Want To Be A Contender? Build A Brand, Not A Logo

You may be asking yourself, “Why do you need a brand when you have a loyal customer base and recurring revenues”? Or maybe you find yourself saying, “My brand is fine. I already have a logo.”

While a logo is a necessary component of your brand, it can’t stand alone as the sole front facing image of your business. What if you were to undergo a name change or updated logo? How would you describe your brand then? To elaborate, what does the word brand mean to you?

Let’s start by defining the word brand.

A brand as defined by Investopedia is a,

Distinguishing symbol, mark, logo, name, word, sentence or a combination of these items that companies use to distinguish their product from others in the market.

“…A combination of these items that companies use to distinguish their product from others on the market,” is what we’d like you to focus on.

Unless you’ve developed a revolutionary technology, are introducing a technically superior product or have found yourself in an emerging market, chances are you have a healthy field of competitors. Your logo alone is not enough to warrant your success against a business with a quality product/service and killer brand.

Everyone else has a cool logo and great color scheme, but a fancy logo without any substance behind it might as well continue to be a blank canvas. So, how do you make yourself stand out from the crowd?

Hailed as the “Father of Advertising,” David Ogilvy believed a brand to be “the intangible sum of a product’s attributes.”

Jerry McLaughlin, CEO of Branders.com, puts it like this,

Your ‘brand’ is what your prospect thinks of when he or she hears your brand name. It’s everything the public thinks it knows about your name brand offering—both factual (e.g. It comes in a robin’s-egg-blue box), and emotional (e.g. It’s romantic). Your brand name exists objectively; people can see it. It’s fixed. But your brand exists only in someone’s mind.

Here at TalenAlexander we focus on brand development and management because that’s what we love to do. However, branding is more than just the focus of our business model, but an essential component of launching, promoting, and running a successful business.

How do we accomplish successful brand development & management for our clients? The key lies in culture.

Our culture drives a progressive business model geared towards utilizing the best and brightest across various backgrounds. Whether introverted or extroverted, male or female, methodical or chaotic, we all share one common denominator: The pursuit of creative excellence.

We’re not trendspotting, we’re trendsetting, and we know that the only way to accomplish such is by merging the old school with the new school. There are several tier one companies that we’re sure you’re already familiar with who extend employment opportunity with a similar philosophy; to name a few, Google, Apple, Amazon, Complex, etc.

These companies embrace the uniqueness comprising their culture and in turn the dedication wrought through employer-employee relations is of world shaping proportion.

Culture is the intangible secret ingredient to creating long term value with customers. Now, your internal culture may not look the same as Google or Apple, but it doesn’t have to either. You should acknowledge the people and personalities with whom you’ve surrounded yourself, endorse the philosophy under which you operate, and stick to your business model.

Take for example, The Weiners Circle or  Dick’s Last Resort , two restaurants known for their particularly obnoxious staff who will insult you. Their business models are quite a novelty, but through the passionate personalities operating the brick-and-mortar locations they each have gained national attention.

Allow your culture to support your logo, brand name, tagline, and other collateral so that you may begin to build your reputation.

Food for thought: The true mark of a successful brand is when it becomes known by more endearing names e.g. Harris Teeter or “Harry Teet”; Wal-Mart or “Wally World”; Target or “Tar-je”; McDonald’s or “Mickey D’s”; Nike or “Nykes”

#LOVEYOURBRAND