There’s been a considerable number of interesting articles recently on some of our favourite websites discussing what branding really means, what makes branding effective and, ultimately, why it’s so important for branding to be an honest representation of your organization.
Street artist and philosopher De La Vega once said, “Believe in yourself… and stop trying to convince others.” It’s unlikely that this inspirational phrase will appear on any fridge magnets, cards or cushions in the next few decades, but it is poignant enough to be a useful place to start thinking about the importance of honest branding.
As PSFK explained, “If you really want to impress people with your brand, just be who you really are… Being of value, inspiration, and support is the ultimate brand story anyone should try to tell. It doesn’t get more real than this.”
The same website also published an article by Ed Cotton criticizing Coca Cola for failing to understand the importance of branding when financially valuing a company. Cotton explains that a few years ago Coca Cola bought a minority share in Honest Tea, a small start-up business that had burgeoned into a successful company with a growing share of loyal customers. As a result, the multinational drinks corporation offered Honest Tea $40 million for their share.
Coca Cola’s next step was to look for ways to increase their profit margin; in particular by substituting sugar in the drinks with high fructose corn syrup: much cheaper to produce but also under considerable scrutiny for its possible contribution to childhood and adult obesity.
Honest Tea is still in debate with Coca Cola about this. They don’t want to simply remove the “no high-fructose corn syrup” banner on their packaging because a cornerstone of their brand is the promise of ‘no-hidden ingredients’. Honest Tea presumably feels that to silently remove this understanding would not only be dishonest to their customers but also their brand, and the philosophy behind the brand, upon which their reputation and profit margin are based.
While Cotton’s article primarily focuses on the importance of companies valuing the branding of organizations when making financial decisions (an argument we agree with), we believe that his example effectively represents De La Vega’s point.
Whether it’s marketing, PR, branding or graphic design, a primary goal for each should be to take the inherent positive attributes of an organization and communicate those to the public in an innovative, original, and eye-catching manner. Good branding is not a case of creating an identity but rather using the existing personality of a company, product or service and translating that into graphics, text and colours.
Branding is, to some extent, about convincing others. But companies will have a far more successful time of this if their brands are honest and place the focus of their branding on expressing themselves rather than convincing others of traits that are not necessarily there.
