Someone asked me lately “what amount of revenue should I start caring about brand?”
I lol’d at such a silly question - but then it made me realise the term “brand”, much like “strategy” - has a thousand different interpretations.
(What they really meant was when should you start spending money on brand marketing - which is an entirely different question)
Anyway, I’m gunna share with you what brand really means and why it matters to know it.
But first, let me try and answer the original question in earnest - which led to this brain dump in the first place:
When should you care about brand? It depends on what you are selling.
If you are selling luxury goods - brand is your biggest lever. You cannot start “caring” about brand at 50m as a luxury brand. You won’t even get to £50m in the first place.
And “brand strategy” IS your “business strategy”. Such as decisions about who your audience is, or isn’t. Or what you as business care for, and what you don’t. What you are the ONLY brand doing. Not just a “brand” doing something “better”.
You have a brand from the moment you start a business - it’s up to you when you decide to start being intentional with it
If you are selling water bottles or wallets - your product matters more
If you are selling 1000 dollar water bottles or a 1000 dollar wallets - your brand matters more.
Ultimately - branding is signalling status
“People like me buy products like this”
“I want to be like someone that owns a Bentley”
People will subconsciously ask themselves “how does this maintain or elevate my status” - brand is the vehicle to make that story coherent in a prospects mind.
EVERYTHING you do is a signal that contributes to this overall image.
The mere fact you cannot go to a Ferrari dealership and buy a new Ferrari - is part of their brand.
Or why you need to be on a 3 year waiting list to buy a brand new Rolex.
Scarcity creates exclusivity - which elevates status of ownership. It’s all bullshit - but when we collectively decide to play along with it - it’s actually not bullshit lol.
When you see someone in a Ferrari - you wonder how they got so rich to buy a Ferrari. This is the primary reason that person purchased a Ferrari, because they want that feeling of knowing that’s how you will be thinking about them.
All of human life is a Status Game. And this is not a game you get to decide if you are playing or not. Rejecting the status game is a move in the game of status.
The primary reason I can sell card decks for $200+ is because of brand. And we cared about brand from the start.
Brand is not how it looks or sounds.
Brand is all the products we decide to NOT make and what to call them.
Brand is the what we do and don’t care about.
Brand is the mise en scène of business
Brand means how we do stuff. Take any given thing - like ads, website, communication. A strong brand means decisions on how to approach these things takes care of itself.
Brand is doing your business on purpose.
Brand is ultimately what people talk about behind your business’s back.
As always there isn’t an absolute answer - it’s a matter of context. If you are selling a commodity - no one gives a shit. There is no “luxury” energy. But you will find we now have “luxury” water lol. Guess what… all brand.
Brand is something I’ve personally invested a huge chunk of my career into learning and executing on.
We’re actually developing a Pip Deck for branding. It’s being authored by Alex Smith at basicarts.org who helped us really nail our brand strategy.
But you have to be careful because “brand” means a lot of different things to a lot of different people.
So my advice would be to go absorb as much as you can. Check out stuff like StoryBrand by Donald Miller. Read Purple Cow and other works by Seth Godin.
Ultimately the brand is already within you, as a founder - it just needs excavating.
Most Brand agencies are expensive, grifty fuckers who have no skin in the game with whether executing on your brand long term will work. That’s always going to be you.
Your brand will evolve - so it’s always going to be better to develop this in-house. And remain flexible long term.
You could totally find some good branding agencies to help you execute on aesthetics - but the point I’m making is that your brand strategy is so closely coupled with your business strategy - that most agencies are only going to focus of superficial shit.
If you build your business intentionally, with a clear strategy (what you are doing and what you are not doing, who it’s for and who it’s not for), you are likely “doing branding” without realising it.
The thin layer on top is how it looks and sounds.
And again - “brand” is what people are telling each other about your brand behind your back.
When an artist creates a work - they cannot control how people will respond to it. But they certainly have a lot of control in what kind of response they hope to invoke.
Like art - brand is 50% creator, 50% viewer.
And if none of this has driven my point home… “building a brand" does not mean putting together a 40 slide deck explaining the colour scheme and what feeling #24cf2f should convey.
Anyway, hope that was useful. Maybe not. Let me know in the comments.
You write from the heart, Charles. Or maybe, given the salty words being used, another place!
I don't know if I agree entirely, though you make some great points. Is "brand" equal to quality and exclusiveness? There is a recognisable McDonalds brand for example. Or the other recognisable one: Coca Cola.
I think "brand" is what advertising is selling, so branding is indistinguishable from advertising, so long as your advertising is setting your product or image apart from the competition.
The elements of what makes one product different from another is what advertising is selling when there are a number of different competing products. The tobacco in Lucky Strike cigarettes is toasted and is a selling point. Even though all the competitors have the same process. The information is meaningless, and marvellous.
Lego is another famous brand. For many years they had the building brick market essentially sewn up tight. And yet they put a lot of effort into branding and nobody would say they are - or were - a luxury product. Or an exclusive one.
As you say, it's how we do stuff. That's the branding. And that's the real product.
Thanks for another inspired rant. Things for me to chew on as I light up a Lucky.
Britni