We are surrounded by countless brands and companies that want to become one. Not only companies try to be perceived as a brand, but individuals also strive to stand out and become known. Digitalization is changing how we communicateand increases the general necessity to differentiate from competitors in dense markets and reach the attention of the right people. And yet—or precisely because of this—there is great confusion when it comes to the topic of brand. As a freelancer or entrepreneur, but also as an employee, it is worthwhile to engage with the meaning of brands in order to recognize and leverage the opportunities associated with them. Brands are more than just empty shells.
The brand of a company or a person can and should be regarded as the greatest possible intangible asset. This value, which can be distributed (diversified) across various “assets,” works inwardly as well as outwardly and significantly influences future business success.
The use of the term is diverse, ambiguous, and often misleading. Even among creative service providers and agencies, there is often a lack of a differentiated understanding of how brand and business are connected and influence each other. Branding and marketing then often become synonyms that are mixed wildly with other concepts without really having understood the interrelations.
To distinguish the concept “brand” from its colloquial uses, let us first bring to mind what a brand is not.
A brand is not
- the brand name
- the logo
- the self-image of a person
- the social media or web presence
- the product
- the promise
- the service
While all of these aspects are important components of the brand concept, none of the points mentioned represents a correct and helpful definition for everyday business. There are often very different and partly incorrect ideas among freelancers, entrepreneurs, and employees about what a brand is, what significance it has, and what it actually serves.
For the building and further development of the brand to succeed, all those involved should first gain a basic understanding of what possibilities brands can create for people and organizations—and how this can succeed.
Your brand looks different in every mind
The brand is the result of all touchpoints a person has had so far with the company through experienced behavior and perceived communication. This means it is not the company or the person who decides “I am a brand,” but rather the behavior of other people shows “This is a brand.”
What impression do we leave behind? Which emotions, which images, associations, and characteristics are linked to the brand as a result? – The answer is always individual, and yet strong brands seem to have a connecting core between owner, employees, customers, partners, and society. Successful brands manage to create coherence that allows an overarching brand image to grow out of individual impressions.
The goal is to create experiences—on a small as well as a large scale—that are memorable and unforgettable in order to anchor yourself in the minds of the right people.
The brand therefore only comes into being in the minds (and hearts) of the people who come into contact with it. Not the logo, the product, the promise, the flyer, or the website itself, but the emotions, associations, and attributes linked to them in real people make the brand existent and alive.
Due to our individual experiences and subjective perception and interpretation filters, every person has their own (or no) version of the brand in their mind. Put differently: every person has different associations and attributes in mind and processes them in their own way when a particular brand is called to awareness.
If it succeeds in generating sufficient resonance internally in order to bundle energies and align them toward a meaning and purpose, the desired effect and the appropriate image can emerge externally.
The brand is the current reputation that people attribute to the business. The brand is thus the trust account for future business. The brand is the answer to the question of how our business and our work are perceived by our customers, employees, partners, and competitors—and with which emotions and thoughts they are stored in people’s minds.
The internal & external view
To understand the concept of brand even better, as so often, the distinction between internal and external world helps. As we have already seen, every brand is the “energetic result” externally, which we can influence through our behavior and our communication.
Behavior and communication, in turn, arise from our personal and organizational identity. Given consistency and coherence, an image emerges among those people whose attention comes into contact with the brand.
This perspective is meant to help us, when it comes to brand, think primarily of those people who are to be convinced and inspired by it. Because only through these people does identity become image. Only through them does the brand become an asset.
In our experience, however, the brand is more often understood as a self-image. Then, especially with too strong an emotional attachment to one’s own company, the necessary foresight and empathy are missing in order to put oneself in the shoes of the people who see value in our promises and are willing to pay for it (customers) or contribute something to it (employees and partners).
So the question arises as to how the power of a brand—known to move mountains, ignite fires, and generate pull forces—comes into being and what influence we can have on it. How can we use the brand as an energy source to strengthen our business and attract the right people? And how does a brand form externally in the first place?
We have already learned: The image a person currently (!) has of a brand and the reputation attributed to it arise from the experiences and encounters one has had so far with the offerings, the communication, and the behavior.
The key therefore lies in preserving the consistency and coherence of the brand identity in communication and behavior at all touchpoints with the brand in order to enable memorable and unforgettable experiences for the right people.
But what causes the experiences a person has with the brand to remain in memory for a long time and in a positive way? The answer, as so often, first leads us into the internal world.
The driving force of a company and customers’ enthusiasm usually originate first from the owner or the founders. One day, perhaps you too decided to embark on a self-employed or entrepreneurial path. You therefore bundled your individual personality, your unique perspective, and your competencies in order to offer certain people the greatest possible benefit and to benefit from it yourself. Or at least one of the two.
If you then increasingly succeed in reaching people with your offerings and inspiring them through results and experiences, a brand forms externally, which in turn attracts similar people with the same values.
The power that the brand ignites externally and the value that can be generated for the business are therefore usually strongly linked to the energy and passion of the pioneers who founded and established the business. If there is access to this identity, it can be linked with the intentions of the right people (customers, employees, and partners) in order to generate resonance and impact internally as well as externally.
Perhaps, at some point while building your company, you also brought additional people on board who felt drawn to a similar meaning and, out of intrinsic motivation, devoted themselves to the purpose of the venture (at least for a while). Then you succeeded in transferring personal identities into an organizational identity. The resonance that arises through a shared identity within the organization is the foundation for effectiveness and success externally.
The prevailing resonance internally is the foundation for generating resonance externally. Resonance creates impact.
Only when all those involved identify with the value promise and can contribute in a self-determined way does a driving force emerge that leads to excellent customer results and experiences and allows the brand to grow sustainably.
The resonance we create through our behavior and our communication is the key to an unforgettable and highly effective brand with a view to achieving business goals.
The brand can thus also be understood as a sounding board that determines how much attention a person gives to the behavior and communication of the brand and how these touchpoints are evaluated.
