This post is by Michael Pollock, the original owner of Small Business Branding. Yaro Starak now owns and produces the latest content for this blog.
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As I define it, small business branding is a strategic business paradigm – a set of
assumptions, behaviors and practices – grounded in the results of
successful solopreneurs. It’s a way of assessing the current business
climate and articulating which skills and practices are necessary and
most effective for building a successful solo-enterprise in the 21st
century.
Small business branding is the process of building your business via building your brand. This is not necessarily the only approach available to build a solo-enterprise, just the most comprehensive and effective in my opinion.
What Is a Brand?
When we talk about the term "brand" as it’s used today, we really need to look at three different, but related, definitions.
1. Brand – defined by the American Marketing Association (AMA) as:
"A name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that
identifies one seller’s good or service as distinct from those of other
sellers. The legal term for brand is trademark. A brand may identify
one item, a family of items, or all items of that seller. If used for
the firm as a whole, the preferred term is trade name."
2. Brand Image – defined by the AMA as:
"The perception of a brand in the minds of persons. The
brand image is a mirror reflection (though perhaps inaccurate) of the
brand personality or product being. It is what people believe about a
brand – their thoughts, feelings, expectations."
3. Brand Personality – defined by the AMA as:
"This is the psychological nature of a particular brand
as intended by its sellers, though persons in the marketplace may see
the brand otherwise (called brand image). These two perspectives
compare to the personalities of individual humans: what we intend or
desire, and what others see or believe."
As
an example lets look at Nike, the company. When you see the well-known
Nike "swoosh" logo, that symbol/logo is the brand. When you see the
Nike "swoosh" or hear the Nike name, your thoughts, feelings and
expectations about the company are the brand image. The thoughts,
feelings and expectations that Nike marketing executives want you to have when you see their "swoosh" or hear their name is the brand personality.
As you can see from the definitions, what really matters is your brand image.
You and/or your company name and logo are merely the shorthand symbol
for the thoughts, feelings and expectations that others have about who
you are, what you stand for and what you offer.
In his recent book, The Brand Gap, Marty Neumeier captured the importance of brand image when he wrote:
"A
brand is a person’s gut feeling about a product, service, or company.
It’s a GUT FEELING because we’re all emotional, intuitive beings,
despite our best efforts to be rational. It’s a PERSON’S gut feeling,
because in the end the brand is defined by individuals, not companies,
markets, or the so-called general public . . . When enough individuals
arrive at the same gut feeling, a company can be said to have a brand .
. . a brand is not what you say it is. It’s what THEY say it is." (emphasis his)
Small business branding, then, is actually the process of building your business via building a successful brand image.