Thoughts on Branding

The purpose of brand strategy is simple: Teaching everyone in your company what your brand stands for… …so they can make good decisions every day that reinforce it. Companies focused on scaling often fall into a common trap: → Visual identity before brand strategy → Naming before brand strategy → Messaging before brand strategy → Marketing before brand strategy → Everything before brand strategy Surprisingly, executive leaders, including CMOs, acknowledge this backward approach, often compelled by CEO directives. This results in: → Wasted time → A focus on features over benefits → A meaningless brand → Disconnected, piecemeal efforts → Confusion over which strategy to pursue Beyond the obvious issues, this can become a cultural norm and a hard-to-break bad habit. Brand strategy is what you do to scale with less friction. @wearemotto

What if branding was less about distinguishing products and more about igniting belief? Too often, businesses focus solely on their products as the heroes of their stories. The problem is they are overlooking the deeper role of the brand itself. There's a misconception that a product will 'sell itself.' It's the brand that infuses these products with meaning and value. This transforms a simple transaction into an alignment of values between brand and consumer. You elevate the product from a commodity to a symbol of shared ideals. How does your brand encapsulate its ethos within its products? Are you merely selling something, or do you actually stand for something? @wearemotto