To say branding is misunderstood in the marketplace is a demonstrable understatement.

So, to shed some light and possibly help with an easy rule to remember, consider: whatever someone first thinks, when they think of you, your company, your product, etc., is pretty much the brand.

“Hey, do you know Joe?” “Yup, man…that dude is so funny!”

Funny is Joe’s brand, regardless of what he does and offers in a business sense.

“What did you think of that new software?” “Well, it was unbelievably complicated!”

Complicated is the brand, even if the manufacturer tries to “position” in some other way.

You see, you can consider the first thought toward things as most likely the brand. And the opportunity in branding is to try and shape the first thought others have about you.

What’s the first thing that comes to mind when I mention Volvo? Safety, right? I often ask this in my speaking engagements, and the answer is ALWAYS “safe” or “safety”.

Think of what you want your brand to be, and begin the process by learning how to talk about it and deliver it. Assuming your brand has intrinsic value, if you can do this over a long period of time, you’ll most likely develop a brand to help you grow and operate more efficiently.

One of the most common mistakes - in fact, a stupendously common one - in the marketing world is when a firm does “branding” work but in reality only does brand “identity” work.

It’s when they only do design, logos, tag lines, create a new jingle or mascot, or change the font on their letterhead. What’s left out is the hard work of Positioning.

With all apologies, to do a branding project without doing the Positioning part (i.e. positioning and differentiation versus the competition) is to unwittingly develop less than half a project.

My own view is, don’t bother. When a firm only does identity work, it’s either to simply unify their materials (which can be legitimate) or doesn’t understand the branding process enough to do the entire work set. To only do the identity part, with all the time, effort and money involved, but to leave out how to beat the competition via positioning is nearly a complete waste of time.

The examples are legend. Look at what The GAP did with their logo a while back. Not only did they ignore what should have been the proper motivation (positioning and differentiation) they came out with what might be the worst identity work anyone has seen in a decade or more. And they got hammered for it. If anything, they lost business by doing this work, rather than gained competitive advantage.

The point is, be sure to do an entire branding project, if you’re going to bother. The much more important part of branding is the positioning part. Without it - again, assuming you’re goal is more than updating and/or unifying your web site and materials, etc. - you’ve literally skipped the part that should drive not just your sales and marketing, but also your management, operations, and entire culture.

If you’re a service provider, your product(s) need to do more than one thing - the assumed thing - for clients or you’ll fall behind the very best competition.

If you’re a software firm, your products need to not just automate a process, but create other “values” also, such as easily produced consumer value or data.

If you’re a law firm, you not only need to do the usual law-things, but also wrap in business consulting of some kind, for instance.

If you’re a sales, marketing, or branding provider, you’d better be offering additional value beyond the normal one-channel of impact (sales training only; marketing strategy only, etc.) or sophisticated clients will start to move away from you, if they haven’t already.

Me? My branding work improves a brand, sales, culture, operations, AND management modeling, all at once. It also creates a unique business simplicity platform that is indispensable for firms that want to grow and be efficient.

What are you doing, beyond what a prospect would already expect, to move value through further reaches of your customers’ businesses? If you haven’t answered this question practically by the time I’ve finished asking it, maybe you (wink wink) should put some thought into it!

I typically take my available time each December and think about strategy, i.e. strategy for the following years business pursuits.

Rest assured (and I know you’re deeply worried about this!) I’ve put some changes into my business, all with the goal of providing better work to clients. They are, however, for my brain only.

But the point of this post is, are YOU thinking and rethinking about your business, and to what degree you are maximizing your potential?

December always seems like a good time to think about it, at least to me. So then, I ask you, what changes are you making to keep up with or surpass your competition? Are you positioned in the market in a way to dominate your competitive landscape? Are your products and services exactly what clients need, or do they need some tweaks to make them more immediately valuable and attractive?

It’s a busy life. It’s a busy business world. But still, if you don’t take a bit of time to re-strategize your business brain, you might wake up in a year or two and find you’ve slipped behind the competition without realizing it. That would be a shame, to be so busy being busy that your business stood still for large chunks of time.

Not to be presumptuous, but can you afford that?

Kids In Need of Desks

For $48, kids in Milawi, Africa, will get a desk at school, where they’ve been sitting on the ground for at least eight hours a day. The desks are made in Milawi, thus creating jobs there. These people are poor. They are very very poor. Believe it or not, this small amount will have the multiplier effect of learning, jobs, steady pay, and steady food.

Do this if you can. Go to: http://on.msnbc.com/gT1Nrv

I attended a book event recently on the new Drinking from the Firehose publication, by authors Chris Frank and Paul Magnone.

I recommend it highly. It’s mainly about all the research data that’s out there and not getting overwhelmed by it, knowing how to sift through without losing sight of what’s most important, and spotting accurate trends in data. However, as a verbal branding specialist, I’m always attracted most to ideas that overlap into the branding world.

I particularly like one of the questions Frank and Magnone use in the book to cull out the most important - yet often overlooked - information: “What surprised you?”

Think about it - in the branding world, we often are looking for ideas that break a company or product out of the boring category basics, i.e. CPA firms will do your taxes. And since most companies now find themselves in what appear to be commoditized competitive landscapes, the notion of surprising someone or the audience is a truly valuable and practical one.

I’ve been using nearly this exact question in my development process for years. It’s simple: what about your company or product would surprise someone?

