Since my days in grad school, branding has always interested me.  While I loved all aspects of marketing, I was immediately drawn to the concepts advanced by  Reis and Trout  more than 30 years ago.  They believed  that your Brand and your Position exist only in the mind of your customer.  Essentially, it doesn’t matter what you think about your brand, only what your customers believe.  We try to keep this in mind as we work with companies to develop, expand and communicate their brand.   

You can see some of this feeling come through some of my favorite blog posts on the topic of branding.

  • Logo from Sketch Pad to 3D – In this post Taylor talks about the process of transferring a concept from sketch to logo and ultimately to sign, created by my husband @aballstudio as a unique piece of artwork.  Through it all the clients goal to have a rustic, “outdoor” feel to his brand was a guiding principal in our work.
  • Branding is about emotion – In the post I Love Logos I feature the Nike logo as an example of a logo which doesn’t tell you what they do, but creates a “feeling” of movement
  • An important element of branding is the name you choose – In A Rose by Any Other Name we put our visitors to work, soliciting input on names for a carpentry business we were helping to brand.  (By the way, the final name is Carpenter’s Rule.

Bottom line: Branding is about the emotional reaction you create in others.  Your name and logo set the tone, but your brand is about much more.  It is about how you make customers feel when they think of you.