Every organization — whether it’s a for-profit corporation or a nonprofit — has a top line and a bottom line. But does your organization also have a robust “through line”?

Since you’re reading this article, I’m guessing you agree that “brand” is a real thing, and maybe also that it’s a topic worth exploring. It probably comes as no surprise, but not everyone agrees. I’ve met people who think “brand” is a fluffy marketing concept that doesn’t have much to do with the real world. And by “real world,” they usually mean “business” — more specifically, generating revenue, minimizing expenses, and maintaining a profit.

These folks have a point after all. What good is any high-minded concept if your company can’t sustain itself economically and end up in the black?

I’ll agree that “brand” may sound like a high-minded concept, but it’s not.

Every business, no matter how big or how small, has a brand. Some businesses have robust brands that create obvious benefits (or “value”) for those organizations and their stakeholders, while other businesses have weak or negative brands. (Weak brands have relatively little recognition and usually lack clarity. Negative brands have greater recognition, but for all the wrong reasons.)

What is the relationship between “business” and “brand”?

The relationship is not always simple. It can be positive and symbiotic, but it can also be negative and even mutually destructive.

Let’s start exploring this by returning to the concepts of “top line,” “bottom line,” and “through line.”

In a profit & loss statement, as you know, the top line is the number representing total revenue, and the bottom line is the number representing net income (after deducting the operating expenses, depreciation, interest, and taxes).

This snapshot of a business is just that: a highly compressed and simplified view of financial performance over a specific accounting period. It’s one way to characterize a moment in time, purely in terms of money accrued and spent.

A through line, on the other hand, is a sequence of choices and related actions which are oriented toward a long-term goal.

While your top line and bottom line can be thought of as defining aspects of a single snapshot, your through line can be imagined as a pattern of behaviors that appears across many consecutive snapshots, all consistent with a particular outcome.

(The first known use of “through line” with this meaning, by the way, was by the Russian director and actor Konstantin Stanislavski in his 1936 book An Actor Prepares, which laid the groundwork for what came to be known as the Stanislavski System or the Stanislavski Method. Stanislavski taught actors to achieve more credible portrayals of characters by focusing on behaviors leading toward a “super objective.” The Stanislavski Method evolved into modern-day “method acting,” and the phrase “through line” is now applied widely across many creative fields, sometimes to simply mean “overarching theme” or “plot.”)

Healthy, vital brands tend to have strong, positive through lines — highly focused and consistently oriented patterns of behaviors that benefit current stakeholders and attract new supporters. When you strive for clarity and maintain mutually beneficial relationships, your brand can take on a life of its own.

Think of any company, nonprofit, or school you respect deeply. Aside from offering products or services you admire, that organization probably won you over in other ways. Perhaps you’ve enjoyed routinely positive interactions with its employees. Maybe you’re aware that the organization exemplifies high ethics, supports some of the same causes you do, or engages deeply with local communities or people in need of aid or extra resources.

If you’re a loyal fan of that organization and support its work, then many other stakeholders probably do as well. You and your fellow fans may be willing to pay a premium for its offerings or, if it’s a nonprofit, donate to it on a monthly or annual basis. Because of the organization’s values, its value to you, or both, you don’t want that organization to disappear or diminish in any way. You’ll stand by it even if their revenue or net income dips. You might even increase your support!

When a brand is strong — with positive energy and loyalty shared by employees, partners, and customers, clients, or donors — the consistent behaviors, values, and sense of community associated with that brand can help an organization withstand the ups and downs of financial uncertainty or even bounce back from major economic challenges.

If your brand is new or lacking momentum, focus on developing a clear, constructive path of action you can execute without swerving or backtracking. This is the first step toward cultivating a healthy, vital brand, which in turn can support business growth. To then maintain the health of the brand, you may need to periodically tweak or refocus your through line to be responsive to both stakeholder and business needs, but that’s okay, as long as you don’t betray your core values.

What if you have a wobbly through line? Or none at all?

The lack of a strong through line can undermine even the most financially successful organization. Notable inconsistencies in quality, ethics, engagement, and other key behaviors can lead to the deterioration of relationships with employees, partners, and customers, clients, or donors.

Sometimes, the decline of these relationships can be so gradual or delayed that it’s difficult to connect the dots and link the loss of trust, loyalty, and enthusiasm to the irregularities in your organization’s behaviors. For example, you may begin to recognize signs of attrition and wonder “Why are we losing long-time employees and supporters?,” but attribute the losses to external factors like new competitors, rising costs, or macroeconomic trends.

In this case, even recently departed customers or employees might have trouble articulating exactly why they left you. They might attribute their decisions to the most recent negative interaction they had with your organization rather than identifying a long pattern of inconsistencies that alienated them.

The takeaway? If you know your through line is shaky, with recent dips or detours in key brand traits and behaviors, stay on high alert for any signs of decreasing loyalty or mass exits of stakeholders. Conversely, if you first notice drops in loyalty or attrition, don’t automatically assume external factors are to blame. Inconsistency in your operations or how you handle relationships may be a major factor.

The worst case scenario?

A negative through line — that is, a consistent pattern of behaviors that are at odds with the values of your stakeholders or threaten their interests — can be much more destructive than an inconsistent or nonexistent through line.

There’s no shortage of horror stories of high-flying ventures and major corporations that have deceived their stakeholders or engaged in harmful or criminal behavior. (You may recall Enron, Lehman Brothers, Theranos, or FTX, to name a few.) But even small organizations can descend to these lows all too quickly when guided more by the top or bottom line than serving their stakeholders.

How can you reach your brand’s super objective?

If you’re a founder or in the top management tier of your organization, you may well feel that you’re “in charge” of your brand. But it might be better to think of yourself as a faithful steward than a commander. Ultimately, your stakeholders — both internal and external — will have the final say in evaluating and determining the health and vitality of your brand.

Your role as a leader is to focus your organization’s activities, exemplify brand values, reinforce behaviors that serve the greater good of your stakeholder communities, and amplify positive signals throughout your brand ecosystem.

Maybe we can all learn something from Konstantin Stanislavski?

Originally published at Jell Brand Strategy.

Does Your Brand Have a Through Line? was originally published in Brand Leader on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Some leaders focus entirely on business strategy, delegating brand strategy to the marketing department. Other leaders jump directly into brand strategy without formulating a business strategy. Wise leaders know both are critical to a brand’s success.

I’m not a business consultant, at least not in the usual sense. I don’t have an MBA. I never worked at McKinsey, Bain, BCG, or one of the Big 4 accounting firms. Even so, for nearly 30 years, owners of businesses and leaders of nonprofits have sought my input on a wide range of business matters.

Why is that?

At some point, every organization needs help in some aspect of their branding, whether it’s design, messaging, or communications. For small-to-medium brands—most of which can’t afford to hire a big business consultancy—a boutique brand firm like ours seems like an affordable and accessible entry point to the world of consultants. (Besides, for many of us, meeting to discuss marketing sounds more pleasant than analyzing a company’s value chain, right?)

