I usually describe branding as the “real estate” property you own in other people’s brains. And I literally think at it like some piece of the cortex which gets activated when they think at your products.
For instance, the “running shoes” real estate is owned by Mizuno, in my brain. The “luxury car” is owned by BMW, the “classy watch” is owned by Rolex, and “mobile phone” tends to be owned by Apple, lately.
Almost every human concept can be defined as a real estate property in one’s brain. And what we call a “brand” is actually the connection between that real estate on the brain’s cortex and a specific product .
Once you succeed in owning a pice of real estate in people’s brains, you’re set.
But how can you do this? Again, there are libraries dedicate to the topic and I can barely scratch the surface of the topic in one tiny blog post.
Nevertheless, I’ll try to be as exhaustive as I can.
3 Simple Ways To Enforce Your Brand
- Be Clear
The foundation of any successful brand is the ability to clearly define the product (or the service) it stands for. The ability to make it obvious to the point that people will start using the brand name for the object defined. Like “I didn’t buy a purse, I just bought a Louis Vuitton.” Or “I don’t own a German luxury car. I own a BMW”.
Too many young entrepreneurs, especially in the beginning, are complicating their products to the point they become completely obfuscated. Sometimes, even they forget what the product was.
If what you do is not clear to you, there won’t be any brand popping out of it, by itself.
So, it’s fundamental to be very clear about what you’re selling.
- Be Consistent
Next step is to be consistent. Once you know exactly that you make only running shoes, or only luxury cars, then stay with the concept. Stay with the name. Stay with the artwork of the logo. Just be consistent to the point of becoming boring.
It takes a tremendous amount of time to own that part of the cortex. Sometimes it may even take more than a lifetime. Think about car brands that are older than you, like Ford or Mercedes-Benz.
It’s true that during the life of a product, you may have to improve (see the third point below) but the consistency of the brand must supersede any improvement and make clear that you are what the users think you are.
Mizuno sells running shoes. Period. They are very clear about that and even if they use a ton of patent pending technology in their shoes, they’re never steering too far away from the actual product: a simple running shoe. So when I think of a good running shoe, it’s just easier for the brain to make all the synapses and fire that specific part of my cortex. That’s consistency.
The same with BMW. Although they’re selling a bunch of other things on wheels (like motorbikes, for instance) they’re always very clear about what their main product, their brand, their core association on the cortex is: they make luxury, powerful cars.
- Keep Improving
The world is moving. Always. The only constant in our lives is change. So keep improving your products. But do it in such a way that it will preserve your brand identity and your core values.
A Rolls Royce engine is not the same as it used to be 50 years ago, yet when you experience a Rolls Royce today it’s the same brand. The main traits have been preserved, although the engine has been updated to keep pace with the normal engine evolution. Had it stopped this evolution, Rolls Royce brand identity would have weakened substantially.
That connection in the cortex that is creating the brand is always enforced when each and every interaction with your product validates the expectations. So people expect a BMW to be fast, but also adapted to modern safety requirements, like having airbags and ABS. That what it means to keep improving.
If I would have to sum up in just one phrase what it takes to create a great brand, it would look like this:
And yes, it’s much more difficult to actually make that happen than to define it.
This post is part of a 30 days challenge on business, you can find the entire list of articles here.
I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running.
