Why Brands Get Inside Our Heads

A Porsche is a car.

It has an engine, four wheels, seats and a steering wheel. It takes its owner from one place to another.

Yet describing a Porsche that way feels faintly ridiculous. People rarely spend Porsche money simply because they need transport.

They are buying something else.

This is where branding begins.

A brand is often treated as though it were a visual identity: a logo, some colours, a typeface and perhaps an expensive advertising campaign. These things matter, but they are the surface of branding rather than its substance.

The real brand lives in the mind.

And the human mind is considerably older than advertising.

We are social animals first

Modern consumers live among smartphones, algorithms and online shops, but the brains making purchasing decisions developed in a very different world.

For most of human history, survival depended upon other people.

We needed to know who belonged to our group, who could be trusted, who possessed status, who knew what they were doing and where we ourselves fitted into the social order.

Those concerns remain with us.

We still seek identity, status and belonging. We simply express them differently.

Clothes, cars, watches, phones, football clubs, music, restaurants and even the coffee we carry down the street can tell other people something about us.

• Sometimes we want to show wealth.

• Sometimes taste.

• Sometimes expertise.

• Sometimes independence.

• Sometimes membership of a particular tribe.

This helps explain why two objects performing almost exactly the same practical function can command radically different prices.

The difference often exists less in what the product does than in what possessing it means.

Brands are a form of shorthand

Human beings make countless decisions. We cannot investigate every purchase from first principles.

Imagine standing in front of fifty almost identical products and conducting a detailed engineering analysis of each one. Life would grind to a halt.

Brands reduce the work.

A familiar name becomes a mental shortcut.

It might suggest reliability, excitement, value, sophistication, rebelliousness or safety before we have examined the product carefully.

Psychologists have repeatedly found that familiarity itself can influence liking. Repeated exposure often makes a stimulus feel more comfortable and attractive, although endless repetition can eventually lose its effect.

This makes one of the least glamorous parts of branding extremely important:

consistency.

• The same name.

• The same distinctive visual language.

• The same general promise.

• The same character, encountered repeatedly.

Strong brands become easier to recognise and easier to retrieve from memory. When the moment to buy arrives, familiarity gives them an advantage.

The customer feels, “I know this.”

That feeling has value.

But recognition alone creates a weak brand

Being famous and being desirable are different things.

A successful brand usually accumulates associations.

• Volvo became associated with safety.

• Rolex with achievement and permanence.

• Apple with design, creativity and simplicity.

• Porsche with performance, engineering and a certain kind of success.

These associations never describe every customer, and companies can lose them.

Nevertheless, when enough people share roughly the same mental picture, the brand acquires meaning beyond the physical product.

The important word here is shared.

A private association has little commercial value. A brand becomes powerful when many people understand its signals.

This is why branding cannot simply mean inventing a clever slogan.

The business has to behave consistently enough for the association to become believable.

A brand can become too broad

I once worked with someone who owned two related businesses.

One was deliberately positioned towards an increasingly wealthy clientele. The products began at around €2 million and the whole operation was meant to feel correspondingly refined.

The second business was older, more practical and more modest. It came from the family business tradition. It dealt with less glamorous boats, repairs, servicing and general work.

Its modest image made sense.

People using that business were not expecting champagne, polished marble and a uniformed welcome.

They wanted something different.

They wanted sympathetic people, practical knowledge, reasonable prices and the feeling that somebody competent would sort things out.

The two businesses therefore occupied different positions in the customer's mind.

That distinction had value.

Over time, however, the owner began concentrating almost everything under the more prestigious name. The luxury business gradually came to include a much wider mixture of porducts.

At first this can appear sensible. Why maintain two identities when one successful name could sell everything?

The difficulty is that brands work partly through exclusion.

A premium brand tells customers what belongs there, but also quietly tells them what does not.

When a business associated with very expensive products begins to represent almost every category, the meaning becomes less precise.

Strangely, this may damage the premium brand more than the practical one.

Nobody went to the modest yard expecting luxury in the first place.

Its strength came from competence, usefulness and familiarity.

The luxury brand had more to lose because it depended upon a narrower identity.

This illustrates a wider point.

Growth by addition can gradually become growth by dilution.

Sometimes the seller is the brand

There is another interesting lesson in that example.

In some markets, the product varies but the person remains constant.

Yachts are a good example.

A buyer may choose one make today and a completely different make five years later. The boats change. The trusted adviser may remain.

For that reason, the identity of the person selling can become more important than the identity of the product.

The customer may really be buying judgement.

Taste.

Access.

Experience.

Discretion.

The confidence that somebody will still answer the telephone when something goes wrong.

This is especially true with expensive and complicated purchases.

The more uncertainty involved, the more valuable trust becomes.

In such businesses, the strongest brand asset may walk into the office each morning.

