How Branding Impacts (Almost) Everyone
A discovery
As a nerdy 17 year old, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life.
But I did know that I loved creating and I loved thinking about complex problems. Whatever I did, it’d need to engage both sides of my brain. So when I discovered branding, with its unique mix of research, strategy, design, and creativity, I was intrigued. Layer on the more philosophical underpinnings of purpose and culture, and I was hooked.
Fast forward a little more than 20 years, and I’m still hooked. In the two intervening decades, I’ve been a designer, a strategist, and a creative director, but always focused on brands. I’ve had hundreds—actually, my napkin math says more than a thousand—calls and meetings with business leaders while helping them create or evolve a brand they are responsible for. Point is, I’ve invested a lot of my life into a practice that on its surface may seem a little, well, inconsequential.
And (like you, I bet) I do sometimes step back and ask, “did any of that really matter?”
Turns out, the answer is yes. Not merely because branding matters so much to me, but because whether you’ve thought about it or not, it actually matters to you.
Let me explain. By the end, I hope you can look at what you do in a similar way and remember why it matters—to you, and to me too.
For better or worse, you’re swimming in brands.
When was the last time you took a road trip and really looked at the American landscape—the billboards, the signs, the strip malls. How did that make you feel?
Marketing is infused into our landscape and our mindscape. But the nature of that marketing—what message it conveys, how it looks, how it makes you feel, even the way it was made—all of that stuff is brand stuff. Companies lacking a clear, purposeful brand tend to swarm your attention with vapid, disposable interruptions that only benefit them.
Companies who know who they are, who you are, and how to provide value to you—companies with a strong brand strategy— are much more likely to make things you actually want to engage with because they’re meaningful to you.
And brands impact much more than the ads you see. In fact, many great brands don’t lean on advertising at all.
Brands impact architecture. And signage. And product design. And the car you drive. And the clothes you wear. And even the food you eat. When a restaurant chain decides to buy more expensive organic produce, you bet that’s a brand decision.
When you’re swimming in brands, the water quality matters.
I can’t quantify the extent to which the brands you’re exposed to help or hurt your wellbeing, but I bet that upon reflection you can see why better brands would make your life better.
You probably work for a brand. Does it work for you?
Branding is internal and external. The way Referent does rebranding is inside-out, for the same reason that buildings are built bottom-up. You can try it the other way (and many do) but the results are shaky at best.
This means that company culture and values are one of the first, most important aspects of branding. Do you work for a company? Do they have a brand? If you answered “yes” to these questions, listen up, because the quality of your at-work experience is intrinsically connected to that brand.
If you answered no, you may be an entrepreneur, in which case this part is even more relevant to you.
Your team’s purpose, culture, and values are the foundation on which brands are built. In fact they are part of the brand strategy. If your team is small, your brand strategy may not have a clear shape yet, but it has an essence, and that essence shapes the workweek.
When I’m working with brand leaders, I spend a lot of time working to identify the strongest parts of their company culture so that they can be clarified, amplified, and put into action throughout the company. That doesn’t happen overnight, but great brands who know who they are also know who to hire, how to support their staff, and how to lead in a personally meaningful way.
And I don’t have to tell you how much those qualitative aspects of your job impact your well-being.
If you’re an entrepreneur or business leader, branding can make or break your dreams.
The last point here isn’t for everyone. But if you own a brand, this is a point I learned from you. Through all the interviews, the calls, the collaborations, and the genuine heartfelt joy of seeing your brand finally take shape the way you dreamed of. I’ve seen some wet eyeballs when my clients know in their bones that a purpose statement has finally captured and clarified their mission.
I’ve also seen and felt the deep frustration of the disconnect between a heartfelt vision and a brand that—both internally and externally—just doesn’t capture it. It sounds like:
“We’re just not getting credit for what we’re doing.”
“I know we can be better than this. We are better than this.”
“We need to change, but I have to get everyone on board.”
“Our audience just doesn’t get us anymore.”
The desire to change is there, but most teams simply don’t have all the tools for it. Branding isn’t marketing. And rebranding isn’t the same as creating a brand from scratch. It’s a uniquely complex challenge. So navigating brand change can feel like trying to solve a puzzle that arrives with pieces missing.
Owning my impact
Spending so much time seeing the world through the lens of branding has shown me many of the immediate and downstream impacts of my work. And I am sure that whatever you do, whether at work or elsewhere, it has cascading effects too. That’s just how the world works. It’s tangly.
Ultimately, the simplest reason that brands matter to me is that I impact brands, and brands impact people. I want to own my impact. I want to feel it when I’m helping to articulate what a team is all about (what an honor, right?) I want to see it when my team is creating a visual identity that will occupy some part of your landscape
I want the practice of positive transformation to be so deep in my bones that it becomes its own reward and transcends the particularities of my job. And after some practice, I’m happy to say I’m getting there. And as you’re owning your impact doing whatever it is you do—writing, doing taxes, starting a venture, or hanging out with your grandkids—I hope you can feel how the way you do it matters. The impact reaches out to your clients, to your family and friends, and most likely to me as well.
