👋, I’m Kimberly. I’ve been creating obsession-worthy brands for the past fifteen years. And now, I’m giving away my secrets every week in this newsletter.
When you look at search results, the most common question people ask about branding is “What is branding?”
And wherever you search, people have different answers.
So, I’m going to answer the biggest question in branding in a different way today.
Here are five things that branding is not.
Branding is Not an Orb.
Yes, an orb.
This is a question once posed by Two Well-Meaning Founders years ago.
They were starting a venture capital firm, and they had looked at the site of another venture capital firm they admired.
On this website, the other venture capital firm had a huge, glowing orb that shape-shifted with some parallax-video wizardry as you moved around the screen.
“Is this branding?” the Two Well-Meaning Founders asked, pointing at the orb.
“No,” we had to reply. “An orb is not branding.”
And neither is a logo, a font, or a set of colors, which is the more common question.
All of the elements that make up your website or your packaging — aka your logo, font, colors, and even your orb — come together to express your brand and tell your story to the world in a way that you think they will find compelling.
But, they are not your brand in and of themselves.
Since…
Branding is Not Something You Alone Control.
You can put a lot of things out into the world to try and best communicate the story of your brand, including a really cool and quite memorable orb.
But ultimately, branding is the story other people tell about you.
If you do a fantastic job of communicating the story you want to tell, across every touchpoint, you have a pretty good shot that people will pick up what you’re saying and at least somewhat reflect it back.
However, these people — your world of potential customers and people who talk to your potential customers — will also be influenced by other things, not the least of which is the performance of your product and what other people they know (or in the case of online reviews, what other people they don’t know) say about you.
And as much as you try to control your brand, you’ll be much better off ceding complete control and embracing what others can add to your story rather than trying to stifle it.
Because…
Branding is Not a Static Thing.
I’m officially putting a pin in the days when a company just starting out could spend over a year and hundreds of thousands of dollars developing a lengthy document called a Brand Book — a document of biblical proportions meant to guide the company that would be considered Untouchable for the next twenty years.
First off, no one has that kind of time.
When I developed my Branding Sprint, I coined the term MVB (Minimal Viable Branding) for the essential elements you need to get your product out into the world and determine if you have product market fit.
If you launch with your MVB and find out you do have product market fit, bravo! We can go back and develop your brand further with more time and resources.
If you launch with your MVB and find out you do not have product market fit, also bravo! Because you didn’t spend all that time and money on something that the market didn’t want.
Secondly, no brand can afford to go more than maybe two years without evolving anymore.
The opposite of static, brands today need to be agile to keep up with the rapid pace of advancements and changes that affect their customers’ worlds.
Literally nothing should be untouchable about your brand anymore.
Which means…
Branding is Not an Unbendable Set of Restrictions.
In classic Brand Books, you’ll see a lot of rules and guidelines.
Rules and guidelines about what your company values. Rules and guidelines around what kinds of words to use. Rules and guidelines around what colors and fonts and types of photos work best.
They’ll be “do’s and don’ts” as well as “is and is nots.”
But despite these many rules, you should not view your brand as a restriction — but as an area in which to play.
And even the things you might think are the most sacred, like your logo, can be changed under the right circumstances, in the right channel, and for the right reason.
My favorite example of this kind of behavior happened in 2020 when 'TikTok Designer' Emily Zugay started redesigning logos of iconic companies in a hilariously bad fashion.
She explained her thinking behind each logo with deadpan delivery — monotone and expressionless, in a way that critiqued not just the logo but the logo redesign process itself (which is often rife with symbolism that no one will ever pick up on).
Many brands, including McDonald’s and TikTok itself, joined in her fun — either outright requesting that she redesign their logo and/or taking her design and making it their new logo on the platform for a period of time.
Since nothing about your branding is sacred, it follows that…
Branding is Not a Savior.
Branding is 100% there to help you tell the story of your product, connect with your audience, and ultimately drive the sales that keep the lights on for your company.
But it can not cover up all manner of sins.
If your product is faulty or not up to par, branding won’t make it better. And if your idea just isn’t right for right now, branding can try its best — but it won’t push you over the hump.
One brand I love for branding's sake that I’ve discussed before in this newsletter is Liquid Death.
For those of you who have not seen it yet, Liquid Death is a brand of water currently valued at $700 million.
As a brand, Liquid Death capitalizes on the concept of its name at every single opportunity—from the beer-vibes of the can to the design of the fonts and skull imagery to the “Murder Your Thirst” tagline.
In the end, it’s just selling water in a can.
But if the water in the can tasted weird or the can itself was sharp and injured people’s tongues, all the awesome branding in the world couldn’t make it sell.
That’s All Branding Is Not, For Now.
I hope that these answers in the negative were helpful.
And if you think of anything branding is also not, I’d love to hear from you and add it here.
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About Me
I help early-stage founders create the kind of brands that get customers so obsessed, they’ll do your advertising for you.
Based on my experience founding my own consumer brand, I developed The Branding Sprint—a uniquely collaborative, streamlined, and agile approach to brand creation.
Click here to learn more about The Branding Sprint, or schedule a call with me.