The 5 immutable laws of branding
Brand strategy expert Stef Verbeeck reveals the fundamental principles that
separate forgettable businesses from love brands
Over the past 25 years, I have had the privilege of working with a wide variety of businesses and organisations to improve their brand positioning, customer experience, brand identity and internal culture. Each business faces a range of challenges within their own context and their respective industries.
When I discuss successful brand strategy cases during network events, sales meetings or keynote speeches, people often assume each approach must be completely different. A founder of a revolutionary scale up imagining how their prototype might innovate an industry surely needs different branding rules than a CMO of a multinational service provider with a decades long legacy, right?
The truth of the matter is: they don’t. At least not at the core.
Through all these experiences, I've discovered that certain immutable laws exist when it comes to branding. This realisation even led to the publication of my book Brandhacking in 2020, containing the immutable laws and crucial insights to make any brand indispensable. Because regardless of the organisation's maturity level, the amount of marketing hires, the yearly media budget or the size of a company; certain principles ring just as true for every business in the world.
Businesses that embrace these laws and engage in implementing them in their organisation’s DNA, are those who succeed in making their brands flourish. No tricks, no gimmicks, no endless need for marketing budgets, no hollow promises. Just plain old common sense based on the triumphs and accomplishments of those who already understood what sets an average brand apart from a real love brand.
Immutable law 1: understanding what really drives your target audience
Almost every business claims to be customer-centric. Yet when you dig deeper, most can't explain why customers actually choose them over competitors.
The paradox is that over the past decades, businesses collected more data about their (potential) customers than ever before, yet they became afraid to truly engage with individual clients. At best, decisions are based on assumptions about the customers, average market research focused on specific questions businesses have (instead of customer motives) or a rational hypothesis of which features and values attract a crowd and maximise conversion.
What works better? Start believing in so called small data, insights from actual conversations and even anecdotic stories. Listen closely and continuously. This helps understand the true motives behind customer behaviour - even when those audiences are unwilling or incapable of putting them into words.
Start by analysing customer complaints and grievances – they are usually the most valuable and affordable form of small data insights available.
Immutable law 2: emotion beats ratio every time
Let’s get honest about how we make decisions (and yes, this also applies to B2B transactions!).
We don’t buy an expensive toy, we invest in feeling like a good parent. We don’t buy a sports car or designer handbag, we buy status and the idea of success and accomplishment. We don’t hire the most experienced consultant, we like to associate our business with the people that make us feel we can crush any competitor.
Every choice starts with an emotion. Everyone knows this, yet most brand strategies still lead with rational benefits. The sooner you embrace this inconvenient truth, the sooner your brand is able to capture the dominant emotion lingering in the back of the target audience's brain. It allows you to abandon the primarily rational narrative in favour of a more emotional storyline and brand promise.
Important side note: please don’t interpret my belief in emotional triggers as a dismissal of the power of rational benefits. In practice, it’s a matter of using emotion to generate an almost instinctive brand preference, and using ratio to confirm this initial attraction to the brand.
Immutable law 3: purposeful brands have become the new religion
Times have changed. Where people once looked to institutions for guidance, they now expect brands to step up, have meaningful opinions, drive the change and make a difference.
Today, businesses should have an answer to the question regarding their “why”, the deeper underlying motivation behind their brand and the values they hold true. After your purpose has taken shape, it is a matter of consistently communicating about it and acting upon it as if it were the main reason for the existence of your business.
This isn't about jumping on every societal trend. It's about having a genuine answer to "why does your business exist beyond making money?" Your purpose influences how clients see you, how potential employees evaluate you and how partners choose to work with you.
Authenticity is key. Target audiences see through hollow promises and disingenuous efforts within minutes — sometimes even seconds.
Immutable law 4: consensus is a strong brand's worst enemy
Indispensable brands make choices, sometimes bold ones. Sometimes they even choose a path that make people uncomfortable at first. These brands stand for something that allows them to be noticed, trusted and loved.
All too often however, we see how the effort to keep everyone around the table happy results in a brand strategy that lacks a clear vision. The drive for consensus waters everything down. The result is a grey, middle-of-the-road proposition that could belong to any competitor.
Your brand needs the courage to risk losing some people in order to truly connect with others. Safe choices create forgettable brands. Distinctive positioning, even if it initially raises eyebrows, creates love brand based on a story that is worth remembering.
Immutable law 5: simplicity is key
Although it is a human tendency to tell compelling stories and leave no detail untold, it never ceases to amaze me how much brands overcomplicate their narrative. Have a look at the average website and you'll drown in content nobody asked for. Even elevator pitches and boiler plates, usually exemplary exercises in brevity and rendering the entire brand bible into a compact promise or message, sometimes excel at leaving those who encounter them dazed and confused.
Brand simplicity is key. Brands that succeed in converting their key message in one sentence (or less) outperform those with bulky content and complex marketing campaigns. The brands that win focus on what buyers actually look for, not what the company wants to talk about.
Make sure to make bold and purposeful choices regarding brand strategy and translate those choices into a brand statement that is easy to understand, easy to remember and easy to tell others about.