What is Branding?

Branding is the act of shaping how a company, organization, or individual is perceived.

Customer perceptions themselves don’t go out and buy iPhones. But they are critically important for one reason: perceptions dictate behavior.

Even perceptions that we’re unaware of have the ability to profoundly affect how we act. Research in experimental social psychology has shown that while we might think we’re in total control of our actions, our behavior is often influenced by stimuli we’re completely unaware of.

How an individual perceives a brand (consciously or unconsciously) wholly determines how he or she will engage with that brand. The power of branding hinges a very important truth about perceptions:

Perceptions are malleable.

Branding has the power to shape our perceptions because those perceptions are susceptible to being shaped. They practically cry out for it. Whether we know it or not, we are constantly searching for meaning and order in the world around us. Without it, we’re lost. We want our realities to make sense.

As far as our brains are concerned, there’s no practical difference between perception and reality. What we perceive is what is real to us. This is where the real power of branding lies. If branding can shape our perceptions, and our perceptions are our reality, it follows that:

Branding has the power to shape reality.

That might sound like hyperbole, but in a very real sense, it’s true. The power of branding to architect consumer reality is why companies like Apple spend millions of dollars on it every year.

Whether with corporate branding, healthcare branding, product branding, or any other type of branding, when you effectively leverage the ability to architect reality, you’re able to sway consumers’ purchasing behavior in immeasurably valuable ways.

Let’s take a closer look at three important elements of branding: brand positioning, brand architecture, and brand experience.

Brand positioning is critical to communicating your brand’s unique value to those you serve. In positioning your brand, you define the unique place it occupies in the minds of those you serve.

How are you different than your competitors? Are you a luxury brand or a budget brand? Are you provocative or conservative? Indulgent or practical?

Each of these qualities exists as a spectrum in your customer’s mind. Where your brand exists on the various spectra that are relevant to your brand category is how it is positioned.

Brand positioning shapes customer preferences, dictates buying behavior, and serves as the basis for customer loyalty. The world’s strongest brands are positioned in ways that feel timeless and intrinsic.

A brand audit is one of the best ways to assess your brand’s positioning and that of your top competitors.

By first understanding your customers, your competition, and your brand’s unique value proposition, you can ensure your brand is positioned as distinct, valuable, and impossible to forget.

Brand architecture is the coordinated system of names, colors, symbols, and visual language that defines a brand or brands.

Superior brand architecture is highly intentional and intuitive, founded on research into customer experience.

Brand architecture systems are commonly categorized as either monolithic, endorsed, or pluralistic. Monolithic brand architecture comprises a singular master brand and multiple sub-brands. Endorsed and pluralistic architectures comprise parent brands with varying relationships to the divisions over which they preside.

An intuitive brand architecture is the best way to bring your business’s range of offerings into focus, letting you better cross-promote them and gain control over how your brand is perceived by consumers.

Finally, brand experience includes all the ways a customer can experience your brand. How it looks, sounds, feels, smells, and tastes. From your website and mobile experience to your in-store and product experiences, and everything in between.

The best brand experiences are those born from purpose that are meaningful, memorable, authentic—and, above all, consistent.

Cultivating an effective brand experience is the most powerful way to stoke customer loyalty and set the stage for the ongoing growth of your business.