👋, 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 branding is good, it can be your best friend.
It’s there to help you form strong connections with your customers. It’s there to help you tell your product stories in compelling ways. It’s there to stick in customers’ minds so they remember you.
But when branding goes wrong — it can break your company.
Here are my top five bad branding mistakes to watch out for.
Branding Goes Wrong When…
1. It’s Emotionally Distant
If branding were a country, its official currency would be emotions — and all of the stars on its flag would stand for a feeling.
No matter how rational we say we are, people think with both their heads and their hearts. Emotion impacts every single decision we make, and every purchase ties back to it.
So if your brand has not spent a significant amount of time thinking about how it wants to make customers feel, you’re in trouble.
Your brand should start with a strong and dominant feeling, and then all of the elements around it (colors, fonts, photography, messaging) should be built to support that emotion and create a world where customers quite literally catch the feeling.
It’s perfectly possible for a brand to look extremely beautiful aesthetically and to have very well-written copy. But if there’s no emotion present — if you as a consumer can’t sense the vibes of the world or the energy people behind the product in any way — you’re left staring into a big beautiful void on that retail shelf.
Brands need to make us feel some kind of way. And if they don’t, then they fail.
Branding Goes Wrong When…
2. It Doesn’t See the Bigger Picture
I’m a fan of Shark Tank.
My three-year-old son likes it too—I’m not sure why, as he knows there are no real sharks that he likes to be seen.
As a fan of Shark Tank, I’ve heard them say something that rings very true to many founders who stand before them. And that phrase is “You have a product, not a brand.”
The founders who hear this typically respond with dismay, “I have plans to release more products!”
But the difference between having a product and having a brand is about more than just releasing more products.
It’s about selling a dream and a bigger picture, rather than getting bogged down by the lists of features and benefits that apply to one product (or many).
One of my favorite examples of this comes from beauty. The cult brand Vintner’s Daughter built a tremendous business on just one hero product: Active Botanical Serum.
Yes, the brand drew attention to the serum’s magical blend of ingredients, rave results, and multiple awards. But it also did that special thing I already talked about with emotions: it created a compelling world with vibes you can feel.
This world started with the product at its center, then it built outward and upward to tell richer stories and develop deeper moments.
When everything is only about your product and your product’s list of features and direct selling points, it’s like having a “me-me-me” conversation.
Open up your brand—and you’ll open up a world of opportunities to connect with audiences more profoundly and in different ways.
Branding Goes Wrong When…
3. It’s Self Centered
I’ve spoken with many founders who think they know everything about their customers because they are their customers.
“I made this brand for myself, to solve my problem.”
And to that, I say, “Fantastic! The fact that you can put yourself in your customer’s shoes and you’ve been there is amazing. But the second you started this business, you became not your customer anymore.”
People change, context changes, and problems change at a CRAZY fast rate.
And if you aren’t out there talking to real people about your product all the time (literally ALL. THE. TIME.)—you’re going to lose out. Because other people building competitive brands are.
They’re going to find out things that you don’t know. And they’re going to uncover an insight you didn’t know existed, that they’re going to jump on to outmaneuver you.
When brands get built around one person’s understanding of a situation and remain static to that perspective, it’s like they have blinders on.
Developing a deep and rich understanding of your customer as it relates to your product category, to her sense of self, to her community, and to her world is the most important work you’ll ever do for your brand.
And brands that skim over this process or bypass it entirely might launch from the dock—but they won’t have the depth to last in the long run.
Branding Goes Wrong When…
4. It’s Too Clever for Its Own Good
People often ask me how I got into branding.
I always loved writing—so much so that in college, I majored in creative writing and was lucky enough to be in one of the best departments in the country for it (Tobias Wolff was my god of an advisor!).
But despite this training, I didn’t have the urge to be a starving artist. For me, the ad world felt like a happy medium: you get to be creative and tell stories all day, and you can make money.
That thinking is extremely common among most ad people you encounter. Copywriters could have been authors. Art directors could have been painters. Many are also once-aspiring musicians.
The reason I share this is so that you know that sometimes you might need to reign in your creatives. The good ones will always come to your brand from a place of strategy and an understanding of what words and visuals sell.
But sometimes, creatives get creative for creativity’s sake. And that’s when the thread can get lost, along with your company’s message.
Branding should always be based on a solid strategy and remain cognizant of the customer.
Branding Goes Wrong When…
5. It’s a Trend Follower
I remember the first time I was in LA and stumbled upon a magical mecca just starting to get buzz — a house of treats where you could swirl to your heart’s content and pile toppings on top of toppings.
The name of this store was Pinkberry, and it kicked off a country-wide fro-yo craze and a zillion same-same establishments… many of which also had “Berry” in the name.
Just as the worlds of fashion and interior design have trends, so does branding.
Trends impact everything from brand names (hello, weirdly spelled app names for the 2000s) to colors (we Millennials love our pink) to fonts (a quirky serif screams hipster).
Types of brands range from blatant knockoffs like all of the “berry” froyo chains to well-intentioned companies just trying to appear current.
And as a brand, you need to strike the balance that’s right for you.
At the highest level of your brand, you have elements like your name which you hope will stand the test of time. For these elements, it’s smarter to go less trendy.
Fonts and colors you can be slightly more playful with. It’s not uncommon to switch these up in a rebrand down the line. And you can potentially experiment the most with imagery and video; that content is always changing.
But no matter where you’re incorporating them, you need to be aware of the trends — and how and why you’re using them.
Think about each choice you’re making for your brand and ask if it is right for your customer and your world before simply following the leaders.
Branding Goes Right When…
I like to end on a high note, so let’s flip all of these around.
It’s Emotionally Compelling
It’s Accounting for the Big Picture
It’s Centered on Real Customers’ POVs
It’s Clever About How It Sells You
It’s Current, But Not Cookiecutter
If you’re finding this newsletter valuable, consider sharing it with friends, or subscribing if you aren’t already.
Know someone who needs branding help?
My business is 100% referral based — and I work with companies of all sizes, across all industries. If you know anyone who needs branding help, send them my way!
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.