Pragmatic Branding

The principles of pragmatic branding ensure that your brand identity contributes to growth instead of weighing it down.

This content was originally published in the No Best Practices newsletter on 2.13.2022.

It’s time to have a talk about the “B word”: brand. Brand is one of those words that often carries a load of emotional baggage, especially if you’ve worked in or alongside a creative or marketing team. You never know what kind of traumatic experiences you’ll dredge up by saying this word. I am only exaggerating slightly.

Many of you have been told “it’s not on brand”. In a prior role I was forced to turn off our company’s best-performing Facebook ad ever because the featured image wasn’t on brand. The image was part of our campaign shoot and was sitting in a folder of “approved” assets from our creative director.

It’s stories like these that cause many marketers to draw a line in the sand between brand marketing and performance marketing. Some marketers will always view “brand” as a roadblock with no measurable upside. And honestly, if you approach brand strategy like the average company that’s 100% true.

Brand Identity vs Visual Identity

So, is your “brand” really a brand? This is my litmus test: if the company started an editorial-only email newsletter tomorrow, could you tell me what it would be about in under five seconds?

Why use an editorial newsletter? Because a brand isn’t simply a logo and a color palette, or a target customer, or a set of guidelines. A brand is a story about what you sell, and how it relates to the world. “Brand” has power (and financial upside) when it compels a customer to suspend their rational brain and make an emotional decision. And to do that, it has to go beyond simply “looking cool”.

Visual identity is the aspect of branding that’s the easiest to perceive. So when a company sets out to define a brand, that’s often where they start and end–with visual identity.

Working in fashion, I’ve seen this a lot. Brand is completely defined by the founder and/or a creative director, and the only hard and fast rules are “things I like”. This might result in some cool photo shoots, but it makes marketing impossible to scale. If you can’t communicate it or delegate it, it’s not a brand.

Some DTC’s have also leaned on visual identity at the expense of creating meaningful narrative or positioning. Think about the first wave of venture-backed DTC brands, many of which are still unprofitable. The narrative was essentially “we’re cutting out the middleman and reinvesting the profits in a cool logo and illustrated subway takeovers.” That doesn’t say anything about the consumer or how he/she relates to the category. And it isn’t really a differentiator.

Platforms vs Brands

If using visual identity in lieu of brand is an “old school” approach, bypassing brand entirely and going platform-first is the “new school” approach. Facebook and TikTok ads are the major digital customer acquisition platforms in the market today. They’re the foundation on which many DTC brands are built.

Both Facebook and Tiktok have an incentive to keep users on the platform, because (more users x more time) = more opportunities to serve ad impressions, aka more money. These are the dynamics underlying any ad-funded platform, but these two players happen to do it particularly well.

This means that user preferences determine what “works” when it comes to ad creative. More detail about that phenomenon in this post. The outcome is that formats like unboxing, before and afters and user-generated testimonials have thrived. The less your ads look like traditional advertising–polished, highly produced, featuring picture-perfect models–the better they tend to perform.

If you produce your advertising creative purely in response to “what works best”, you’re essentially letting the platforms create your brand identity. That can work really well (and be very profitable), but there are a few downsides:

  • It will be harder to scale that approach to other acquisition channels–every platform has its own nuances.
  • The platform algos are gradually guiding everyone to the same non-differentiated destination.
  • “What works” changes so often that it’s hard to develop a consistent brand story on the platforms where you do need to take a more top-down approach, like your website.

Navigating Branding In The Modern World

If you want to build something sustainable, your approach to brand development and creative governance needs to strike a balance between reactive and dictatorial. And the best way to do that is to develop a strong identity for your brand.

“How to build a brand identity” is a whole topic in itself. I’m going to link some perspectives and resources at the end of this newsletter to get you started. Here are the building blocks of a strong brand:

  • A resonant “why we exist” story. When your core audience hears this story they should nod their heads and think “Yeah, you’re right!”
  • The brand’s origin story is relevant to the times we live in. The story could exist in opposition to the zeitgeist or work to capture it.
  • A well-defined target customer. Does not try to be everything to everyone.
  • A product that speaks to a true need or pain point of the target customer.
  • A consistent visual identity that provides “wiggle room” for expression on various platforms. If the language of the platform is too far from the visual language of the brand, the brand foregoes the platform.
  • Memorable written or visual hooks that feel purposeful. This can be a logo, a tagline, or another signature.

Products that break through and achieve product-channel fit have most of these characteristics already. But in the rush to scale they’re not articulated, refined or documented. That causes friction as the brand scales and more team members are brought on board.

I’m going to repeat this because it’s so important: If you can’t communicate it or delegate it, it’s not a brand. In order for a brand to be effective, the framework needs to be developed and owned by skilled communicators.

Potentially controversial statement: this means that “what’s on brand” should be owned by marketing, not by creative. Creative can own visual identity, but that framework–and how rigid or flexible it is–should require approval from marketing.

Brand guidelines also need to make sense within the context of a company’s financial objectives. If you’re looking to build a strong growth story and sell your brand in three to five years, guidelines that suppress your efficiency on Facebook and Tiktok don’t make sense. To put it simply: if you’re looking for near-term liquidity, you have to be less precious about “what’s on brand”.

Bottom line: real brands are a strategic decision, not a creative decision.

Pragmatic Branding In Action: Haus

Haus is a low-ABV aperitif brand that launched in 2019. The brand is venture-backed, which implies a need to balance brand building and scale. Here are all the things that Haus does right:

A strong “Why We Exist” Story. This note was written by the brand’s co-founder Helena Hambrecht. It explains the gap in the market that inspired her to create Haus. It also explains her unique approach to the problem.

Relationship To The Zeitgeist. The note also describes her frustration with the state of the alcohol market in 2018-2019. It was much less friendly to the light drinker or the sober curious back then, if you can believe it. So if you share her frustration, the note gets you riled up–you are in her core customer base.

Clear, Concise Brand Values. At its essence, the brand is about a more European attitude towards alcohol, ie sharing the good life with friends vs drinking to escape (aka getting schwasted).

Consistent & Flexible Visual Identity. The Haus website and unboxing experiences are both good examples of the brand’s core visual identity. The customer consumes these proactively, so consistent visuals that represent the highest expression of the brand are ok. But customer-friendly elements like product reviews and recipes are still in the mix.

The Haus Instagram contains a more diverse mix of visual styles, including UGC. But everything looks cohesive because there are some visual standards and all the content ties back to the brand’s values. Haus doesn’t seem to be running any Facebook ads at the moment, but I have received UGC-style ads from the brand in the past.

Memorable Hooks. It’s hard to articulate, but Haus has developed a signature way of styling photography. Even if an influencer or a fan is taking the photos, it still has that Haus “vibe”.

Haus was also able to claim a certain level of ownership over the low-ABV aperitif category by being one of the first, most articulate entrants. They said the quiet part loud: “we’re not drinking to get drunk”.

Brand Building Resources