REAL BRAND – Peter Bonnici – AAD Blog

‘Real Brand’

Having read Clinton Howell on Branding (15 January 2012), I was reminded how complexity and confusion surrounding the ‘B’ word can blunts its ability to deliver to its full potential.

Some people take PR activity to be ‘branding’. PR, however, is just a channel for brand communication, as is advertising. And anything communicated about the company – even good news – isn’t necessarily communicating the brand. Take this example: ‘M&S food sales saw buoyant Xmas activity’. Now what do you learn about the feel, the personality, the brand, of M&S? Sweet Zero! So not only is PR not branding, but merely mentioning the name of the company isn’t either.

Of course people do take name and brand to be synonymous, as evidenced by question such as ‘What brand of perfume do you wear?’ being answered by: ‘Jo Malone’ or the like.  Someone should tell the one who answered that they were answering the question: ‘What’s the name of your perfume?’ And someone should tell the questioner to be clear about what they are asking: were they after a name or was something more esoteric intended by their question.

Let’s cut to the chase: brand is the word or concept that arises in the mind of the person when they hear your name. If all that that comes up at the mention of your name is ‘dealer’ or ‘antiques’ then you are in trouble because those two words are also likely to come to mind on the mention of several names of antique dealers. You are an also-ran: why should anyone buy from you?

Ahhh… people start getting the game, so they begin choosing words that they hope will give them the sought-after distinction. ‘Expertise’, ‘integrity’, ‘professionalism’, ‘long-standing’… they exclaim! This is when it needs to be quietly pointed out that a word only has brand-value when someone wishes to ‘own’ its opposite. E.g. ‘We are the dealers you should be dealing with because we have no expertise, scant integrity or professionalism, and decided to get into this business last week!’ This is not a black and white matter: ‘low cost’ (at least in the beer world) could have value because someone is prepared to be ‘reassuringly expensive’. So don’t be fast, look for the gap…

What’s being looked for aren’t clever words that some marketing hack can play about with, but words that express the very truth of your business. What is your dream? Why are you doing this? Would you leave a gap if you packed up shop, would anyone notice? Who’d miss you? What do you really stand for? What value wouldn’t you abandon even if it meant losing you the deal? The answers might surprise you and free you. And not only you, but also your audience, because everyone knows when they are being spun a story and when they are hearing the real thing. And in a sector where it’s sometimes difficult to distinguish one dealer’s stock from another’s, the ring of truth could be what swings the difference.

‘Real Brand’ starts you on a journey during the course of which you might fall in love with your business again, you remember why you started, what pressed your buttons, what got you out of bed in the mornings but somehow got lost on the way and now gets re-discovered. And we haven’t even started to talk about how to express the truth though the verbal and visual languages. Do you get a sense of same-old, same-old when you see ad after ad by the trade? And what about swirly script face logo after swirly script face logo? Or minimalist thin, sans serif type?

But that’s another story.

Peter