Unveiling the True Essence of Branding and Building Meaningful Experiences

I think we all know on some level that branding is more than a logo and colour palette — it’s how the service or product makes you feel, even before you become a customer.

Put another way, I like to think of developing your brand as developing the experience people have when they come across you.

And yet! As a business owner just starting out, it’s so easy to get stuck in a never-ending vortex of logos and colour palettes and font styles. I’ve done it in the past and I’ve seen so many others do it too.

There’s something that is just so enticing about spending literally hours, or maybe even days, making small tweaks and changes to craft a logo, or similar, to the point of it being perfect. I have been there myself many times — I’ve agonised over shades of purple and downloaded special fonts to use, only to change it all over again one day later.

So I’m not going to start saying that it’s wrong, or there is no value in this — there is. And it’s fun! Just like having clothes you love clothes, I think it’s important to have a visual brand that you love and want to share with people.

But I think the elephant in the room is that it’s not this stuff that actually makes our brand a brand, or indeed our business a business. As well as having a logo we love and colours that feel like us, we need to go out there and connect with people too.

It’s only by actually taking people through the experience that we want to offer that we really get to develop the bulk of the brand. And that bit is hard. It’s hard to know where to find people, what to say, how to invite them in. It’s hard to be vulnerable in risking people not wanting or needing what we offer them. It’s hard and it can feel slightly messy and imperfect, a far cry from how we actually want things to be.

But this is the learning. It’s only by actually taking these small steps that we will ever get better. This is the bit of branding that I think is so under-represented — the journey that precedes everything being shiny and polished and finished, not that I’m sure it ever is!

To me this is the unspoken side of branding — it’s the practicalities and tangible action points that you take to actually make your brand FEEL the way you intend it to.

What is your take on this. Do you find it easy or difficult to give the sort of ‘brand experience’ that you want to your customers? Have you experienced this in other people’s businesses? I’d love to hear your thoughts below.