Unfortunately, in many cases we’ve been surprised to discover that the leadership team has performed little or no competitive research and hasn’t given much thought to defining their business strategy in a rigorous way. People often hope that a fresh logo or jazzier website will compensate for a lack of research and strategy by raising the brand’s credibility and generating more leads.

If clients just want to look or sound better, why should we be concerned with the details of their business strategy? Indeed, why worry about business strategy at all if updated branding and marketing can help them grow the top line?

Brand strategy requires business strategy

To build a brand the right way, you need a solid foundation. That foundation is business strategy. Everything rests upon it. Business strategy consists of many interrelated choices (e.g., scope of activities, target customers, structure, partnerships, human resources, and operating costs) that help define which goals will or won’t be pursued by the organization.

By contrast, brand strategy is what happens after the foundation is built. Think of brand strategy as a combination of landscape design, architecture, and interior design. Brand strategy is an effort to realize the full potential of building upon that foundation—to envision what that property should look like and how it can serve residents and visitors for many years to come.

Of course, these are all metaphors, but hopefully you get the gist of how brand strategy builds upon business strategy. Now consider what happens when one tries to leap ahead by skipping some of these steps.

Flying the plane while building it

In the world of agile software development, a popular principle is that it’s best to launch a product or a business as quickly as possible—usually in the form of a “minimum viable product”—then figure out what needs to be done to keep it aloft. That’s the idea behind the popular expression “Build the plane while you’re flying it.”

This iterative approach (which is an updated version of “Throw it against the wall and see what sticks.”) might be fruitful in the high-paced world of technology, where progress often lurches forward in “sprints,” but it seldom makes sense in terms of brand strategy.

Putting aside this talk of sticky pasta and risky planes, let’s return to the metaphor of brand buildings.

When someone asks me to help build their brand, I want to know more about the foundation—a lot more. What’s my client doing differently than everyone else, if anything? Where’s their competitor research? Who has my client included among their target customers, clients, or supporters? Who have they excluded? Is there anything my client would not do—e.g., adding new services or products or entering new markets—in an effort to increase sales or raise funds?

All too often, these questions have not been fully explored, and the answers are not readily available. That means we’re on the hook to help create a building (inside and out), without the benefit of a solid foundation or any idea of who may inhabit or visit the building now or later.

That’s how my team members and I often fall into acting as ad hoc business consultants—helping our clients define the specific industry in which they operate and the competitors they face, characterizing target audiences, identifying strengths and weaknesses, and forecasting opportunities and threats.

When that essential information is not ready and waiting for us, we do what we can to construct a provisional foundation—the beginnings of a business strategy—so that we can continue on to develop a robust brand strategy.

So what is business strategy, in a nutshell?

Let’s start with some common misperceptions:

• Business strategy is inherently dry.
• It is incomprehensible to those of us who didn’t go to business school and therefore requires the services of an MBA or a team of consultants.
• Business strategy is strictly about the bottom line—cutting costs in order to maximize profits.
• The goal is to vanquish or acquire competitors, and thereby become the biggest in your industry.

While there may be a grain of truth in each of these assumptions, perhaps stemming from experiences in big corporations, business strategy doesn’t need to be any of those things.

With a modicum of patience, anyone can learn the basics of business strategy. The counsel of an MBA might be very helpful, but for the leaders of small or medium brands, it may not be necessary.

And business strategy definitely should not be a zero-sum game, measured in success by the losses you inflict on others. Competing businesses and nonprofits can co-exist and prosper by excelling in different ways.

As author Joan Magretta explains, the essence of business strategy is deceptively simple:

“Strategy explains how an organization, faced with competition, will achieve superior performance.”

Unpacking that definition, however, is not so straightforward. For example, how do you define competition? Or “superior performance”? How is strategy different than setting goals or defining tactics?

(For a fun crash course in the basics of business strategy, try Magretta’s What Is Strategy?, which summarizes the seminal work of Harvard economist Michael Porter. Magretta’s writing is concise and witty, and the storybook-style illustrations are clever and illuminating.)

Vive la différence

Perhaps the most common misstep is believing one can succeed by striving to “do better” or “be the best”—essentially mimicking competitors in almost all regards but hoping that you can out-perform them in terms of speed, cost-cutting, price, or marketing. As Porter has said many times in many ways, competing to be the best is a fool’s errand:

“Strategy is about setting yourself apart from the competition. It’s not a matter of being better at what you do—it’s a matter of being different at what you do.”

And being different requires two critical steps: 1) knowing a great deal about your competitors, as well as possible substitutions for your offerings and likely avenues for new entrants to your industry; and 2) making difficult choices about your offerings and with whom you’ll compete in exactly what ways. Here’s Porter again at his pithiest:

“The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.”

Put another way, you can’t be all things to all people. (Or if you prefer: “stick to your knitting,” “stay in your lane,” and “you do you.”)

It may seem like there must be much more to business strategy than these clichés. And there is: a good deal of research and fine-grained analyses are required—not to mention all those tough decisions about what not to do.

Establishing and maintaining a unique approach to anything can be hard work. But committing to differentiation and sticking with your strategy over time is the key to building that solid foundation. As Magretta says,

“Competition is dynamic. Don’t expect smooth sailing. Customers’ needs shift. New competitors emerge. Old technologies evolve and new ones are created. Change is essential. But so is continuity.”

In other words, don’t push the panic button every time there’s a change in the marketplace. Flexibility and evolution are necessary, but remain mindful of your focus. As you adapt your operations or offerings in order to stay relevant, always remember what your business is not.

If the essence of business strategy is choosing what not to do, what’s the essence of brand strategy?

We’ll get to that shortly. First, let’s assume for the moment that you’ve made difficult choices and established a business strategy that truly sets you apart from your competition.

Now imagine your world five or ten years from now—a world in which your business (or nonprofit) is achieving its potential and making both you and your stakeholders very happy.

Focus on that all-important phrase “both you and your stakeholders.” That means you, your partners, your employees, and your customers, clients, or supporters. For all of you to be happy, all at the same time, you must be doing something quite special.

What’s that secret sauce?

Minimally, of course, whatever it is that you make or do must be prized. That is, your products or services must be widely recognized and appreciated for their utility, effectiveness, quality, innovations, or rarity. There’s much more to cultivating one’s brand, however, than gaining recognition and appreciation of your products or services.

Perhaps you’ve proven to be very honest and reliable over a long period of time—not only to those you serve (your customers, clients, or supporters), but also to those you lead or employ and those with whom you partner.

Maybe you’ve taken the time to routinely engage with your stakeholders over the years, asking them the right questions and listening very closely. (For more on this, see “Strategic leaders need brand insights.”)

Maybe you’ve made tough or surprising decisions along the way: taking a stand based on principles, or investing heavily to benefit your stakeholders or the broader community.

Perhaps you were very selective in your business relationships, or you made it clear through your actions that you’re driven by some unshakeable belief or purpose. And perhaps you did so at some risk, knowing that defining yourself (and your business or nonprofit) so sharply and clearly would inevitably alienate some customers, clients, or supporters.

