Only You Can Brand You

 

To put it simply, a brand is what comes to mind when a person hears, sees, or thinks of you or your organization. It’s not a logotype. It’s not a typeface. It’s not an advertising campaign. There is no shortage of advertising/marketing firms and agencies who can help you develop an image, but only you can develop your brand—they are developed from within. In order to begin that development, you must first have a clear understanding of who you are. Marty Neumeier, author of Brand Gap, simplifies the introspective analysis needed by challenging his readers to answer three seemingly simple questions:

• Who are we?
• What do we do?
• Why does it matter?

As simple as these questions sound on the surface, we often struggle to answer them succinctly and honestly when put on the spot. If you can’t answer these questions, it’s time to take a step back and seriously evaluate and clarify your purpose. After all, unless you know who you are, you can’t expect to develop any any effective communication with your target community. As branding and marketing people, we can ask the questions but only you can provide the answers. Only YOU can brand YOU.

Gap vs. Gap

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This post is not about whether or not I prefer the briefly used new Gap logo (which I don’t). This post is to express that this kind of thing should never happen. In case you’re not aware, Gap tried to change the logo from the Gap-in-box to the sans-serif Gap. I don’t know whether the higher ups got tired, or if their design firm wanted a reason to bring in more revenue, or what else might have caused the idea that the logo should change, but this never should have happened.

With today’s discourse and literature on and practice of customer-centric business, customer relationship marketing, flattening of pyramids, social media, and empowerment of people, there is absolutely no excuse for this kind of debacle to happen at the corporate level. I’m going to keep this post brief (if you’d like to hear more of my opinion on this, just let me know), but if you are in a position to make business decisions (which you should, because everyone should be included in the process), before you make those decisions, ask those whom it will affect how it will affect them.

With tools like the telephone, Twitter, e-mail, Facebook, ethnography, etc., it would have been extremely simple for Gap to ask those who care how they react to the current logo, what comes to mind when people think of their brand, and if it was time to refresh. This complete breakdown in communication shows un incomprehensible lack of understanding of the market and customer engagement. Gap has obviously been  out of touch with their consumers (and thus likely their employees).

Be a member of the people you serve. Every decision you make ultimately affects them, so it only makes sense to include their input.