your logo here

Over the past few weeks I have participated in a TON of conversations about branding and marketing. Colors, perceptions (internal and external), wording (internal and external), slogans, campaigns, and the like have overtaken most meetings.

Now usually I get a kick out of these sorts of conversations. You see, I happen to love logos and brands. And logos and brands tend to be the major players that drive marketing campaigns. I love both because of their desire to communicate simply something that might otherwise be complex.

However, I find myself growing weary at the thought of creating campaigns which are not intended to have lives of their own. While there are bright spots along the way, oftentimes these conversations are more about communicating who we think we are rather than creating something that might breathe and have life.

Take 5 minutes and read some of Joshua Blankenship’s thoughts on branding below. I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

“A logo may communicate “modern, friendly, professional” but the people who interact with our brand may see unclear wayfinding signage, a poorly-navigable website or, perhaps worst of all, lackluster customer service. Even if you hired a professional designer who picked the “right” typefaces, the bold complimentary colors & the coolest award-winning letterhead ever, all the logo in the world can’t change someone’s impression of you because everything meant to support your logo actually says the opposite about you.

Do you ever wish you could hear what other people are saying about you when you’re not around? Those are the conversations that define you and your brand. Did you catch that? You’re not in complete control. Your brand is who you are, what you do. No amount of standards, guidelines, rules or forbidden phrases will reign that in completely. A brand is built from perceptions, impressions, experiences — all of which happen in the mind of someone who isn’t us. How can we possibly think we can control that? Your brand has a life of its own the minute you interact with people for the first time. We can do our best to direct the conversation, to be transparent & open, but we have to admit (revel in!) the fact that our intentions in creating a brand are often irrelevant in the way that brand will be interpreted by others. You may have turned the ignition, but you’re just along for the ride.

Your brand should be ever-changing. Branding endeavors should understand & implement strategies that acknowledge the relative smallness of the logo in the overall take-away impressions of what we do. By all means, have a great logo. Make people jealous. Win awards. Be Big Chief Awesome Logo. But more importantly, make sure you’re actually living up to what that logo conveys in all your interactions.

Brands, branded, branding — the terminology is all wrong for what we need to be doing. If we want to be effective in our brand-building, we can’t approach it as an attempt to sear our message onto unsuspecting people (whether they like it or not). Branding like that is only skin-deep. It doesn’t add value to others, it imposes our rigid view of who we are onto them. It doesn’t involve anyone else. It isn’t interactive (and how can anything survive right now if it isn’t interactive?)

If our strategy is so dogmatic and inward-focused, we’ll always be limited by what we perceive ourselves to be. In turn, we’ll burn those same limitations into the people we’re trying to reach. We’ll never grow beyond the initial mark because we’ve choked all the life and possibility out of our brand by dogmatically trying to define it as a static, fixed thing. That disrespects, diminishes & seeks to manipulate people by shaping them into our image when we should realize that they’re the ones defining us.”