If you can imagine such a future—in which both you and your stakeholders are proud to share in what you’ve accomplished, for all of the reasons above—you’re already developing a brand strategy.

Brand strategy is the process of choosing how to behave and communicate with the world at large in unique, memorable, and compelling ways that serve to continuously align the brand’s beliefs and offerings with the values and needs of its stakeholders.

Comparing the processes: brand vs business strategies

Not too surprisingly, some elements of business strategy have direct correlates in brand strategy. In both strategy processes, we must research and analyze the industry and competitors. And in both processes, we consider how best to position (and thereby compete) through differentiation.

As you might expect, the process and language tend to be a bit more formal and quantitative on the business side. For example, in the workup to business strategy, we would expect a focus on financial and performance metrics in a report of industry and competitor research. In the workup to brand strategy, we would focus instead on characterizing the industry and competitors in more qualitative terms, such as messaging, visibility, awareness, and engagement.

Similarly, the competitive analysis required for business strategy would deal with value chains, market share, and growth forecasts, while the competitive analysis required for brand strategy would lean into customer perceptions and needs.

How brand and business strategists interact

In an ideal situation, a leader seeking to build their organization’s brand has marshaled at least some of the research and analyses required for formulating a business strategy. The availability of in-depth business data and insights about an organization’s industry, customers, and competition is of tremendous value to a brand strategist.

It might surprise some business leaders, however, that a good brand strategist will also look well beyond existing business data. For example, firms like ours conduct independent brand research and offer insights that can help a leader refine an existing business strategy or, if necessary, formulate core elements of a business strategy if one doesn’t already exist.

It’s always easier and more profitable to build a brand house on a solid, well-designed business foundation. If that foundation is incomplete, a good brand architect can help a business leader begin to fill the gaps where necessary and fortify the brand from the bottom to the top.

The best leaders recognize that fostering a symbiotic partnership between business and brand strategists—with routine check-ins, collaboration, and consideration of potential tune-ups—offers the greatest long-term benefits to both the business’s bottom line and their brand’s future.

Originally published at Jell Brand Strategy.

What is Brand Strategy? What is Business Strategy? was originally published in Brand Leader on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

There are dozens of books and articles that attempt to explain what “brand” is. Yet many people I meet are still confused about how or when to use that word. Let’s try a very different approach.

First, brand is not a logo

Or a color. Or a typeface. Or a trademark. Or any combination thereof.

But wait: what about the logo and colors and fonts your organization received in the course of a “rebranding”?

Those visual elements are usually referred to as an “identity” or “identity system,” which is one possible output of a branding or rebranding process.

Understandably, people often confuse “identity” with “brand” because their organization’s visual identity system is described in a document titled “Brand Standards” or “Brand Guidelines.”

A complete brand standards guide, however, should go well beyond documenting details of the visual identity. Brand standards should also include recommendations for living and communicating the brand.

Brand is not a presentation or a website

Your PowerPoint deck might be thoroughly road tested and beautifully designed. Your website may have cost many thousands of dollars and required untold hours to perfect. But neither your presentation template nor your website is your brand.

Could you sustain your business development targets without these tools? Maybe not. If your site disappeared, even temporarily, would revenue take a hit? Almost certainly.

But just because you depend on them doesn’t make them your brand.

Brand is not marketing, advertising, SEO, or social media

Increasing awareness and engaging with stakeholders are good and necessary things. Most brands can only persist or grow by maintaining visibility and competing for the spotlight.

Increasingly, brands can seem a bit needy—constantly seeking your attention and doing their best to prompt commentary, regardless of whether it’s positive or negative. In the words of Oscar Wilde,

“There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”

This eagerness to stimulate and engage takes many forms. Cheeky emails. Exuberant Facebook or Instagram posts. Videos targeted at a specific generation or subculture. Provocative podcasts. Branded sponsorships. Influencer placements. Celebrity endorsements. Loud billboards. And, of course, over-the-top commercials with funny animals, kooky spokespeople, or both.

All of that put together must be a brand, right?

You know the answer.

Brand is not a style or an attitude

People sometimes describe certain brands as “edgy” or “trendy.” You might also hear brands described as “quirky” or “no nonsense” or “irreverent.” Are these descriptions the brands themselves?

Not really.

Brand managers employ styles and attitudes like these to create “brand personalities,” most often to make big consumer brands appear human and relatable. Social media celebrities and influencers do the same thing, adopting and projecting memorable personality traits to launch or reinforce their “personal brands.”

There’s nothing inherently wrong with thinking of a brand as having a personality. In fact, it can be a very useful tool for creating consistent communications. But reducing a brand to a one-sided, one-dimensional, or superficial personality trait is somewhat akin to summing up a person by their hair color, clothing, or ability to tell jokes.

A compelling and enduring brand should be much bigger and more complex than a trendy look, which can quickly fall out of favor, or a distinctive attitude, which is bound to become annoying quickly.

Brand is not an archetype

Clearly, brand can be a slippery and complex concept. Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a simple template for categorizing brands, so you could easily choose which kind of brand you had (or wanted) and what you should do next?

Many people are convinced that such a template exists: the 12 personality archetypes that Carl Jung derived from ancient mythology back in 1919.

Psychoanalysis isn’t my thing, but I recognize the popular appeal of such a simple, evocative system. Many branding and marketing professionals have adopted this model, which was inspired by Jung’s notion that these 12 archetypes are baked into our collective unconscious, shared by all.

Proponents say every brand can be categorized as one of these mythic archetypes (e.g., the hero, the outlaw, the creator, the magician, and so on). Once you choose your archetype, you design and market the brand accordingly in order to tap directly into the subconscious desires of your target audience.

Some people take this concept very seriously and believe that every brand can be shoehorned into one of the 12 archetypes, as though Jung (who has long been largely discounted in the field of psychology) were the father of brand strategy.

Presented with confidence and some showmanship, the concept of brand archetypes can impress clients and make everyone feel smart, but it does very little to advance anyone’s understanding of brand or brand strategy.

Let’s just say the 12 archetypes may be useful as metaphors—easy to remember and handy as an icebreaker in a group discussion—and leave it at that.

Brand is not your personal tastes or your preferences

Founders—especially first-timers—occasionally conflate their startups with themselves. That is, they fall into the trap of trying to create brands based on their own personal quirks or public personas.

It’s a strange twist on the old Pygmalion myth, in which a king sculpts his idealized version of a woman and then falls in love with the statue. In this case, a modern-day Pygmalion attempts to create a brand in their own image, presuming that everyone else will fall in love with it.

That kind of self-centered shortsightedness is stifling and is likely to backfire in the long run. A brand can be inspired by its founder but must soon take on a life of its own.

Perhaps you’re trying to think of some exceptions to this rule? What about those founders who are so clever or charismatic that they become synonymous with the brands they launched?

There’s certainly a case to be made for having a leader with a strong personal brand that can dovetail with the organization’s brand, thereby complementing or enhancing it. But an organization brand created in the likeness of a single individual—or completely overshadowed by a charismatic leader—is likely to have a relatively short and possibly unhappy life.

