Why are most branding efforts hard for people to understand?

When an organization wants to go down the path of strengthening, refreshing, repositioning or redefining its brand, the process can typically be long, painful and fundamentally confusing. Brand essence, positioning, promises, attributes, architecture, pillars, value drivers. It is no surprise that the process can leave most executives scratching their heads. What does all of this mean? It turns out it can mean almost anything depending on who you ask? This is not to say it is isn’t important for an organization, especially one that is growing, to consider what its strategy is and how this all fits together.

I feel unqualified to give a discourse on the difference between brand essence and brand pillars; I’ll leave that to a branding expert.

However, I feel that if you ask an organization to share its brand story in plain language, they will be forced to make something utterly complex and unintelligible simpler, and more meaningful. Or else, they risk wasting all the time and money they’ve invested.  A story, especially one about about a brand, needs to be strong and credible if it hopes to move people to action and mean anything to them.

 Print This Post