The topic of branding has been nudging me a lot lately, sort of like my cat does when he wants attention. I have talked a lot about branding in the past; about what it is and why you should pay attention to it. It seems that recently branding has become one of the darling buzzwords of the industry and creating your personal brand is all it takes to become a gajillionaire and land your own TV reality show. Gah!! What are you thinking?

Here is what branding means to me.

Branding is the visual (or auditory, think Intel) signal that triggers a response in people. That response should be the instant recall of all you do, have done and stand for. It should imediately evoke in them a knowledge of your style and place in the industry.

It is not enough that they recognize ‘it’, they must recognize everything for which ‘it’ stands. What’s more, it had better ring true.

You can’t hang a shiny new upscale logo on a meat and potatoes caterer and think you are suddenly upscale. First you have to earn it. The same thing works in reverse.

It doesn’t matter whether you are just starting out or are well established, your visual trigger, or brand, has to represent the whole backstory. It has to tell the tale.

There is only one way for that to work, you have to know the backstory, you have to know who you are and what you stand for. What’s more, you have to be honest about it to both yourself and your consumer. Today’s consumer can smell a fraud a mile away.

You see, it isn’t really the visual signal that matters, it is what it represents.

You know me, here are a a few examples.

I work with a association of wedding vendors. They have established over time an repetition a solid brand represented by a certain red circle logo.  New board comes in, hate the colors and wants to change the entire look of all the marketing material.  I got to test this out last month at a series of bridal shows.

I would first hand out a piece of the new marketing material and the response would be the typical bridal show blank stare.  I would then hand them a piece of the old collateral and the response was one of immediate recognition.  They not only knew the association but had been to its website and loved it. All it took to change the response was a single red dot icon.

What do you think, should they lose the red dot device?

I am working with another client, a caterer who started out as a meat and potatoes, simple fare kind of operation.  Over the years  her business has grown dramatically. She has established a reputation that is trusted as a qualified professional operation and she has hired a wonderfully creative chef. She is now able to offer a decidedly upscale, gourmet type of cuisine. Unfortunatly, her logo still evokes pot roast instead of fillet with truffle butter. There is nothing inherently wrong with the logo. It is just that in the minds of potential customers is still means pot roast.

The challenge is, to create a new logo to represent what her company has evolved into without losing the positive response that already exists. The backstory has evolved, the visual trigger has to as well. The plan is to subtly change the logo, keep the colors and redo the website and copy.  I’ll let you know how it goes.

Then there is the dear friend that has built a personal brand with out even thinking about it.  What logo and branding there is came about more by chance than design.  You have all heard me talk about eWedNewz and Paul Pannone. His brand has skyrocketed in the last year just by relentlessly doing what he does, by always being true to himself and never being afraid to put it out there. Today, newz with a “Z” means something. It means edgy, honest and unafraid. He didn’t go into this with the goal of claiming the letter ‘Z’ as his own, but it got hung on him and he is running with it.  In this case, he built the backstory, the brand if you will, and the visual icon just developed.