Brand is not products. Or services. Or a technology. Or a platform.

This is true for everyone, but inventors and entrepreneurs especially should take note: the thing you want to sell is not your brand. It doesn’t matter how amazing your product or service or patent is, it’s still not a brand.

Even if the name of your company is the same as the thing you’re selling — and, oh by the way, now is a great time to think twice about that! — the thing you’re selling is still not your brand.

What if you’re launching the next big innovation? Like a cloud-based backup for personal memories? Or an appliance for regenerating organs and limbs? Sorry. Those inventions may change the course of history and make you billions, but they are still not brands.

Maybe you have a more mature business, with highly differentiated product lines or a full menu of service offerings. Surely something that big and complex is a brand? Nope. Alan Watts, a prolific self-styled philosopher with zero interest in brands, captured this perfectly:

“The menu is not the meal.”

To sum it up, your brand is not for sale. Or rent. It’s not licensable. And it’s not available as a monthly or annual subscription.

Brand is not about building consensus and managing risk

For some, the intangible and seemingly elusive qualities of brand make it an unavoidable annoyance that must be wrangled and tamed through bureaucratic means.

Rather than embracing and celebrating their brand as a living, breathing asset, they choose to process it through workgroups, run it up and down flagpoles, smooth out annoying edges and wrinkles, PowerPoint and focus group it, and then freeze-dry it in a formal mission-vision-values statement (which may or may not be revisited every three years, as decided by the board).

Don’t get me wrong: building authentic internal buy-in and enthusiasm for an organization’s brand position is a very good thing. A truly inclusive process can even mitigate some risk.

But truly vibrant brands are seldom designed by committees, improved by boards, or vetted by the legal department.

Brand is not static

Your organization’s history and milestones might be utterly fascinating and noteworthy, but they are not your brand.

If anything, your brand is your present—as fleeting as the present always is—and your future.

Bottom line: your brand can’t be nailed down, carved in stone, or frozen in time. Brand moves and mutates constantly.

So what is brand?

The concept of “brand” may seem difficult to grasp. But brand becomes quite obvious once you strip away all the distractions and potential misdirections outlined above.

Brand is reality. It’s a lived experience.

Brand is often earned with great effort and all too easily squandered. Brand is very fluid and often a bit chaotic. Brand is a web of real relationships and all the desires, delights, disappointments, and other perceptions those relationships engender.

Brand can be trust or mistrust. Brand can be joy or satisfaction or mere grudging acceptance. Brand can be mutual respect or mutual hatred. Brand can be fancy pants and premium-priced, or it can be down to earth and deemed a bargain. Brand can be constant striving for excellence or satisfying basic human urges.

Brand is what your employees experience and feel and say. Brand is what your customers (or clients or supporters) experience, feel, and say.

Brand is what happens when employees interact with customers, or when employees interact with each other, or when customers interact with each other. Brand is actions and consequences. Brand is what people say behind your back, whether that’s good or bad.

Brand is the nexus of you, your organization, and everyone you interact with. Brand is an ecosystem, which means it can grow, thrive, dissipate, and die.

If you want your brand to grow or thrive, don’t take it for granted.

Pay close attention. Study your brand. Listen closely and watch for clues.

Above all, nurture your brand obsessively. You can’t control every aspect of it, but you can steer it in the right direction.

Originally published at Jell Brand Strategy.

Brand is Not _________ was originally published in Brand Leader on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Many leaders rely on their own experience and intuition to make big decisions. But listening to stakeholders is essential for developing a vibrant brand strategy.

If you’ve ever launched a startup or managed marketing and communications, you know that nurturing your organization’s brand is just as critical as growing revenues or optimizing performance.

Regardless of whether your organization sells to consumers or other businesses — or operates as a nonprofit — both your top line and bottom line are likely to suffer in the long run if your stakeholders are unhappy or unengaged.

Brands thrive on the energy, interest, and goodwill of many different groups: customers or clients, B2B partners, and employees. In the case of nonprofits, there are also donors, volunteers, nonprofit or for-profit partners, foundations, and government agencies.

That’s why a hallmark of true leadership is an insatiable appetite for the lessons one learns by paying close attention to the needs, perceptions, and habits of stakeholders.

Brand insights are not simply gut instincts

Our culture has trained many of us to value our opinions and perceptions over those of others. The messages come in many forms: “Trust your gut;” “Go with your instincts;” “Listen to your inner voice;” “Follow your heart;” “Be a leader, not a follower.”

These bits of advice have intrinsic appeal, especially to those who identify as visionaries, loners, rebels, underdogs, or rugged individualists. Popular books and movies often feature a hero who sees what the rest of us can’t see and who has the passion, courage, or moxie to go against the grain.

This isn’t just the stuff of comic books, romances, action movies, and Ayn Rand novels. It’s also the plot line of some of America’s favorite business success narratives, particularly in the world of tech startups. Steve Jobs and Elon Musk are prime examples. Each is celebrated for pursuing a seemingly unique and contrarian vision that eventually proves prescient and wildly profitable.

While self-styled visionaries like Steve Jobs have often portrayed their brand insights as evidence of their genius, we should take these anecdotes with a grain of salt. (For more on this topic, see “Brand myths & legends: Jobs, Ford & Apple.”)

Visions and epiphanies based on “instincts” may be great starting points, but what strategic leaders really need are evidence-based brand insights.

What is a brand insight anyway?

Let’s begin to answer that question by defining “brand” and “insight” separately:

• Brand refers to the collective experience of your stakeholders vis-à-vis your company, product, or service. If you have customers or clients that love the way you operate and value what you provide, your brand is probably succeeding on the retail front. If your partners and vendors respect you and work to maintain their relationships with you, your brand is probably succeeding on the B2B front. And if people want to work for you, through times both good and bad, you may be succeeding on the employee experience front. Conversely, if any of these stakeholders are less than happy with you, your brand may be showing fault lines.
• An insight is a fresh observation or an understanding that was not previously obvious or widely shared. Before Charles Darwin published his 1859 treatise On the Origin of Species, most people (including most scientists) believed each species was created by a divine entity, or evolved into its current form according to some grand plan. Darwin’s greatest insight was recognizing that the diversity of individual variations within each species was the driver of evolution. He proposed that all species descended from a common ancestor through a long, slow process of random mutations and natural selection. That insight was a huge leap that changed our world forever.

A brand insight is a fresh observation or a clearer understanding of the way stakeholders might encounter, perceive, or judge your company, product, or service. A brand insight is not simply a data point, such as a rating, a percentage, or a follower count. A brand insight is the recognition of a tendency, a pattern, or a relationship that had not been previously articulated.

