Authentic brands: what you do matters more than what you say

Authentic brands don’t emerge from marketing cubicles or advertising agencies. They emanate from everything the company does.

Branding is a mercurial subject. Endlessly agonised over by organisations and individuals, it’s one of those divisive topics, prone to over-simplification or over-complication by practitioners, academics and charlatans. Branding exists it the space between subjectivity and objectivity — which is a tricky place to exist! But I’d suggest there are some fundamental tenets which help us understand the importance of branding and how we can develop, utilise and sustain a brand in order to sell our product, service or idea.

The sound of a tree falling in the woods

I’ve worked as a freelance with start-ups to develop brands, advised businesses and public sector organisations on branding and worked for many years with one of the most recognised brands in the UK — the NHS. I’ve seen the power of branding to shift opinion and sell units…and I’ve seen brands fall flat on their well-designed faces because of a fundamental lack of understanding of what a brand actually is.

There are a thousand definitions of brand but most agree that a brand is like the sound of a tree falling in the woods — it only exists if someone is there to hear it. A brand is the perception and accumulated experiences an individual has with an organisation . It is dynamic, not static and subject to change. Brands are how we feel. That’s why they are difficult to define. But like so much of life, our decisions are driven by feelings not strict logic, so branding matters.

We’ve all made a purchasing decision based on how we feel haven’t we? Whether it’s running shoes, holidays, hair conditioner or red wine, we’ve all allowed how we feel to direct our decision. The interesting thing after that purchase, our feelings toward the product have a real-world impact on how we consume and interact with them.

For example, a 2017 study suggested that informational cues such as the price of a wine can trigger expectations about its taste quality and thereby modulate the sensory experience on a reported and neural level.

American hotdogs

My wife is a teacher. While on playground duty recently, she broke up a game of British Bulldogs (Red Rover for the American reader), the bone shatteringly violent game long banned in schools. The very next day she saw the same group of children about to play British Bulldogs, and so sternly asked then what they were doing…

‘It’s a new game Miss, it’s called American Hotdogs’.

Whether the game being played was British Bulldogs, American Hotdogs or Polish Kielbasa — the result would have been the same; a broken elbow. Unfortunately this is the approach too many organisations take when it comes to branding. They mistake logos and visuals with the brand itself when in fact the logo is just a vehicle for values.

Branding exists in the space between objectivity and subjectivity

Authentic brands don’t emerge from marketing cubicles or advertising agencies. They emanate from everything the company does.

When trying to understand the values associated with your brand, you must look holistically at your customer experience — the whole journey. Only then can you get a sense of what your brand is and how you can reinforce or alter perception.

For public services this is a different proposition than Starbucks or Apple. The journey for our ‘customers’ (clients, citizens, patients, people) can be long or unexpected or circuitous and is often precipitated by human need rather than consumer need. However there are some common touch-points to evaluate:

• How do they find out about you?
• How can they interact with you?
• How are they treated?
• Is this treatment consistent across their journey?
• Is the service they are given objectively efficient?
• How is the after-care?

These questions summarise the experience of your customer and can give you insight into what you do well and what you don’t. This is where authenticity can be found — and this authenticity can then inform your logos, your straplines, you digital marketing, your stakeholder communication and your strategic planning — the vehicles for your values.

If our intention is to utilise and sustain a brand in order to sell our product, service or idea then we must start with the values and experience of our customers. They are the precursors to the vitality and health of our brand, because the addage is as true today as it ever was; what you do matters more than what you say.