More than just choosing some colours and getting the name and logo right, defining a brand is expressing what a business stands for, so it’s clearly important. However, defining a brand is difficult for precisely that reason – it’s so important that it can be hard to get to the heart of it. Let’s look at some more reasons why it’s so hard to define a brand.
Balancing Consistency and Flexibility
One of the biggest challenges in defining a brand is finding the right balance between consistency and flexibility. Consistency is crucial for building brand recognition and trust, but if it’s too rigid and nothing ever changes, that means you’ll become outdated.
On the other hand, being too flexible and changing all the time can make it hard to know what the brand is, and you certainly won’t get recognised. Striking the right balance requires a deep understanding of your core values, and it might be that a brand strategy agency like Really Helpful Marketing is the best partner for that.
The Subjectivity of Perception
A brand is ultimately defined by how it is perceived by the public, not just by the intentions of the company. Therefore, even if you know what it’s meant to signify, it doesn’t necessarily mean that your audience will.
This subjectivity makes it difficult to create a brand identity that’s universally understood in the same way. However, the good news is that by speaking to your target market, you can get a clearer idea of what they think.
Navigating the Competitive Landscape
Finally, defining a brand is made more difficult by the need to differentiate it from competitors. In a crowded market, brands have to carve out a unique space that sets them apart, so you can’t just have a standard brand, even if it does mean what you intend it to.
You’ve got to go one better. Sometimes that can result in branding that’s difficult to understand, even if it’s completely unique – in fact, that uniqueness might be the entire problem.