company so we tend to look at companies.
What Does Designers and Clients Think ?
And designers tend to look at branding as from our point of view like this is something we’re doing, we’re telling a story where we’re making a claim or you know we’re making a pitch and and that’s what we do but that’s not what a brand is. The brand is the result of that and if you don’t start there you don’t know what you’re doing, you actually don’t know it you. You think you know what you’re doing but you don’t. So from a designer’s point of view, I mean It always tend to be this way. It’s like I just had my gut feeling about whether this is going to work or not and then I would sell it as hard as I could sign off on it.
And What Does The Client Think ?
From the client’s point of view they’re going about the checklist… I got the logo, I got the tagline, I got the ad campaign. They think they’re done, none of that’s right you know what’s right is what happens in people’s heads, like what we achieved, what’s the reputation that we’ve created through the products we’re putting out the design of the products the messaging we’re putting out the look and feel of them are culture. You know how does that affect people how employees behave. You know how is that affecting our reputation all that stuff accounts so it’s a big world and it actually takes in almost all business not so much finance. But finances are also involved too, because finance has to green light all these things but almost everybody in a in a company is you know affecting the brand, doing something with the brand doing it for the brand or hurting a brand.
If you want to take a look at the latest TV Commercial that ISMedia Works created, do check it out HERE