What is a brand?
A lot of us in strategic marketing roles grumble about the tendency in organizations to equate the word ‘brand’ with a company’s logo, colors, typography, or tagline, but it’s understandable given that common sources like Wikipedia reinforce this perception: “A brand is a name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that distinguishes one seller’s good or service from those of other sellers.”
Google’s definition, courtesy of Oxford Languages speaks a little more to the marketing value of brand: “A type of product manufactured by a particular company under a particular name.”
In more comprehensive fashion, Merriam-Webster provides no less than five definitions of the noun ‘brand’, with definition 4.d taking the most expansive view: “A public image, reputation, or identity conceived of as something to be marketed or promoted.”
There are many more definitions out there- so which one is right? The answer is all of them.
In higher education and for American universities in particular, which do many things for many constituencies, brand has become a topic of great interest and investment over the last 20 years. SimpsonScarborough, a higher education brand and marketing agency, once defined brand as “the sum total of all associations made with your institution.” I like this because it is confoundingly abstract–how does one even go about calculating such a sum?
But it also speaks to the truth that no matter the category, industry, and market, any brand that is salient and valuable is defined and owned by the customers and the market it serves. This means all the business really owns is their brand strategy.
And if the essence of strategy is choosing a position and making choices not just about where you will compete but also where you won’t, then having some organizational clarity about how your company defines brand can make it easier to mobilize your energies and investments in service of that strategy. Here are just a few of the forms a brand can take:
A tribe. A brand can be a community that customers feel like they are part of and belong to, be it product brands like Harley Davidson, Tesla, or Apple; artists like Taylor Swift, Metallica, or the Rolling Stones; collegiate and professional sports teams; educational institutions; and even geographical brands like cities, regions, states, and nations.
A reputation that drives consumer behavior. The brand can represent a clear expectation from the customer- e.g. Apple = innovative; Amazon = convenient; Walmart = cheap; Volvo = safe.
A promise. Brand can mean a credible promise the business makes to their consumers (“Nothing runs like a Deere”; “Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.” “Save money. Live Better.”) that they must deliver on.
A strategic position. In this sense, your brand means the space you want to occupy in the minds of your target customers and market relative to the alternatives and competition- whether you seek to be the category-defining leader, a distinctive challenger brand, or a substitute brand.
A valuable business asset. One of my favorite definitions of brand is “the ability to charge a premium”. Brand as expressed by signals like pricing makes consumer choice easier, whether you seek the best value or the best, period.
What these examples all have in common is the primary manifestation of their brand is suited to the job it needs to do for the business.
What you don’t want is to have a brand strategy that is misaligned with your business strategy. What does that look like? A logo that signals nothing to the viewer, or is always changing. A tagline that is meaningless or worse yet a lie. It means hype without any heart to back it up. History is littered with the refuse of wannabe brands who defined it in the superficial sense not by the nature of the business’s relationship to its customers
Why is it important to think through this? Because it can save you, your organization, or your clients time, money, and headaches. Don’t waste your energy and resources trying to be a tribe if your customers aren’t seeking that from you. Don’t go to the trouble of a tagline or story if there’s no one to make use of it. Don’t invest in a social media strategy if you don’t have an audience there that wants to hear from you. Don’t over-think your positioning and differentiation too much if your whole strategy depends on copying your category leader and offering a more affordable substitute.
Brand is hard to define and harder to measure, but also essential to manage. Knowing what kind of brand yours is, and what your customers need it to be, will make that task easier and your efforts way more impactful.