Many significant brand insights are discovered by researchers either watching other humans “in the field” or listening closely to them in open-ended conversations. Much as Darwin spent years studying a wide array of South American species in the 1830s, trying to discern a pattern, a brand researcher or strategist may choose to observe diverse human behaviors for clues that lead to significant breakthroughs in understanding a brand’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

Many brand leaders believe they’re already collecting these clues, courtesy of their front line staff, and that they know exactly what their external stakeholders are thinking. But it’s a mistake to rely entirely on your marketing team, salespeople, or customer service representatives to discover and report brand insights. No matter how well intentioned they are, each staff member has their own role-based bias as a representative of your organization. And of course, to some degree, their jobs and budgets are at stake. (For more on this topic, see “DIY market research: your mileage may vary.”)

Getting out of one’s head

In the course of his 50-year career on radio and television, Larry King hosted over 50,000 interviews with a stunning array of luminaries, movers, and shakers, including several sitting US presidents and leaders like Dr Martin Luther King, the Dalai Lama, and Nelson Mandela. He often said, “I never learned anything while I was talking.” In other words, King learned by listening, and he listened to other people talk for over 50 years.

Does listening sound like a non-activity? Journalist and author Kate Murphy has written a wonderful exploration of this topic titled You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why It Matters. Her book is filled with tips on how to listen effectively and actively, many drawn from conversations with professional listeners, including a CIA agent, a bartender, an FBI lead hostage negotiator, a producer on WHYY’s Fresh Air, and legendary focus group moderator Naomi Henderson.

What is the through line in all of these conversations with professional listeners? Good listeners cultivate curiosity—a combination of genuine wonder and the willingness to listen.

Murphy quotes Studs Terkel, the legendary author, conversationalist, and radio interviewer: “The obvious tool of my trade is the tape recorder. But the real tool is curiosity.” (Terkel fans will also remember that he wanted his epitaph to read, “Curiosity didn’t kill this cat.” For more Terkel, visit the Studs Terkel Radio Archive.)

Cultivating this level of patience, curiosity, and open mindedness can be challenging, especially if you’re a leader who’s routinely expected to make tough decisions quickly. Even if you’d like to prioritize listening, you may find yourself overwhelmed with competing priorities.

That’s when you should consider collaborating with a skilled qualitative researcher — an independent consultant committed to establishing neutral yet vibrant connections with a brand’s stakeholders. Regardless of whether the research takes place in a phone call, a Zoom meeting, or a room with a one-way mirror, the researcher strives to create an open, nonjudgmental space for stakeholders to express themselves freely.

Facilitating this kind of honest, unfettered expression is not easy, and it’s certainly not a job for everyone. Qualitative researchers are skilled at breaking the ice and melting it quickly. They ask the right questions at the right time — then utilize their own silence — to unlock floods of valuable information from strangers.

What’s the first step toward better brand insights?

As a brand leader, the most important step you can take is to cultivate your sense of curiosity about the perceptions and stories of all the stakeholders in your brand’s ecosystem. Think about how they might fall into various segments, and ask yourself whether these segments share any traits, such as needs, preferences, and pain points. Keep a list of things you don’t definitively know about these segments. You may not be able to effectively find the answers by yourself, but you will be much better poised to engage a researcher who can deliver the critical insights you’re seeking.

If you’re a leader of a small- to medium-sized organization, you may wonder whether qualitative research is affordable or a good fit for your brand. Leaders of many B2B brands and nonprofits assume such research is most appropriate for large B2C companies that compete by focusing on consumer trends. If you’re wondering how qualitative research might benefit your B2B or nonprofit brand, see “Is qualitative research only for big brands?”.

Originally published at Jell Brand Strategy.

Strategic Leaders Need Brand Insights was originally published in Brand Leader on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Global brands, especially those that sell to consumers, spend a lot on market research. But leaders of small to medium brands need to listen to their stakeholders every bit as much—if not more.

The notion that research is only for big companies and consumer brands is a common misconception. Perhaps this is because many people envision a focus group comparing breakfast cereals or discussing shopping habits when they hear the terms “market research” or “qualitative research.”

But nothing could be further from the truth. Qualitative research — i.e., listening to people — is equally valuable for organizations of all types and sizes.

The leaders of smaller brands need insights from stakeholders and target audiences just as much as big-brand leaders, if not more.

For over 20 years, our firm has utilized various forms of qualitative research with a diverse array of S2M (small-to-medium) nonprofits, higher education clients, B2B companies, and startups. In every instance, the insights we gained from talking with current stakeholders and target audiences were critical to forming a meaningful and coherent brand strategy.

Here are just a few examples:

• Higher education: A professional degree program was seeking increased prominence, but we sensed that marketing was not the issue. We conducted numerous in-depth interviews and discovered broad undercurrents of disappointment among key stakeholders, particularly in terms of culture and outcomes. That did not bode well for word of mouth, career development, or alumni loyalty. Our research insights allowed us to develop a brand strategy that tackled stakeholder concerns head-on.
• B2B service company: Our client struggled to attract and retain new customers in an extremely competitive, price-driven market. Was customer satisfaction the issue? No. Conversations with both front line staff and customers demonstrated that both groups were happy and valued their relationships. The company’s position and messaging, however, emphasized data, failing to depict or capitalize on the uniformly positive brand experience that was a rarity in their industry. The new brand strategy focused on this differentiator and attracting the kind of simpatico customers the company was seeking.
• Nonprofit agency: We were enlisted to design a brand strategy to engage current donors more effectively and expand support beyond the current base. Step one was learning why our client’s fundraising efforts had plateaued. Our research found that many longtime supporters—as well as prospective donors—had distinctly different views of the organization’s mission, scope, and impact. The lack of coherence in brand perception was exacerbated by a misleading brand name and an inconsistent brand architecture. Insights from our research drove the development of a more focused and coherent brand identity and communications strategy.

Is qualitative research a good fit for your organization?

If you’re the leader of a small-to-medium nonprofit, B2B, or educational institution, you may well wonder where this kind of research fits into your strategic planning and whether it needs to be conducted in the first place.

The short answers are: “early in the process” and “yes.”

You might find it hard to imagine how the techniques used in consumer research could possibly apply to your organization. After all, the challenges you face are fundamentally different than those the CEOs of Nestlé, Procter & Gamble, PepsiCo, Toyota, or Nike face.

The questions we may ask your stakeholders might be different, but the fundamentals are the same. If you’re truly interested in serving the people you work with—whether they’re employees, partners, customers, donors, or volunteers—it’s critical to listen closely to what they have to say.

And the best way to do that is with a well designed and professionally executed qualitative research program.

As I pointed out in “DIY Market Research: Your Mileage May Vary,” a successful outcome requires more than a down-and-dirty DIY survey or a staff workshop. The most useful insights come from engaging the right people in conversation, asking the right questions, and listening actively.

Qualitative researchers know how to put people at ease. A good researcher assures subjects that their input will be both highly valued and anonymized, thereby encouraging them to speak openly in an unfiltered way. Additionally, the best qualitative researchers have acquired numerous techniques for coaxing valuable insights from even the shyest or most reluctant subjects.

Can you ask your staff to do the research to avoid the cost of a professional research firm? Possibly, but a DIY research program may flounder if no one on your staff has previously designed and executed a qualitative research study. At the very least, consider engaging an experienced qualitative researcher as a consultant to guide your team in their DIY efforts.

