Branding is all about what the customers perceive of your business. Your brand is the promise that you intend to make to the customers. This episode takes that plainly, and spends its time on the second sentence rather than the first, because the promise is the part that has to be kept after the design work is finished.
A logo, a colour and a name are the notation. The brand is what a customer expects to happen next time, and it is set by what happened last time. That means branding is largely an operational subject wearing a creative coat.
What the episode works through
- Writing the promise down in one sentence before anything is designed.
- Checking whether the business can currently keep that promise every time.
- Consistency of tone across the places a customer actually meets the company.
- What a broken promise costs compared with never having made it.
- Why a small operation can hold a sharper promise than a large one.
The part that is easy to put off
Asking recent customers what they expected before they bought. The gap between that answer and the intended promise is the branding work, and no amount of new artwork closes it.
Next: EP. 24 The Lecor Lady, Business Lessons, Pivoting during the Pandemic & more · Back to Episodes