Brands are all around us. There are strong and weak brands. Brands people remember and forget. Brands that evoke genuine connection, and brands that merely exist. Companies spend billions every year on establishing and maintaining brands. Overall, branding is impossible to ignore.
But what is a brand today? I believe brands are a means for individuals to signal their perceived uniqueness in a world of conformity and fitting in. As everyone is plagued by their desire for approval and need to belong, brands become a way to express individuality. When someone wears a t-shirt from a given brand, they want to signal to the world a certain set of values—something they believe in. And the way they intend to signal is by creating and maintaining a certain set of perceptions about themselves. At its core, brands play a deep, expressive role in our lives.
There is a set of people that value this form of expression less than others, but I would bet the vast majority of our Western world cares a lot about brands.
So how do you build a strong brand? By following the line of reasoning above, to build a brand you need to stand for something. You need to be clear on what beliefs and values you want to convey with your brand, so people can decide if these represent something they want to adopt as they show the world their perceived individuality. It's all about signaling who you are as a brand by becoming extremely clear on what beliefs you have and including this in the essence of everything you say, do, or create.
This is a profoundly useful insight. For those creating brands, it gives them the chance to get personal and contemplate the beliefs and values that excite them, and then turn this into a brand that resonates with people like them, slowly finding and building a tribe of like-minded individuals. So beyond expressing mere individuality on the local level in the conformist fabric of society, a brand also serves the purpose of creating connection among those who share the same beliefs. And this is a powerful dynamic to tap into. Combining the contemporary human need of signaling individuality with connection is the essence of what the brands that win in today's world are built on.
Brands are a deeply expressive construct that gives order to an otherwise chaotic world. They are a deeply psychological expression, yet their influence extends even beyond psychology. It all starts with becoming clear on what you believe in, and then effectively signaling that to the people it resonates with. This is how winning brands are built.