If you have a qualified researcher on staff, remember that an in-house researcher may have subtle biases and blind spots (not to mention job pressures!) that can skew each stage of a study, from research design to interpretation and reporting. Take those biases into account as you review both the design and the results.

The nature of small-to-medium brands

Both B2Bs and nonprofits—especially in the S2M category—are often very relationship-driven. Rather than relying on mass marketing and advertising, these brands usually thrive by cultivating in-depth connections with a relatively small pool of stakeholders. If you’re a B2B, you or your staff probably interact with many of your stakeholders routinely, possibly even on a daily basis. If you’re a smaller nonprofit, chances are you’ve met or even befriended most of your most loyal donors and volunteers.

As with any personal relationship, the parties involved can become so close over time that transparency suffers, or they can begin taking each other for granted. In the worst case, familiarity may eventually breed contempt. These are all good reasons to have an impartial outside researcher learn what your stakeholders really think and feel on a range of topics.

If you’re already committed to the idea of hiring a researcher, seek one who has worked with organizations similar to yours in terms of size and type. (Your specific sector or industry probably doesn’t matter in your selection process.)

For example, if you’re a small family-owned distributor of HVAC parts, it wouldn’t make much sense to hire a researcher who has worked exclusively with major retail food brands. Instead, look for a researcher familiar with small businesses and, hopefully, supply chains.

If you’re the leader of a hyperlocal social service agency, seek someone who has experience working with nonprofits of any kind, but ideally those with a similar geographical scope or community impact.

And if you’re a startup, you may still be trying to determine exactly which target audiences will be receptive to your offering and how they might be cultivated into long-term relationships. A researcher deeply familiar with the pitfalls and small victories experienced by other entrepreneurs will probably be more capable of designing the right research program for you.

How long will it take? How much will it cost?

If you’re only seeking a quick read on one or two dimensions of your brand, a qualitative research program need not be overly elaborate or excessively expensive. You can discover quite a bit with a cohort of only 5–10 subjects, especially if they’re carefully chosen.

Finding and scheduling the right subjects can be as time-consuming as conducting the research itself, so it’s generally advisable to allow one to three weeks for those steps. With another one to three weeks for the research and reporting, you should allocate a total of two to six weeks for a brief study.

Depending on how the research is designed (e.g., one-on-one interviews versus a virtual focus group) and how easily subjects can be recruited and scheduled, costs for a small “quick pulse” study might run anywhere from $5,000 to $15,000.

If you have more complex questions and goals, a more elaborate research design may be required. For example, a researcher may need to recruit subjects in a variety of cohorts or contact them for follow-up questions over time. Financial incentives for their participation may be required.

In our experience, such studies can extend to two to four months with budgets ranging from $10,000 to $60,000.

Of course, your brand and your situation are unique. There’s no single best way to program the research, and there’s no standardized menu of options and costs.

To learn what type of research design and budget might be most appropriate for your brand, request a proposal from one or more reputable qualitative research consultants.

Originally published at Jell Brand Strategy.

Is Qualitative Research Only for Big Brands? was originally published in Brand Leader on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Running your own online surveys or in-house workshops? It’s unlikely you’ll discover the game-changing brand insights you’re seeking.

If you’re considering a shift in your brand strategy, you’ll need fresh insights about the various stakeholder groups involved with your brand as well as any target audiences you’re trying to engage. Where will those insights come from?

Your personal experience and gut instincts might be a launching pad for exploration, but they won’t be sufficient. You’ll need to look for ways to gather direct input from those groups.

Running an online survey or an in-house workshop can be quick and relatively painless. But it’s unlikely you’re going to stumble upon game-changing insights regarding your core constituencies using those methods.

Surveys: are you just checking off a box?

Online surveys are not inherently flawed as a research tool. I’ve used brief surveys to probe one or two specific topics, usually as a precursor to more in-depth research. But most surveys I encounter are not well designed or deployed for the right reasons.

Do you recall the last time you took an online survey? Chances are, there were too many questions covering too many topics, and you couldn’t wait to escape the forced march for which you had unwittingly volunteered. Maybe you even exited before reaching the end, overwhelmed by boredom or frustration.

Many surveys I receive are clearly designed to elicit favorable reviews. Some are developed as marketing tools, to promote new offerings under the guise of customer engagement. Others are sent primarily to signal a brand’s commitment to eliciting customer feedback, but they offer no clues as to how the feedback will be utilized.

I can’t recall the last time I participated in an online survey that was designed from a truly neutral point of view to discover what I need or what I think about a brand’s offerings or overall vibe. Instead, I often feel I’m being asked to make the organization feel better about itself — to validate its point of view or confirm my approval of its way of doing things. And where do all my multiple choice answers and satisfaction ratings go? To what purpose? Did the organization learn anything new, or did it simply check off some boxes for the marketing department?

All too often, poorly conceived surveys annoy stakeholders rather than engage them. That means you run the risk of alienating the people on which your brand depends, rather than hearing what they have to say.

Should you workshop it?

There are many flavors of brand workshops, but the most common kind brings team members together with some combination of whiteboards, giant notepads on easels, colorful markers, sticky notes, and card decks printed with adjectives, sentences, or questions.

The goal of these workshops is usually to encourage people to articulate their organization’s personality traits or core values (perhaps for the first time) and to compare their answers. Workshops like these can be fun icebreakers at the outset of a brand exploration, but what insights would you gain?

If the workshop participants are all employees of the organization, you might learn something about the participants themselves or the employee experience.

Many people describe their organization’s brand in the same way they describe themselves: “I’m quirky and innovative, and so is the organization I work for.” Other people may choose descriptors that align with their personal experience in the workplace: “My team works long hours to meet deadlines. Our brand is tenacious and driven.”

But it’s a rare employee who would choose descriptors representative of an external stakeholder such as a customer, a client, a partner, a patron, or a donor. Their perceptions may be very different indeed!

Introspection does not always result in insight

Introspection is always a fine place to begin an exploration. There’s never any harm done in grabbing a notepad and jotting down brand traits under the headings “We are” and “We are not.” You’ve at least begun establishing a baseline for your brand goals.

The trick is remembering that your self-perception may not reflect the fullness of reality. In fact, there is often a significant gap between how we see ourselves and how others see us. That’s why it’s so important to engage other people to conduct a reality check—to ask open-ended questions, without a hidden agenda, and to listen very closely to the answers.

It’s difficult, if not impossible, for either leaders or their team members to be completely neutral observers and objective reporters. Both employees and their managers are likely to shape conversations in their own favor or to the advantage of the brand—or simply to keep the customer happy. Conversely, customers may not feel comfortable telling a front line worker what they really think about your organization or your offerings. A customer might be happy to lodge a narrow complaint about a recent transaction, but that’s very different than discussing their general needs and expectations, their beliefs or value systems, or particulars of their lifestyle.

