Branding Is Still Misunderstood - And It Is Hurting Businesses.
How a company understands and applies "branding" can be the difference between success and failure.
Branding is one of the most misunderstood disciplines in business. When I started in this industry (about two decades ago), I set out to take on this misconception, which I am about to describe.
Armed with this big insight, I was going to change the industry. Or so I thought. A few years in, I gave up on the term branding and started talking about “strategic brand building” to describe what my brand consultancy was doing.
It turned out to be an uphill battle, and little has changed in 20 years.
Ask ten people what branding is, and you’ll get eleven answers — most of them confusing. Ask ten brand consultants what branding is, and most will give you a decent answer, some will give you a great answer, and surprisingly many still see branding in an extremely shallow way.
I have observed that there are roughly these four categories of “perceptions about branding”:
Branding as visuals This is the most unsophisticated level, it’s where the CEO tells his assistant “Hey, show them our brand”, indicating that a brand is nothing but a logo and some colors and fonts).
Branding as communications Branding is seen as the expression of visual and verbal messages. It’s the “saying vs. being and doing” trap. This is still, unfortunately, where you find the majority of people.
Branding as marketing This is already sophisticated, branding sits in the marketing department, and at best it is managed like a strategic marketing function under marketing. But it rarely transcends the marketing department, and the CMO is fully in charge of it.
Branding as strategy At this level, branding transcends marketing and it is generally accepted as the “organizing principle” that affects customer choice. The whole business strategy and company is aligned behind the brand strategy, and branding is a strategic, cross-functional philosophy and activity - branding informs all major decisions that in some way, directly or indirectly affects people’s perception of the brand (internally and externally).
To leverage the full potential of branding, you must play at level 4.
To put it in a simple way:
A brand is an idea people hold in their minds.
Branding is everything you do to shape that idea.
That’s it.
Not 300 slides.
Not a mood board.
Not a manifesto printed on a wall that no employee reads.
A brand lives in the mind.
Branding is the act of shaping that mind.
Everything else is details.
The Idea in the Mind
Every brand exists in one place only: inside someone’s head.
That’s where the meaning lives.
That’s where trust lives.
That’s where choice happens.
And here’s the kicker — the company doesn’t own that meaning.
People do.
They co-create it. They decide what your brand is, based on the signals you send and the experiences they have.
A brand is a mental shortcut:
Who are you?
What do you stand for?
Can I trust you?
Are you for me?
Branding is the discipline of shaping that shortcut so that, when it matters most, people choose you.
Choice is everything.
No choice, no revenue.
No revenue, no company.
Branding is the business of shaping choice.
Signals Shape Perception
Every signal your company sends teaches people who you are.
Not what you say you are — what you prove you are.
Signals include:
Your product and what it’s made of
Your service and how it feels
The environments where your brand lives
The behavior and energy of your people
Your communications, visual and verbal
The choices you make, the trade-offs you accept, the standards you keep
Most brands obsess over the last one — communications — while forgetting the first four.
That’s branding’s original sin: confusing messaging with meaning.
Messaging is one dimension.
Branding is five.
The Five Brand Dimensions
Every brand manifests across one or more of five dimensions. These dimensions shape perception — and perception shapes choice. Each brand and category has a different mix.
1. Product
What you make signals who you are.
Ingredients, materials, sourcing, performance — these are identity statements.
2. Service
Every interaction tells people what you value: speed, care, convenience, empathy, expertise.
3. Environments
Where your brand lives shapes how people feel: physical spaces, digital interfaces, packaging, even the checkout experience.
4. People
Employees are the brand. Their tone, behavior, energy, and presence communicate truth more loudly than any tagline.
5. Communications
The stories you tell.
The visuals you present.
The tone you use.
Important, yes — but only meaningful when aligned with the other four.
A brand collapses when these dimensions contradict each other.
A brand compounds when they reinforce each other.
Branding Is a Company-Wide Act
Branding is not the marketing department’s job.
If you limit branding to marketing, you limit your brand to messaging — and messaging without matching behavior produces the world’s most prolific product: cynicism.
Branding is what you build, how you hire, what you reward, how you treat customers, what you stand for, and where you compromise.
It’s not a campaign. It’s a culture.
Not a tagline. A truth.
Not a department. An operating system.
The Customer Choice Equation
In business, everything ladders up to one outcome:
Will the right customer choose you over alternatives?
That’s the game.
That’s the scoreboard.
Every dimension of branding exists for that one reason.
People choose what they perceive as the most relevant option.
Relevance is the intersection of desire, trust, meaning, and timing.
Branding is how you shape relevance.
Why This Matters Now
We’re living in the age of infinite products, infinite content, infinite alternatives.
Customers have more choices than attention.
More noise than clarity.
More information than understanding.
Brands that treat branding as cosmetics will fade.
Brands that treat branding as meaning — built through coherent experience across the five dimensions — will rise.
In a world of abundance, only relevance cuts through.
In a world of sameness, only meaning endures.
In a world where choice is everything, branding is everything.
In Brief
A brand is the idea in their mind.
Branding is everything you do to shape that idea.
Signals shape perception.
Perception shapes choice.
Choice shapes your business.
Therefore:
Branding is the business
.