The Defining Features of a Brand
As a business owner, it’s important to create and develop a unique brand for your business. Your brand helps to define your business and give it a voice, provides a focal point, and helps to keep things running in the direction you want to go. It also helps to develop the ‘personality’ of the business – the characteristics that make your business distinctive.
Brand elements
There are a number of central features of a brand. These include the:
- Brand vision
- Brand’s mission
- Brand ethics / values
- Brand personality
- Brand’s image
- Brand’s narrative or story
- Brand logo
There is no one right way to go about building a brand, but the first step and central element is generally the brand vision. The vision is a short statement about the main reason the brand exists – its raison d’être, and central purpose. You could refer to it as the heart and soul of your business.
A brand’s mission and values expand on the vision. The mission might explain in a sentence what achieving the brand vision means, while the values state the basic standards and ethics the brand intends to follow.
It’s also important to develop a brand personality. If you think of a famous brand you know, it probably brings up in your mind an image of that brand, what it represents and the characteristics and traits of the particular business the brand represents. It may also invoke a particular emotional response within you, depending on your experiences with the brand.
A brand’s voice refers to what is communicated to the world – what is said, and the language and tone that is used.
The brand’s narrative or story is an ongoing thing. Everyone loves a good story, and it has been one of the principal ways people communicate and convey messages since time immemorial. The stories you tell about your business, its history, ethos and current activities, could form part of your content strategy, providing a way of communicating with your audience. Brand narratives can even have their own characters, storylines and heroes!
Brand characteristics
On a deeper level, some of the most important brand characteristics include:
- Authenticity – people know hype when they see it! They want to engage with a brand that speaks its truth.
- A focus on those it serves. Your brand should be focused outward, on what you can provide to others that will benefit them.
- Passion and a commitment to excellence in all activities.
To be successful, a brand should also be forward-looking, positive, focused, innovative, and consistent yet adaptable.
Defining your brand
A good way to define your brand might be to draw a series of concentric circles. In the central core of this diagram is the brand vision. Then in the circles coming out from this central point are the brand’s mission, values, personality, voice, and narrative. Experiment with this – you might even come up with more circles.
Defining your brand in this way helps give an identity to your business that sets it apart from all the other businesses out there – in other words makes it truly unique.
