A branding exercise
Rethink what you think a brand is.
❌ A brand is not a logo
❌ It's not a product
❌ It's not the sum of all the impressions it makes on an audience
✅ A brand is a promise of what to expect the next time someone engages with you
✅ It's a person's gut feeling about your product and service
It's in their heads and in their hearts.
✅ It's your reputation
If you think that branding or rebranding is logo-ing or re-logo-ing, you don't understand it well enough.
Being named Sam is not a brand. Sam is your name, not a promise. If you're a visionary, selfish hustler, that's your brand.
Alternatively, you can't say "We're Nike" by pointing to your sneakers because, in a blind taste test, everything is the same.
It's something else. It's about doing the work we care about, work that people honor and share with others.
If Nike were to open a hotel, we would probably correctly guess what it would be like.
Seth Goldin rightly puts it:
"I don’t care about your logo, really. Few of us do. If you don’t believe me, look hard at the logos for Starbucks, Neutrogena and Hermes. It really doesn’t matter."
Making a name sound good or a logo look good doesn't really matter.
Ultimately, it's about bringing life to it. And naturally, people will associate the name with the brand.
If this newsletter resonates with you, here are three more ways I can help:
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Book me as a keynote speaker. Reach out at alvis (at) designlabb (dot) cc
Glad to see you here.
See you next week,
Alvis