The best brand leaders understand that they cannot depend on themselves or their employees to “read the room,” as it were. Just as most of us recognize that we must periodically seek insights into our health from radiologists or other diagnosticians, wise leaders must occasionally employ qualitative researchers to monitor the pulse of key stakeholders.

If you’re wondering whether qualitative research is affordable or a good fit for your small- to medium-sized brand, see “Is Qualitative Research Only for Big Brands?”.

Originally published at Jell Brand Strategy.

DIY Market Research: Your Mileage May Vary was originally published in Brand Leader on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

If you were asked to name a truly legendary brand, Apple may well come to mind. How much of that legend is clever brand-building? How much is myth? And does the difference matter?

Those of us who follow success stories in business are often drawn to cases involving so-called visionaries. You know the type: an innovator and brand leader, usually quirky or charismatic, who sees a future the rest of us might find a bit far-fetched.

Visionaries lead with the courage of their convictions, often discounting the opinions or expertise of others. Perhaps the most obvious example is Steve Jobs, the cofounder of Apple and its on-again, off-again CEO, who was infamous for his self-assuredness as well as his prickly nature.

In addition to building one of the world’s largest and most consistently innovative companies, Jobs inspired nine documentaries, four movies, and two dozen books. While many will remember him as a technology innovator, it was actually his track record in brand strategy and marketing that is most interesting.

Perhaps most famously, in a 1998 BusinessWeek interview, Jobs implied that he knew what people wanted well before they did, and that market research had little or no role in product development:

“It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”

Fans of Steve Jobs — as well as critics of focus group methodologies — love this quotation. In their interpretation, Jobs pointed out the obvious: if we market tested every innovative idea by seeking approval from a group of presumably unimaginative consumers, we’d all still be stuck in the Middle Ages.

Jobs later reinforced this viewpoint when he told Walter Isaacson, his biographer,

“Some people say, ‘Give the customers what they want.’ But that’s not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they’re going to want before they do. I think Henry Ford once said, ‘If I’d asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, “A faster horse!”’”

A great quote within a quote, right? In just under 50 words, Jobs perpetuated the legend of his own genius and prescience while positioning himself as a successor to the equally legendary Henry Ford.

As it turns out, there’s actually no evidence that Ford said this or anything similar. (The quote appears to have been proposed hypothetically in 1999 by John McNeece, a cruise ship designer, then later repeated as fact by others, including Jobs.)

The reality distortion field

Of course, whether Ford said this or not was immaterial. Jobs was always inventing the reality he desired, and it usually worked. Inside Apple, his ability to bend facts to pursue his goals was deemed the “reality distortion field,” explained here by Andy Hertzfeld (designer of the original Macintosh operating system), who joined Apple in 1979:

“In his presence, reality is malleable. He can convince anyone of practically anything. It wears off when he’s not around, but it makes it hard to have realistic schedules.…just because he tells you that something is awful or great, it doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll feel that way tomorrow.…If you tell him a new idea, he’ll usually tell you that he thinks it’s stupid. But then, if he actually likes it, exactly one week later, he’ll come back to you and propose your idea to you, as if he thought of it.”

The reality distortion field even came into play with regard to the Ford quote. A few others had repeated the apocryphal quote before Jobs, including his friend Tom Kelley (founder of Apple’s industrial design firm, IDEO), but Jobs can probably take credit for popularizing the quote while simultaneously linking it to his own legacy.

Crazy ones

Why have these quotes by Jobs garnered so much attention and fandom in the first place?

Perhaps it’s because these anecdotes romanticize the courage and ingenuity of brand leaders and innovators. We like the idea of visionaries and rebels. In fact, Steve Jobs doubled down on that theme in 1997 with the “Think Different” ad campaign, soon after he returned to Apple to save it from a precipitous slide during the price wars of the mid-’90s.

The centerpiece of the campaign was a groundbreaking television ad, known internally as “Crazy Ones”:

“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

The “Think Different” campaign was wildly successful, instantly repositioning Apple as a champion of creative types, misunderstood and undervalued by the business world, yet destined to change our future.

It was also a win for Steve Jobs’s personal brand, since he was depicted as a visionary savior, returning to save his prodigal child.

The creative concept for the campaign has been widely attributed to Jobs, further burnishing his reputation for branding genius. While it’s not disputed that Jobs threw his full support behind the campaign, he was initially hesitant to run with the concept, according to one of the campaign’s authors at TBWA/Chiat/Day. (Ironically, as has been reported by this creative director and many other creatives he employed, Jobs was extremely difficult, frequently belittling or dismissing their many efforts to please him.)

Circling back: is it really true Apple didn’t use market research?

We began this story by exploring Jobs’s 1998 suggestion that Apple didn’t use focus groups in the course of product development. Was that true? And did he really mean to imply that Apple simply never used market research?

In 2008, Jobs told Fortune:

“We do no market research. We don’t hire consultants. The only consultants I’ve ever hired in my 10 years is one firm to analyze Gateway’s retail strategy so I would not make some of the same mistakes they made [when launching Apple’s retail stores]. But we never hire consultants, per se. We just want to make great products.”

That’s a bold statement and a bit difficult to believe—especially considering Apple had $24 billion in sales by that point. As it turns out, this may have been another instance of his reality distortion field.

Jobs was in fact deeply interested in his target audience. It’s worth noting that two sentences are routinely omitted from citations of his 1998 “focus groups” quotation:

“We have a lot of customers, and we have a lot of research into our installed base. We also watch industry trends pretty carefully.”

In 2011, Apple brought a case against Samsung alleging infringement of Apple’s patents and copyrights. Apple won, but the case also surfaced evidence that Apple routinely utilized various forms of market research. Apple routinely conducted surveys, often using outside market research firms (as evidenced by this archived apple.com page from January 2006), and had even created an online focus group panel called Apple Customer Pulse.

Splitting hairs?

The fact is that Apple relied heavily on both user testing and market testing, including many forms of both qualitative and quantitative research. The company just liked to keep their research a secret—both to burnish the visionary dimension of the brand and to prevent competitors from discovering how the sausage was made.

While Jobs may have overstated his aversion to market research, he was probably not wholly disingenuous about its role in product development. Perhaps it’s true that Jobs never employed market research consultants to decide whether Apple should develop a novel product.

Jobs clearly considered human needs, perceptions, and behavioral patterns to be critical inputs for the development of the product concept itself. After all, Apple was an early pioneer in user interface design and user experience testing—a form of audience research.

Instead of asking a focus group whether they wanted something they had never seen, he focused on creating products that offered people new experiences and capabilities. Development at Apple under Jobs was driven primarily by recognition of essential human needs combined with insights from user testing rather than desires explicitly stated in focus groups or questionnaires. Once Apple products entered the marketplace, people could try them out, then embrace or reject them. And that’s when the market research kicked in.

Jobs was a very keen observer and listener, and he was right: people didn’t know they wanted an Apple product until they tried it. By taking these risks and monitoring customer responses, Jobs played the long game—and Apple eventually won.

What was Steve Jobs’s greatest brand insight?