Expensive brands can act as signals

This becomes particularly obvious in luxury markets.

Visible luxury goods can operate as social signals. They may suggest status, expertise, success or membership of a particular group.

This does not mean everyone buying an expensive object wants to boast.

Status itself has become more complicated.

A giant logo may communicate status in one group while appearing vulgar in another.

Among some affluent buyers, recognising the product without needing the logo may itself demonstrate membership of the group.

The signal has become quieter.

• An enthusiast recognises the watch from across the table.

• A sailor recognises the yacht.

• A photographer recognises the camera.

• A Porsche owner may recognise the model from the shape of its rear lights.

Knowledge becomes part of the luxury.

This helps explain why premium branding so often involves restraint. The brand does not always have to shout.

Sometimes whispering demonstrates greater confidence.

We buy identities

Perhaps the most interesting part of branding concerns the story we tell ourselves.

Consumers frequently choose products that fit the person they believe themselves to be — or the person they hope to become.

The off-road vehicle may spend almost its entire life on tarmac.

The professional-quality kitchen may produce scrambled eggs.

The expedition watch may never venture beyond an airport lounge.

That does not necessarily make the purchase foolish.

The product performs a psychological function as well as a practical one.

It says:

• I am adventurous.

• I care about craftsmanship.

• I have made it.

• I belong here.

• I am different from those people.

Brands therefore help construct identity.

They provide props in the stories people tell about themselves.

And those stories can be remarkably powerful.

The mistake of starting with the logo

This is where many smaller businesses go wrong.

• They decide they need “a brand”, so somebody redesigns the website.

• The colours change.

• The logo becomes cleaner.

• A photographer arrives.

The business now looks more expensive, but nobody has answered the important question:

What should this business mean to people?

That question comes first.

A successful brand needs some reasonably clear territory in the customer's mind.

Perhaps:

• “The accountant who explains things plainly.”

• “The hotel where everything feels effortless.”

• “The yacht broker who removes the worry.”

• “The village shop where somebody always knows what you need.”

• Once that idea becomes clear, visual identity can reinforce it.

Without the underlying idea, design becomes decoration.

But this does not make the logo unimportant.

It simply gives the logo its proper job.

Different businesses need different kinds of logos

Consider the two marine businesses again.

The practical boatyard can quite comfortably use a fairly generic identity.

That may even help.

Its customers are looking for competence, value, friendliness and somebody who understands boats. A highly polished luxury identity could create the wrong expectation.

It might even suggest higher prices before anybody has walked through the gate.

The prestige yacht business has a different problem.

Its identity needs to work in a world of flags, boat-show stands, uniforms, websites, social media icons, tender covers, printed material and tiny digital favicons.

Here, apparently minor graphic decisions become rather more important.

A long wordmark may look elegant across a website but disappear when reduced to the corner of a screen.

A simplified pictorial symbol may look contemporary, yet mean very little until enormous amounts of money have been spent making it recognisable.

For a smaller premium company, a circular device containing the initials of the business can sometimes work better.

It has several advantages.

• It remains legible when reduced.

• It sits naturally on a flag.

• It can become a favicon.

• It works as a social-media avatar.

• It can appear on clothing without looking like an advertisement.

• And, if carefully designed, it can borrow a little from the visual language of clubs, yacht clubs, old-established firms and institutions.

That does not automatically make a circular monogram the correct answer. The point is that the logo has to perform a job.

The question is less:

“Does this logo look attractive?”

and more:

“Where must people recognise this business, and what should they feel when they do?”

A pub sign is not quite a corporate logo

Country pubs demonstrate the distinction rather beautifully.

A pub may have an extremely simple logo on its website, menus and stationery.

Its sign outside can be something else entirely.

British inn signs have traditionally ranged from heraldic devices and coats of arms to animals, historical characters, local landmarks and painted scenes.

That apparent inconsistency need not weaken the brand.

Quite the opposite.

The hanging sign is part of the place.

It belongs to the architecture, the road, the village and the history of the building in a way that a corporate logo seldom could.

A visitor may barely remember the typeface used on the menu.

They may vividly remember the painted sign swinging outside

.

Yet even that sign does only part of the work.

For a pub, much of the brand is three-dimensional.

It is the frontage.

The paintwork.

The lighting through the windows on a winter evening.

The condition of the car park.

The flowers outside.

The smell when the door opens.

The bar.

The furniture.

The glasses.

The fireplaces.

The menu boards.

The loos.

And, above all, the people.

We might therefore distinguish between a graphic identity and a sensory identity.

Some businesses depend heavily upon the first.

Hospitality depends enormously upon the second.

Sometimes the real branding problem is the business itself

I know another couple who invested heavily in a country pub.

Both had considerable business experience.

Neither had much experience running an inn.

That distinction matters more than it might appear.

After a couple of years, the husband largely lost interest.

