Reviewing the material most people are tackling the question why brand is important from the purview of its practical application. While we’ll cover that, I want to step back and ask why brand is important from the purview of its context.
Why brand?
Without wants, brands wouldn’t exist.
Why?
As the tale goes, there are two fish in a bowl. One morning, the first fish says to the other, “How’s the water?” The second fish replies, “What’s water?”
What this anecdote is attempting to communicate is that whether you are aware of it or not, you exist in within an environment. A subtler point would be to say, it’s not neutral. It’s not nothing. Water is a something.
As it turns out, the environment around about us influences and shapes us in both known and unknown ways. Brands are no different.
Brands Exist in an Environment
That environment isn’t neutral. Just think about modern life. Hurried. Busy. Complex. Confusing. Life in the 21st century is layered and textured. Culture. Family. Politics. Class. Technology.
What do I mean?
Here’s an example we all might be familiar with. Different cultures assign different meaning to colours. Red might evoke a sense of danger or excitement if you’re in the West. Where if you hail from China, it symbolises luck and happiness. Meanings can change based on the environment.
To a man with a hammer, anything looks like a nail. The reality is we’re often unaware of the perspective or perception we have. We just take it as a given, we like the fish just assume this is how the world is. When really, we see the world as we are.
A philosopher I like says, reality is what you run into when you’re wrong.
What we call brand, branding, identity simply didn’t exist for most of human history. It’s not self-evident. And it’s really only out of the industrial revolution and parallel philosophical revolutions that what we call brand actually starts to even make sense.
Following?
In short, a brand is a solution to a problem identified in an environment. (In this case late modern capitalism.)
Now, I just need to drop in a slight history lesson. If you haven’t seen ‘The Century of the Self’, you can thank me later, what happened at the turn of the 20th century set the course for the path we’re walking today. This is where the ideas of famed psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud found their way into the hands of his nephew Edward Bernays.
What happened next was the start of a revolution.
As a side note, Bernays is the one who literally wrote the book on Propaganda, hired by powerful corporations, who influenced public opinion and behaviour on things like cigarettes. The whole ‘these are the cigarettes doctors recommend’ is his work.
One of the most significant shifts was that of moving from a needs-based society to that of a wants-based society. This was in part because the post-war economy was struggling and that unlocking consumer purchasing power was considered a panacea. This was done through appealing to subconscious desires and using techniques to promote consumerism.
See where I’m going with this?
It can be difficult for those of us who haven’t known anything other than modern life to get our heads around just how different a worldview previous generations had. People simple didn’t buy things they didn’t need. And if they did buy things they bought functionally, not to create and manage an image.
This is all to say something changed at the turn of the century. As a consequence the environment changed.
A series of history-changing shifts took hold. Whether it was technological, civil or sexual, the seeds of these revolutions had been laid decades and centuries beforehand and we began to see the fruit.
The radically simplified version of these shifts goes something like this.
- Wants > Needs
- Individual > Group
- Mass > Narrow
- Global > Local
- Progress > Maintenance
This is all to say the environment changed. Life changed and got a whole lot more complex. The implication being, it became too complex to navigate systematically, we needed heuristics and identifiable patterns to reduce the complexity of our decision making.
In light of these changes, we needed a way to navigate this new environment. Where tarmac streets where laid to carry the world’s new forms of transport, brands were identified as tools to help us make decisions in this new world.
If a brand is the thoughts, feelings, actions and impulses that people hold, it makes complete sense that brands respond their environments. They’re dynamic and ever changing.
Why?
You are.
So, Why is Branding Important?
Importantly, because brands show up in every area of life, they impact every area of life. We’re going to break it down into the following categories:
- Emotional
- Social
- Functional
- Psychological
What roles does brand play in the categories now understanding our environment?
Emotional
- Identity & Self-Expression: Brands can be vehicles for individuals to express their personality, values, and tastes. By associating with a certain brand, people can signal who they are or aspire to be.
- Emotional Connection: Brands can invoke emotions such as nostalgia or excitement. Consumers may feel emotionally attached to brands that have been part of their lives or align with their beliefs
Social
- Status & Prestige: High-end or luxury brands provide social status, allowing individuals to convey wealth, success, or sophistication. This can be created through exclusivity or price-signals.
- Belonging: Brands can create a sense of belonging around their products and worldviews. This can range anywhere from niche enthusiasts to global identities. You too?
- Community: Strong brands both create and participate in communities around shared values or experiences. People feel that they’re a part of something larger than just a transaction.
- Proof: Using a recognised brand can reassure individuals that they are making a good decision because the brand is trusted and widely accepted.
Functional
- Quality & Consistency: Brands that have earned trust become signal of reliability. Consumers turn to brands they trust for consistent quality and to reduce the risk of a poor decision.
- Time-Saving & Convenience: Recognisable brands simplify decision-making. Individuals can quickly choose products or services from trusted brands.
- Differentiation: In absence of real distinction brands can use differentiation to drawn attention to themselves and distinguish themselves from competition.
Psychological
- Simplifying Decisions: Brands help individuals cut through the clutter of choices in the market by creating a shortcut to decision-making.
- Sense of Control: Familiar brands offer predictability, which can give individuals a sense of control over their choices and experiences.
At the end of the day, these brand dimensions: emotional, social, functional, and psychological are all forms of value. Branding is important because it help businesses communicate value. Brand strategy then is simply a way of using brand to communicate value.
