Your brand is not your logo or color scheme, it’s how people think about you

alexqgb 15 years ago |

Having worked in ad services for many years (to the point where I really can't stand the words 'brand', 'branding' and 'brand equity') I just think "reputation" instead. Because that's what it is.

joshkaufman 15 years ago | |

"Branding" is an overrated buzzword: http://personalmba.com/branding-overrated-buzzword/

lessallan 15 years ago |

I totally agree! http://b.lesseverything.com/2010/3/30/brand-is-the-aftermath...

ThomPete 15 years ago |

Interface is brand.

(Shameless Plug)

http://000fff.org/mr-brand-manager-tear-down-this-wall/

michaelpinto 15 years ago |

I have a background in branding so I don't want to throw cold water on this post, but you can take things a step further: For a startup your product is the most engaging aspect of your brand — so get it right.

faulkner8 15 years ago | |

From the post:

3. Creating a genuinely useful product.

michaelpinto 15 years ago | | |

It's a bit more than a "useful product" — for example an engaging game like Farmville isn't "useful" but it does quite a bit of brand building within the product. In many ways you an give software a personality (example: gamification), and those little touches might not be useful in and of themselves. A good real world example would be that the old Macs booted up with an icon of the computer with a smiley face — that wasn't useful but it was a great brand building exercise. Contrasting with that Acer did the same thing with their monitors and their logo was so ugly it made the brand cheap.

faulkner8 15 years ago | | |

I think the product is the obvious part of brand experience and the one that most startups think is the silver bullet. It isn't...there is no silver bullet. It is about delighting people every single time they come in contact with your company.

In a B2C context, the only contact the user may have may be the product in which case focusing the brand experience around the solely around the product may make sense.

In a B2B context there are touch points such as support and customer service, billing, development, etc. Whether you know it or not, you are have the opportunity to build a relationship with that customer at every single touch point. If they have an experience that blows them away at every time they come in contact with your company...this is something that goes way beyond just having an engaging product. This is something they will want to tell others about.

nametoremember 15 years ago |

I would have assumed everyone would know this stuff, especially on HN.

sambeau 15 years ago |

<grumpy opinion> A single color scheme is the second-most immature form of branding, just behind combining initials into a logo. </grumpy opinion>

vacri 15 years ago | |

I'm not so sure. At my last company, we sold to four reasonably separate industries with a small amount of overlap. The four lines of products had nothing in common to look at - different shapes and styles, different colours. The marketing department liked the different colours because it made sorting the propaganda cough sorry, I mean 'info packs' easier. But the effect was that there was no commonality in the field - a user from one industry crossing into another would not recognise our equipment.

For the marketing power of unified forms and colour schemes, see Apple. Colour schemes all by themselves probably aren't enough, but they are a fundamental part of 'form'.

sambeau 15 years ago | | |

I don't think you can use Apple to make this point. Apple do not have a company colour and they just have one very simple logo: an apple (not a weird union of A, P, L & E). Software gets logos usually in the form of an icon. Hardware has iconic photography. Icons and logos change with time. This is sophisticated adult branding.

skmurphy 15 years ago |

Two definitions for brand I find useful:

"relevant differentiated promise"

"your brand is the promise you keep" Kristin Zhivago