In junior high, we did science experiments that distilled one liquid from another, leaving us with highly concentrated substances that we’d weigh and measure and use for other experiments.
Branding is a lot like that. It requires you to break down something – a product, business, political candidate – to its essence.
We’ve been doing a lot of that lately, working to create positioning statements and brand books that capture the most-important aspects of our clients’ operations, starting with 25- and 50-word statements and a tagline.
Branding involves research to thoroughly understand the business or product itself. This might involve market studies, opinion research with different constituencies and interviews of individuals within the organization or on the outside. Things like that.
But there’s a piece of the process, near the end, that really serves as the bunsen burner to help us distill that information into a brand statement.
Broadreach uses a white board during this step. We’ve intentionally blurred the picture to protect the identity of our client, but even the fuzzy image gives you some idea of what I’m talking about.
Words and phrases that capture the essential nature of a business, product or individual become the basis of their brand. This image is intentionally blurred.
First, we come up with a couple dozen individual words to describe how the business differs from others, what really makes it special. Then, we start developing two- and three-word phrases that speak to important aspects of the client’s operation.
Finally, we put them into sentence form, like someone working on a jigsaw puzzle that doesn’t come with a picture on the box. We’re constantly erasing, crossing out and otherwise changing the prose; putting hand-drawn boxes around words we love or hate; employing a rainbow of colored markers.
Throughout that process, we’re asking questions:
· Does this really show how the organization differs from others?
· What do the clients’ customers care about, and does this address that?
· Is this word or phrase overused, or might it be understood in another, unflattering way?
· Do the words being thrown about reflect the nature of the business: Is their connotation quirky and casual, or professional and reassuring, depending on the client?
· Can we hear an echo of a different, positive meaning in a particular word or phrase?
It takes time and a lot of discussion – debate sometimes – to get the first two sentences of a company’s positioning statement and their even-shorter tagline just right.
But it’s important to stick with the process. Those few dozen words serve as the starting point of just about all the other marketing communications that the company does. The phrases and tone set at this initial branding session will find their way into advertising, news releases, brochures, posters, event handouts and other materials produced in the future.
So, it’s not something you want to throw together. It’s not enough to say, “This is good enough.”
Instead, it’s important to do what Ernest Hemingway always tried to do with his writing, as he said in a letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald: “search for the perfect title, the perfect word.”
– Eric Blom
Tags: Brand, Branding, image, marketing, reputation