Often the best ideas will work in multiple environments - here it’s research data vs. brand positioning development - and in overlapping industries. They are good ideas precisesly because they are universally usable.

In the future, when you’re trying to develop insight into important business issues, pay closer attention to what surprises you within the applicable data. It just might lead you in a new and valuable direction.

Being a speaker on all things “Verbal Branding”, I get to have a little fun when I do my presentations.

I make a point to always ask business audiences, “How many conversations do you think you’ve had in your business career?” The answer is invariably somewhere between 5 and 15 thousand.

However, I remind them about the reality of the branding world along with the way humans absorb and gravitate to information. With that said, the correct answer, from a strictly branding perspective, is they’ve only had two conversations in their entire careers (when it’s a conversation with those outside their firms):

1) the same, or 2) different!

That’s it. You see, it’s critical to understand that, in the mind of the consumer you’re either the same as those you compete with or you are different. In order to have a powerful brand, you must establish differentiation so you can be “filed away” in their mind in the latter category.

And when does this process begin? The quick answer is, immediately. As soon as you begin speaking or when someone begins reading your web site or marketing materials, etc., you have .000000002 (my unofficial estimate) to establish you are different than the others in your marketplace.

It’s like a magic moment - when you have the chance to brand as having differentiated positioning. If you miss that chance, not only will you be seen as the same as the competition, you’ll also have about the same revenue as them too, rather than the chance to dominate the selling landscape.

During presentations, it’s an assumption that most of what is said is understood.

It’s not always the case, of course, because those of us who do a lot of speaking come across audiences or people who won’t ask questions even when they have them.

But the questions are a favor. If people aren’t clear, it’s our fault, not theirs. In my last session, I was asked at about the one-hour mark about something I felt I’d covered and ought to have been clear. It wasn’t, at least to one person who asked a simple question, in the form of a statement:

“But we know all this. I still don’t see the difference between Verbal Branding and what we already know about marketing and branding.”

So, I backtracked to some of the info I always cover near the beginning of my speeches: a spoken application for brand positioning appears to be unique in the world AND even highly sophisticated, Fortune 200 firms I’ve worked with cannot truly differentiate themselves while speaking in one or two simple concepts and in five seconds or less. Therefore, they don’t know what a Verbal Branding platform’s foundation consists of, and they aren’t able to use the platform to simultaneously improve the organization in four dimensions (sales, culture, management, and “time”…or speed).

This person said something like, “Ah, now I’m clear”, and seemed satisfied.

So the purpose of this post is to be sure I’m clear, without assuming you already understand: Verbal Branding is different than anything else I am aware of in the branding marketplace for the reason’s mentioned above, the fact that spoken and conversational dynamics are the foundation of this branding platform rather than marketing and/or advertising philosophies (which BTW, makes all the difference) and, the platform is both ultra-simple and capable of directly improving everything of importance that goes into successful business functioning IMMEDIATELY AND SIMULTANEOUSLY.

Without a Verbal Branding platform, regardless of the type or size of your organization, you are losing money, brand identity, and operational efficiency every…single…day !!!!! (Happy Thanksgiving!)

There are some ideas that float around in the “selling” world that need to be put in their proper place. One of them is the idea of selling based on “Like and Trust”.

I’ve heard it for years. Make sure people feel they can like and trust you, and you’ve got it made. A similar, overlapping concept is simply to feel you’re selling the “relationship”.

In truth, neither of these are high-level selling concepts, and are closer to admitting your product or service isn’t good enough, so something of value that seems of value!

But there are several flaws in selling this way. First, both like and trust and relationships are post-sale executables, not original offers. People will learn to like and trust you if you make a sale and you are likable and trustworthy over time. When they don’t know you yet, they have no idea about these qualities in you, and it’s a huge mistake to consider it’s what you are actually selling.

And on that point, are these the things that you are actually selling? Really? Absolutely not. In reality, it’s a default mindset from a position of weakness, not strength. It’s certainly not a significant business offer, especially when dealing with Sr. level executives. (It will work better, I’ll agree, if you sell to small, main street type businesses.)

The right way to view these ideas is this: yes, you want to be liked and trusted, but each have to be based on something else. That something else has to be your brand positioning. Those who sell for Volvo are quite likely to treat you well enough that there will be a sense of likability and trust. But it’s not WHAT they are selling. They are selling safe cars. THAT’S the bases from which you should like and trust them.

If you’ve been using these concepts to sell, reorient your thinking so the reason someone should like and trust you is based on a much more significant business proposal: your business and differentiated brand offer.

A quote from Steve Jobs that I particularly like and can relate to is:

“Your time is limited so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking.”

The reason I like the quote is probably obvious, as it fits perfectly - applying a twist toward branding - with nearly everything I teach business people and organizations.

The idea is to go ahead and stand out from the crowd. Don’t be afraid to be different, because when you are (as long as it’s with professionalism) you’ll be granted just rewards. Think of it in terms of brand positioning.

You are compelled in today’s hyper-competitive business environment to move away from the thinking of others and, in effect, living the lives of other business people who happen to make a living in the same category of business you do.

And the problem with that is obvious: if you live other people’s business lives - accepting their thinking as your own, probably without knowing it - you are also going to live with their results too.

So, the question remains: do you wish to live the professional life of someone else, or as yourself? Branding, and in particular Verbal Branding, gives you the opportunity to live your own life and attain your own results.