Are you a business or a brand?

You might think you’re a brand. You have a great logo, and the website is stunning. But are you a brand?

Seth Godin is pretty brutal in defining whether or not you’ve made the grade. He says “If the consumer doesn’t pay a premium…then no brand value exists for that consumer.” One of the examples he uses to illustrate that point is the hotel industry.

We’ve all heard of Hilton and Sheraton. They’re brands right? Well, maybe not. If you booked rooms at each of these hotels, would the décor be different? How about the experience? They’d probably be similar, wouldn’t they? You could even say they were interchangeable. Which is why guests are often happy to base their choice on the deals they can get from booking.com or wotif or trivago.

Seth takes this example one step further and asks us what we’d think about Nike having a hotel chain. It would be totally different wouldn’t it? Consumers would expect energy, excitement, attitude. And they’d know they were going to get. Not only that, if they’re fans of the Nike brand, they’d probably be willing to pay a few dollars more to stay at a Nike hotel.    

Where do you think you sit on the business-brand continuum? Are you providing a product or service that’s pretty much a parity offering? Or do you have a brand that people seek out, talk about and pay a premium for?

There are a lot of ingredients that go into determining where you sit. How well have you defined your promise? How well have your people embraced your vision? How consistent are you in your messaging?

If you ask yourself the tough questions, and you’re prepared to switch things up, you’re well on your way to becoming a brand.    

 BTW if you liked the photo in this article, it was by Tara Chernus on Unsplash