His wife remained more involved and enjoyed spending time at the pub. Yet enthusiasm produced another problem.

The menu grew.

There were too many dishes.

Ingredients sometimes ran out.

The business accumulated more than one website, while independent review sites occasionally gave visitors a clearer picture of the place than the pub's own communications.

Meanwhile, the staff quietly kept much of the operation going.

Indeed, there were occasions when the pub seemed to run more smoothly without either owner present.

This sounds like an operational problem, and of course it is.

But it is also a branding problem.

Because what exactly is the pub trying to become?

• A destination restaurant?

• A traditional country inn?

• A community pub?

• A gastro-pub?

• A place for walkers?

• A special-occasion dining room?

A good business can combine some of these things, but somebody needs to make the choices.

Without that structure, the brand becomes whatever happens that evening.

And here a new logo would solve remarkably little.

If the exterior suggests one kind of pub, the website another, the menu a third and the actual experience a fourth, customers receive several competing messages.

The premises themselves are doing more branding than the graphic designer ever could.

Aspiration comes before branding

This leads to an uncomfortable thought.

A business cannot develop much of a brand until its owners decide what they want the business to become.

The pub owners have invested money.

The staff can serve drinks, cook meals and organise rotas.

Customers can leave favourable reviews.

Yet none of these things replaces strategic intent.

If the underlying aspiration amounts mainly to enjoying the experience of owning a pub, then that too becomes part of the business.

There is nothing morally wrong with that.

But it produces a very different enterprise from one deliberately constructed to become the best country inn in its area.

Branding requires choices.

• What sort of customer do we want?

• What are we especially good at?

• What experience should people expect?

• What should we stop doing?

• What are we prepared to become known for?

Until those questions receive answers, a new logo achieves very little.

Premium means removing reasons for doubt

Businesses seeking premium positioning often assume that charging more will make them appear more desirable.

Sometimes it does.

Frequently it merely makes them expensive.

A premium brand needs evidence.

The product has to feel considered.

The website has to work.

The packaging has to make sense.

Telephone calls need answering.

Staff behaviour must fit the promise.

Complaints have to be handled well.

Small inconsistencies matter because customers use them as clues.

Imagine an advertisement promising painstaking craftsmanship followed by a careless invoice full of spelling mistakes.

Or a luxury hotel where nobody answers the telephone.

Or a company selling personal service through an automated maze that makes speaking to a human almost impossible.

Every contact either strengthens or weakens the story.

Branding therefore belongs to operations as much as marketing.

You cannot advertise your way out of reality

There is an uncomfortable consequence.

Eventually the brand has to be true.

Advertising can persuade somebody to try a restaurant once.

It cannot make the food good.

A striking campaign can generate enquiries.

It cannot make the sales team helpful.

Beautiful photographs can create expectations.

They cannot repeatedly rescue a poor product.

In fact, powerful advertising combined with a disappointing experience may accelerate failure. It encourages more people to discover the gap between the promise and reality.

The strongest brands gradually reduce that gap.

What they say, what they sell and how they behave begin to tell the same story.

Branding is memory with meaning attached

This gives us a useful definition.

A brand is neither the logo nor the product.

It is the collection of expectations, memories, feelings and meanings attached to a name in somebody else's mind.

The logo matters because it provides a convenient visual handle for all those associations.

A good one becomes a container.

Each positive experience puts something into it.

Each disappointment takes something out.

Over time, a simple mark can come to represent far more than its designer could ever draw.

Businesses can influence those associations.

They can seldom control them completely.

That matters.

Brand building therefore involves repeatedly creating experiences that encourage people to arrive at the desired conclusion themselves.

Porsche does not need to print YOU ARE SUCCESSFUL across the bonnet.

The accumulated associations do the work.

And when a brand becomes very strong, purchasing it can feel less like selecting between products and more like choosing which version of ourselves we wish to express.

The oldest technology in marketing

The machinery of branding changes constantly.

First came shop signs and newspapers. Then radio, television, websites, social media, influencers and now artificial intelligence.

The platforms will continue to change.

Human beings rather less so.

We still notice what other people notice.

We still form groups.

We still seek signs of competence.

We still copy people we admire.

We still use possessions to communicate.

We still prefer the familiar when uncertainty makes us cautious.

And we still construct stories about who we are.

The most sophisticated brands understand something surprisingly simple:

They sell the product, certainly.

But around the product they construct meaning.

Sometimes that meaning is concentrated into a tiny circle of initials flying from the stern of a yacht.

Sometimes it hangs on a painted board outside a country inn.

More often it is carried by hundreds of small experiences that nobody would describe as “branding” at all.

That meaning helps us decide whether something belongs in our lives.

Which is why the strongest brand in a market may possess something far more valuable than a famous logo.

It possesses a small piece of the customer's mind.