He knew that a significant percentage of people would adopt technology if it made them feel more adventurous, creative, or fun, rather than simply more productive. Apple customers bonded by “being in” on the revolution, forming their own fan culture and reinforcing the brand. That’s why the “Think Different” campaign touched a nerve, as well as the later effort to further define tribal affinities with the “Get a Mac” campaign of 66 commercials that ran from 2006 to 2009.

He also discovered early in his career, perhaps during his time in the Homebrew Computer Club, that he could easily inspire people by exhibiting the kind of single-minded focus and supreme confidence others around him lacked. He continued testing and refining those leadership skills during the early years of Apple, eventually perfecting his cult of personality, both in internal meetings at Apple headquarters and later on stage during his extravagant product introductions.

The legacy of Jobs’s brand leadership

Walter Isaacson summarized the key elements Jobs’s unique leadership style for the Harvard Business Review, boiling it down to fourteen core principles. Of those, the following eight may offer the most inspiration to leaders working to transform their brands:

1. Focus
2. Simplify
3. Take responsibility end to end
4. When behind, leapfrog
5. Bend reality
6. Push for perfection
7. Engage face-to-face
8. Know both the big picture and the details

As any leader knows, those are easier said than done — at least, consistently and effectively.

Even if you’re not a fan of Apple or a devotee of Steve Jobs, you can learn quite a bit about brand strategy and leadership (as well as some less desirable character traits of ambitious leaders) by studying his extraordinary 35-year run at the helms of Apple, Next, and Pixar.

Even when his technology gambles fell short, his seemingly inexhaustible chutzpah and commitment to building a compelling brand never wavered.

Originally published at Jell Brand Strategy.

Brand Myths & Legends: Jobs, Ford & Apple was originally published in Brand Leader on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

What you really want may be a new way of seeing things, rather than a new way of being seen.

If you asked many of my clients what I do for a living, they may tell you that I “do branding” or that my firm“rebranded” their organization. But that’s not exactly how I see it.

The problem is that the terms “branding” and “rebranding” are often used quite loosely, often to refer to fairly superficial tune-ups — a change of color palette, an updated logo, or a snappier tagline. Those are the kinds of changes that tend to garner the most attention, whether positive or negative.

Many people revel in rebranding rollouts. Agency types and amateur pundits race to share first sightings of a logo makeover or a launch spot on social media, usually with pithy critiques. There’s even a popular online publication called “BrandNew” devoted entirely to in-depth analyses of these “rebrands.”

The viral rise of interest in rebranding

Our culture has become enamored with the topic of rebranding. According to Google Trends, global interest in “Rebranding” as a search topic has roughly tripled since the beginning of 2004. (By comparison, interest in “Brand” as a topic has doubled over the same period. Interest in “Logo” as a topic has remained high but unchanged.)

What has driven this relatively rapid increase in interest in what was once an obscure industry topic? Perhaps it’s the amount of money and effort that is now routinely invested in the public rollouts of brand updates — anywhere from hundreds of thousands of dollars to millions, spread across broadcast media, digital channels, and social platforms. Maybe it’s the rising public awareness of the concept of “brand,” not only in terms of corporate, product, and service brands, but also as expressed by a tidal wave of celebrity personalities and social influencers. Or perhaps it’s because our culture is more attuned than ever to reinventions and upgrades, whether those are expressed as personal style makeovers, elective cosmetic procedures, digital image enhancements, or the creation of alter egos in virtual spaces.

Most likely, rising interest in “rebranding” is driven by the intersection all of these very powerful trends. People who are particularly susceptible to these cultural forces — avid consumers of popular culture — may be led to believe that if you’re not in the process of rebranding, you might just be lazy, unmotivated, or dead.

But enough about everyone else!

Let’s return to you. Are you reading this because you’re thinking about rebranding your organization or one of your offerings? Perhaps you’ve already started the process. Maybe you’ve even completed the process and are now trying to understand whether it was worthwhile or what your next steps should be.

Regardless of where you are in the journey, consider your motivation. Try to pinpoint and enumerate the reasons you or someone else in your organization set the rebranding ball in motion. How many of the following reasons were invoked in your case?

• We look outdated.
• We look boring.
• We look small or unimpressive.
• Our primary competitors look more on trend, interesting, and impressive.
• Our growth is flat or negative.
• We can’t attract the right kind of talent.
• We need a new logo.
• We need a new tagline.
• We need a better website.
• We need more effective sales and marketing.
• We need to attract younger audiences.
• We need to attract more diverse audiences.
• We need to compete at a higher price point.
• We need more [sales leads / new members / individual donors].
• We need more visibility.
• We need to be on the first page of Google.
• We have new leadership, so we need a new look.
• All of the above.

How many did you check off? And what’s the common thread in this list?

So what’s the common thread in this list?

These reasons, which are the ones we hear most often, are a collection of pain points and needs. Most are based either on perceived internal weaknesses (why we fail) or comparative weaknesses (why others succeed) or both.

Even if these reasons for rebranding have some basis in reality, they do not bode well for a constructive approach to the exercise.

So what are some more positive examples of reasons to rebrand?

• Identifying and leveraging your differentiators.
• Identifying and leveraging your strengths.
• Understanding and activating your team.
• Listening to and engaging your external stakeholders.
• Improving or articulating the value of your offerings.
• Developing a focused brand strategy.
• Clarifying your position.

“But wait!,” you (or someone you know) might say. “Those don’t sound like rebranding. We just need an updated look and a fresh voice. We just need a makeover, a reboot. We need people to sit up and notice us.”

To which we (or another brand strategy firm) might reply, “We have no wish to deprive you of an updated look or a fresh voice. But you can’t simply jump into an entirely new body and expect success. The updated look must reflect who you really are and how you make your stakeholders feel. Your fresh voice must sound both familiar and revitalized. Before we can help shape the look and sound of a new you, we need to zero in on what makes you worth knowing—now and into the future.”

In other words, rebranding is not merely about changing appearances or adding features or functionality. Rebranding is not like adding a fresh coat of paint or upgrading to a faster server. Rebranding is a journey of discovery and rebirth. Rebranding requires introspection, empathy, research, analysis, insights, and tough decisions.

Rebranding done well—performed with attention to purpose, credibility, and sustainability—is about revealing rather than covering up. Rebranding should be about honesty rather than artifice.

As it turns out, good rebranding is not simply a matter of changing your branding, as the term “rebranding” implies. Rather, it is a matter of renewing one’s commitment and attention to one’s brand — the reasons you exist, the beliefs you hold, the benefits you offer, and the value others might see in you.

Rebranding is a process of editing and clarification: shedding dead skin and deleting unnecessary adjectives. It is looking your stakeholders in the eye and connecting in a straightforward way on topics they hold dear.

And if your revitalized commitment to your brand necessitates a change in your branding—an updated look, a fresh voice—so be it. In that case, you’re rebranding for exactly the right reason.

Originally published at Jell Brand Strategy.

Thinking About Rebranding? Think Again. was originally published in Brand Leader on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.