What is a brand exactly? 

Some thoughts from you fine readers included: "A brand is what people feel about you", "a brand is a company's personality" and "a brand is a consistent expression of identity".

It's all of the above and more. A successful brand is like a person—it has passions, values and goals, a specific gift (e.g. product/service) and it acts, looks and talks in its particular way, consistently. 

But before we dive in, why does this matter in the first place? Well, look at the chart below.

While brand loyalty is on the rise so is our fickleness—83% of the US says that "when they find a brand they like, they stick to it" and nearly 1/3 of the US says "they like to change brands often for the sake of variety and novelty", a 35% change since 1995.

For brands to survive in today's landscape, we must write a new chapter of the branding "rulebook".

How have brands evolved? HBR wrote a great article in 2016 outlining the evolution of brands, which I paraphrase below: 

"A brand started out as an identifying mark like a name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies a product. In the next wave, a brand shifted from a feature to a perception, or from an object to an idea. The next wave focuses on a brand as a container for a customer’s complete experience. And now, brands are redefining the very nature of the relationship they have with their customer."

HBR says "if the first three waves were brand as object, idea, and experience, the next wave will be brand as relationship." Fast forward to 2020 and I believe we've entered into a new era of what a brand is—evolving from a brand as a relationship with its consumers to being the tribe of its consumers. Or, the platform for shared passions, a community of likeminded people.

IPG Media Lab predicts that democratized creativity will be the way forward. They discuss how "More people create, remix, and share content in more ways than ever before...where younger consumers expect to be engaged in the conversation, and to be given the tools to incorporate your brand into their culture."

So if that's the case, where does one start to make a great brand? I suggest, per Simon Sinek, starting with why.

Understanding the "why" is massively important because it inspires your customers AND your employees (including key stakeholders), giving them a reason to "buy-in". Just like "happy wife, happy life", happy employees = happy customers.

The "why" becomes the key differentiator because more often than not, products are at parity. And people buy emotionally more than they do rationally anyways.

Psychology Today reports that "Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) shows that when evaluating brands, consumers primarily use emotions (personal feelings and experiences), rather than information (brand attributes, features, and facts).

And emotions make more of an impact—Forrester Research found that "a customer’s emotional connection with a brand has a 50% greater impact on driving positive business outcomes" than the attributes of a brand. 

That same positive impact is seen internally at organizations. Companies who have given their employees a sense of purpose posted profit gains of 26% during the last recession (vs. a 14% decline at comparable employers).

On top of that, HBR reports that 9 out of 10 people are willing to make less money if they're doing meaningful work.

So, how does one go about building a great brand? Here are a handful of core tenets that will help you get there:

• Anchored vs. Aimless: Your why gives you a reason for being that becomes your anchor for decision making. Constraints create a world of opportunity.

• Purpose > Product: Yes, your product makes you, you. But, it's not all about just that anymore. For example, when looking at digital media brands, the ones thriving are way more than just their content (see previous Pollinatr about this here) which meets the needs of their audience in more ways than just one.

• Personality, plz: It's not just the words you say but how you say them. Infuse your brand's personality into every touchpoint (from your menu to your receipts to your social media to your advertising to your customer service, etc. etc.). B2B brands, I'm looking at you.

• Actions speak louder than words: Your brand can't just talk the talk, it has to walk the walk. And your actions should be consistent with your "why". It's that friend who always follows through.

• Communications is more than just advertising: This might sound obvious, but where a brand shows up does not have to just be through ads. Where are your fans, and how can you be a part of their communities? And conversely, how can you create spaces for them to be a part of your community? 

• Design goes deeper than the logo: A recent wave of brands (think Sweetgreen, Casper, Warby Parker) have created a new standard for design that transcends every touchpoint, from their product to their packaging to their communication and every other way it shows up. I mean, since when has anyone ever liked vitamins until Ritual?

• Patience is a virtue: Building a great brand doesn't happen overnight. I think one of the reasons why some DTC brands have faltered, is because they're still in nascent stages and are just hitting their first growing pains, which are being exacerbated by VC money and the pressure to perform. You don't go from acquaintance to bestie overnight, same thing goes for brands

What are some examples of brands that are killing it?

Food52 has become a shining example of "being the tribe" vs. just having a relationship with their tribe. If you're not familiar, Food52 started as a site for recipes but has transformed into a "category-defying platform that publishes articles, recipes and, crucially, sells a wide range of cookware and home products to readers."

Their recipe for success lies in the secret sauce of their audience—co-creators of products. The apron pictured below has built-in pot holders, a suggestion from a survey to thousands of their zealous readers.

Glossier has seen similar success, creating a Slack channel for their rabid fans to connect with each other and help with product creation and testing.

Complex is not just a lifestyle site about sneakers, hip hop and culture. Complex is also an online shop, a zeitgeisty event called ComplexCon, a hot sauce millionaire, and a streetwear design class with Parsons. They live and breathe what their audience does.

And if you needed any more data points to say why brands matter, look no further than Brandless, a recent DTC failure. Axios writes that "Brandless was primarily felled by a thesis that never panned out—that there were young consumers who craved a digital middle ground between dollar stores and malls. People who were price-sensitive cared somewhat about quality, but not about brands." 

What does this all mean? The ante has been upped in the world of branding. To build a great brand takes a more holistic approach than it used to, but what a brand means to its audience is deeper than before. So, when done right, the hard work is worth the effort.