Branding has to be one of the most misunderstood words in business. Mention the word and most people instinctively think about logos, websites, brochures, business cards or perhaps social media. I can understand why. They're the visible parts of a business. They're tangible, they're easy to point to and, in many organisations, they're the only parts of branding that ever receive any real attention.
What I've found interesting over the years is that I've rarely started there. Perhaps that's because I've never been particularly interested in looking at businesses through the lens of a single discipline. Most consultants develop deep expertise in marketing, finance, operations, HR or sales. There is enormous value in that. I've simply found myself drawn somewhere slightly different. I've always been more interested in the relationships between those disciplines because that's usually where the more interesting commercial questions begin to emerge. It's often where value is either created or quietly lost.
That way of thinking has inevitably shaped how I look at branding. Over the years I've noticed that businesses are remarkably good at describing what's happening, but often much less certain about why it's happening. The conversations are surprisingly similar. "We're not growing." "We keep losing work on price." "People don't seem to understand what we do." Those are all observations. They describe the symptoms the business is experiencing. The next sentence, however, is often, "I think we need to improve our branding." That isn't an observation. It's an assumption. Sometimes it's the correct one. Quite often it isn't.
When someone tells me they have a branding problem, my instinct isn't to open their website or critique their logo. I'm trying to understand how the business actually works. How does it create value? Why do customers choose it? Does the leadership team describe the business in the same way? Does the customer experience reinforce the promises made by the marketing? Does the pricing reflect the position the business is trying to occupy? Is the market seeing the organisation in the same way the organisation sees itself? Those questions usually tell me far more than a visual identity ever could because they begin to reveal whether the business itself is coherent.
Perhaps the easiest way to explain this is to imagine you're preparing your business for sale. No serious buyer is acquiring your logo. They are trying to understand the quality of the business behind it. They are assessing the strength of your customer relationships, the reputation you've built, your pricing power, your market position, the capability of your people and the confidence that the organisation can continue creating value long after you've stepped away. The logo may appear on the front page of the information memorandum, but it won't determine the valuation. It simply represents everything that sits behind it.
I sometimes think a house provides a useful analogy. Most of us notice the front door, the paintwork or the kitchen when we first walk through the door. A surveyor sees something very different. They're interested in the foundations, the structure, the roof and whether the building has been well designed and maintained. The cosmetic details influence the first impression, but they don't determine the underlying value. Business is much the same. The visible elements of a brand matter, but only because they should be an honest expression of the business beneath them.
That's why I've never really thought of branding as a marketing exercise. I've always seen it as a commercial one. A strong brand doesn't compensate for a weak business any more than a fresh coat of paint compensates for structural defects. What it does do is make it easier for customers, employees, investors and, ultimately, potential buyers to understand the value that already exists.
Perhaps that's the real point. Most businesses don't have a branding problem. They have a business problem that branding simply can't solve on its own. Get the business right and the brand usually becomes much clearer because it is no longer trying to create value. It's communicating it.
I help businesses, founders and senior professionals become clearer, better positioned and easier to choose.
