Is your brand invisible?
Branding is tremendously hot these days. Everybody is talking brand: Brand messaging, personal branding, re-branding, brand values, and everything-you-can-think-of-branding. Brand messaging coaches and experts speak loudly and lengthy about the importance of having an authentic brand.
Often accompanied by trashy looking Powerpoint-slides…
Everybody speaks about branding, but very few ask how it looks. Please don’t get me wrong. As I have stated many times before: I am probably THE happiest person in the world when someone recognizes what their brand really is. What their values are, what their business’ #1 personality trait is and what vision they have. When people know all these things, co-creating a visual brand with them becomes so much easier and more enjoyable. If they are able to articulate their values and visions to themselves, they will also be able to convey them to others and it will be possible to translate them into a visual language that can be recognized everywhere.
WHY recognized everywhere? Because no matter how permeated and full to the bursting point you might be of your super-brand, you are NOT omnipresent. You may shine from brand confidence in networking- and client meetings, but you will also need ambassadors.
You’ll need to charge a visible brand outside yourself with your values, so people who meet your business when you cannot be present (which is most of the time, by the way) will experience your brand the same way as if you had been present. I am talking about everything from business cards to websites. This is not only for solopreneurs. When there is more than one person in the business, the necessity is even stronger to gather behind the same banner and show up as one.
It’s said that you should not judge a book by its cover. However, when something looks bad, we tend to think it IS bad. We cannot guess that there is a soul of brilliant branding inside it that no one can see.
Unless you are marketing solely to the blind, the communication of your brand will always be visual. It will be visible to others. We say:
Look at my website.
Look at my offer
Look at my Facebook Page
Look at my Instagram.
Nobody has an invisible brand.
Isn’t it time to ask how it looks?
