Because I believe so strongly in making my brand All About Them, I sometimes have to remind myself to take a step back from pontificating about building brand value. Instead, I need to spend more time understanding the issues and concerns my clients and readers have and try to give them proven tools, tips, and techniques they can use to make their businesses – and their lives – better.
I was thinking about this when I received a note from a friend of mine who is creating a new business and a new brand.
He wrote, “Hey, Mr. Harmonica Man! You'll be pleased to know I have finally set up my drums and started to play again. Yay!
“If you don't mind, here's a question for you: Is there a difference between one's brand and one's value proposition? I've seen some folks write about “your brand's value proposition.” Would that value proposition just be one avenue of how we express/communicate our brand? Is our value proposition the brand's promise?
Thanks for the help. Hope all is well with you.”
After giving his question some thought I wrote back:
“Good to hear from you. Congratulations on all the successes you're having – couldn't happen to a nicer, more deserving guy.
“I could answer your question a bunch of ways and simply add to your confusion. That's because there's no specific, agreed-upon definition for either brand or value proposition. I think a lot of the confusion in the definitions and applications of the words comes from there – the people we talk to about the subject often have different points of view based on different definitions of the same word.
“As I see it (and in a perfect world) your brand value and your value proposition should be the very same thing. That is, you're known not only for who you are and what you do but for what you mean to your customer/client/consumer/community. In other words, your audience knows you for the value you provide in their life.
What are brands known for?
Volvo = Safety
Starbucks = Getting together
Jeep = Rugged
Notice that none of these meanings have very much to do with the companies' product function. Instead, they are the attributes that the companies both possess and bestow on their users.”
Based on this belief, it's no wonder my last two books were titled, Building Brand Value and All About Them.
What is a brand?
Keep in mind that your brand is not a logo, a tagline, a brochure, a blog post, a website, an anti-stress ball with your name stamped on it, a branded water bottle, or any of the other things we use to promote our businesses. Instead, a brand is the reputation we have, the promise we make, the feeling our audiences get when they consume our products or services.
Needless to say, all of these interactions should both promise AND deliver our value proposition – THAT'S why they should be the same thing.
What should a brand do?
As I like to tell my clients, your brand should both REinforce and PREinforce the expectations and satisfactions that your consumer gets from you and your products or services. In other words, they should know what they're getting, and they should know what they got from doing business with you.
Regardless of what you call it, what matters most is the effect your brand has on your clients. Remember, a good brand will make them feel good. But a great brand will make them feel good about themselves!
Cool blog! Is your theme custom made or did you download it from somewhere?
A design like yours with a few simple tweeks would really make my blog jump out.
Please let me know where you got your design. Many thanks
Good post Bruce. Since I started my freelance graphics business 40 years ago I considered my brand value (quality work in a timely manner) an important part of my business. I just never had the concept spelled out like this before. Thanks
Thanks for proving the concept Rick. It’s one thing for me to write about it. It’s another thing for you to do it!!
Perhaps the confusion comes from the origins of the word “brand.” A brand was a distinguishing mark used to determine who owned a particular steer in the herd. When “brand” became a metaphor used in marketing, some people focused on the idea that a brand was a “unique mark,” a logo that differentiates. But it’s just as easy to imagine that a rancher might care for his herd with more compassion – feed them better, call in a veterinarian earlier if symptoms of illness showed up, etc. It’s not difficult to imagine that rancher encouraging buyers to look for his “mark” at the cattle auction – the suggestion being that the visual brand personified the values with which he ran his enterprise. Etymological overlap between BRANDing, MARKeting, and deSIGN notwithstanding, “brand” can be considered from two levels:
1: Functional branding: Does the mark distinguish the enterprise from other businesses, especially competitors. The avalanche of globes-and-swooshes logos and other cliche approaches suggests that most logos (visual brands) fall short of this functional goal. Ask for a logo on a crowdsourcing site and you’ll receive variations on dozens of clichés from “The Big Book of Logos.” Most brands make the individual steer difficult to distinguish from the rest of the herd. And of course, those rustlers over at the “Peace Sign Ranch” had no trouble stealing cattle from those not-very-innovative folks over at the Circle Ranch.
2. Value Proposition branding: Here’s where the uniqueness of the artwork is subordinate to the uniqueness of the VALUES that distinguish the entity from others. The is SHOW as opposed to TELL. Goodwill, care, integrity, vision, reliability, quality: all must be demonstrated rather than claimed.
When work is done to familiarize consumers with the mark as well as with the values associated with it, the brand has EQUITY – VALUE. It’s not important to choose a definition (e.g. visual mark vs. value proposition), but it IS important not to get stuck in either one. A poorly designed logo communicates little attention to detail, care, and business savvy – before any other mission-statement-derived values enter the picture. Any business values worth sharing should not be hidden by a weak mark. Neither should a strong mark conceal poor ethics and weak values. In an ideal world, each – the mark and the values – reinforces the other.
Brilliant! Thanks Dave.
“PREinforce the expectations…” is a concept I heard you make once before during a speech to a professional association. It has become one of my new favorite made-up words. PREinforce. BOOM. It communicates value and reinforces the idea of what they will experience from my brand before they actually experience it. What a fantastic way to understand brand and value prop subtleties. Thank you for posting this.
Thank you for remembering and reminding me Brian. Just another reason why you are “Mr. 110%!”