the most important ability for brand-building
„I find it hard to define the positioning?“
„No one understands the brand?“
„Why do we actually work on this brand?“
„What is the outlook for the brand?“
All of the above are common issues brands, brand managers, creatives, or anyone with a personal brand, encounter.
The solution to their troubles is often not linked to their lack of creativity, usually they have that plentiful. However, they probably lack the most important ability for brand-building – the ability to focus.
I came to my personal conviction on focus being the core skill for brand-building during the last five years as the co-founder of a small slow-fashion brand, that in the beginning was everything else than focused, as a curious observer of the “culture”, with its high-flyers and low-lights, and as a friend to creatives, who are more or less focussed themselves.
Brands are still thought of as miraculous inventions by some glorified hyper-creatives. But building a brand is not always a chemical reaction that leads to instant virality. It is often a lengthy process, in which brands are built step by step. Through well executed messaging and frequent repetition – focus helps to steer the process.
Finding a brand identity, sticking to it, optimizing and pulling through. All of the above are core to building a brand, and they are all related to focus.
I believe there are four key dimensions of focus in brand-building. They exist across two axis, external to internal and strategy to execution.
pin-pointed identity to cut through the noise
The first dimension of focus is finding a pin-pointed identity for your brand. Just putting a fancy name on a shiny product does not create a successful brand.
Brands have to stand out, they have to be distinct from the pack, only then they become catchy and memorable. Most importantly, a brand identity has to be precise, it has to be pin-pointed.
If you tell somebody about a brand and you are not able to distil it down to one, maximum two sentences the brand is not pin-pointed. I don’t care if you say that the brand complex or special, it is not pin-pointed.
A common fallacy leading to this lack of focus is, that creators of brands confuse the brand’s identity with their own identity. Even if a designer might be interested in a variety of things and have a multi-faceted character, the brand shouldn’t! Multi-faceted brand identities are hard to grasp and hard to own for consumers.
When the brand identity is diluted, the brand can’t be built. A pin-pointed identity will allow consumers to onboard fast and spread the word, because they know precisely what to tell others about the brand.
consistent messaging to reiterate identity
If brands find a strong, pin-pointed identity they need to make sure not to lose it. Consistency will build your brand, so focus on reiterating the identity as often as possible is required.
Consistency means maintaining focus over time and across all of the brands activities. In practice, brand managers should be able to open their social media of choice, show any picture, video or even sound and it will reflect the brand identity.
Consistency is the dimension of focus that will lead to everyone understanding the brand identity in the long-run.
I like to test it like this: if you ask 10 people that know your brand, how they would describe it, and they give you ten different answers, the messaging has not been consistent. If they give you more or less the same answer, you are doing well.
Consistency is key, if brand managers can’t stay consistent they will never have one brand, just a collection of messages. Clear and consistent messages enable customers to align or even enrich their personal identity with a brand’s identity, which will make it desirable over time.
goal-driven approach to brand-building
We switch from the external to the internal dimensions of focus and will recognise, that focus in this area is all about enabling the external dimensions.
Sharp focus is powered by a goal-driven approach to brand-building. Creatives and brands sometimes get lost in all of the different ideas they have. They are focused on creating, but a the same time lost in the process, leading to confused outcomes.
Goals that are both quantified and timed as well as aligned with the brand identity help creatives and their brands to keep themselves in check. At the end of the day reaching a quantitative and timed goal is binary – you succeed or you don’t. Aiming for the accomplishment of an identity-aligned goal will allow creatives to become and remain focused in developing a pin-pointed vision and executing consistently
disciplined execution
Brand building is a process, we have established that by now. To pull through from the start and over the long-term is what it takes to make it happen, therefore, the last dimension of focus is discipline.
Finding an identity requires the discipline to reflect if the brand is yet pin-pointed enough – those are hard questions creatives have to ask themselves and the answers often hurt.
Maintaining the identity requires the brand to regularly deliver messages that are consistent without getting boring for long-time followers. It requires discipline to engineer this process.
When you have determined your goal, it requires discipline to optimize for the goal and only the one goal. This also involves de-prioritising many activities that might seem exciting today but will not lead to the desired outcome in the long-run.
“Strategy is sacrifice” is one of my favourite quotes this year and it also applies to brand-building. Sacrificing the multitudes of identities, cool advertisements that are just not consistent and all the goals you want to reach, requires discipline.
Probably the most discipline is required to just keep going. Pushing through a phase of low energy and low creativity is where creatives need this last dimension of focus. Discipline is the glue that sticks all of the above together.
And now? Back to the drawing board. Write down everything you want your brand to be, cut down most of it and pin-point the identity that works for you. Develop a sequence of consistent messages reiterating your unique identity and set the goal you want to reach next on your journey. Finally, just start doing and don’t stop anymore. However, always reflect on, if you have focus, the most important skill for brand building.
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