You Ask, I Answer: How to Start a Brand From Scratch?

In this episode, Olivia asks, if you are starting a brand from scratch, where should I start? Well, that's a big question. Um first, let's settle on what a brand is. Uh, there are any number of definitions. Uh a brand is a promise, a brand is a collection of attributes about a company or service.

The one that I like best is by a uh comedian uh named Zay Frank, who in 2006 said that a brand is the sum of a series of uh experiences that is essentially an emotional aftertaste. So uh a brand is the emotional aftertaste of a series of experiences. And I love this definition because it jives, it makes sense. It is what we feel. Like when you name a brand, the emotions that you feel around that brand define that brand, right?

When you think if you're uh a big fan of Apple, uh when you see the Apple logo or talk about the Apple brand, you feel certain things. When you see uh certain politician by name, that politician has a personal brand. And depending on your political orientation stuff, you may be like, yeah, or uh, you know, but either way, it evokes an emotion. The brands that are at in the most peril are the brands that don't evoke any kind of emotion. You see the logo and you're like, eh, okay.

Um think about it like this. You know, here's a here's a battery, right? And this is the brand of this battery is EBL. I don't feel anything. Did you feel anything?

Now these are decent batteries, they do their job. Here's a brand, this one uh is energizer, right? You at least have some kind of association there, there's something uh to call upon. Uh, and it's going to be a combination of, you know, that that annoying bunny with the the drums uh and personal experiences you've had with this. But when you don't feel anything for a brand, when there's no emotion, it makes it very easy for for something to become a commodity, right?

When this is no better than this, and this is no better than this, then lowest price wins, right? Um when there's a brand, when there's a series of emotional aftertastes, then this brand or this brand can become your preferred choice, right? You'll go to that brand first because you have that emotional history with it. So the first thing you have to do if you're starting a brand from scratch is decide what emotional aftertastes you want to invoke. And you want to be specific, right?

You don't want to just want to be uh oh, we want our customers to be happy, right? Or or the worst. We want our customers to be satisfied. Like I'm sorry, um, satisfaction doesn't win anything ever. You want your customer commercial at least to be happy, possibly delirious.

Um, but think about all of the the words and phrases that are associated with your products and services. Look in your customer service inbox. Um, and now if you're starting from a brand from scratch, look at what other brands, other competitors in the space have got, right? Let's say you're starting a coffee chain, right? Uh uh a coffee shop chain.

What do the existing brands evoke? Right? You know, there's there's Starbucks. What kind of emotions does that evoke? There's Dunkin' Donuts, Pete's Coffee, uh, you know, you name it.

There's so many. What are the emotional aftertastes of those brands? And then once you map that out, look at um look at any number of sort of emotional mapping diagrams from psychology, like uh Plutarch's uh wheel of emotions, and see where the gaps are. If you can clearly define the emotional aftertaste of your competing brands, and you're new in this space, you're starting a brand from scratch, where are the logical gaps? Now clearly, you know, if if you're starting a coffee chain, you probably don't want abject terror to be the emotional aftertaste that you're going after, right?

Um that probably would not be great. But is there a distinction you can make from satisfied or relaxed or comfortable, you know, maybe, or caffeinated or busy. Uh, you know, I was thinking of the the uh brand slogan for Dunkin' Donuts, you know, America runs on Dunkin' it incorporates this emotional sense of of doing things, going places. What's still left on of the emotions that you would want to evoke, what's still left on on that emotional structure? That can be your emotional aftertaste that you would then build your brand messaging around, build your brand assets, your style guide, you name it.

When uh we were doing this for trust insights, you know, we looked around at you know the big consulting firms, you know, McKinsey, Bain, um Boston Consulting Group, BCG, and overwhelmingly, the big consulting firms have the same, very similar emotional aftertaste that um convey that sort of you know, we're we're much smarter than you were, reassuringly expensive, um, providing a sense of security, uh, an emotional sense of security, right? You know, I'm not going to get fired for choosing a big name consulting firm. But what they didn't promise was other positive emotions along those arcs, and we found some that we incorporated into our own brand. Being a bit more casual, a bit more accessible, um, being more approachable, uh, speaking in language that people can understand. Um, and even though, you know, I'm not trying to say that the work we produce is cheap by any means, but producing work that stands on its own for the value it delivers as opposed to how nice the PowerPoint presentation looks, right?

Yes, again, not saying that we're we have a terrible design because we don't, we actually have a pretty decent design, but the value that we want to provide, the emotional aftertaste we want to provide is rooted in the value of the content, not the presentation, not the appearance of it. Now, you can and should ideally do both, but again, when you're looking at defining a brand for the first time, what are the emotions that you want someone to feel? We want someone to feel reassured, uh comfortable. We want them to feel smarter, right? It's it's easy to make yourself look smart.

It's much more difficult to help somebody else feel smart. So that's a core part of that brand promise. So that would be my advice. If you are starting a brand from scratch, define the emotional aftertaste that you want your brand to deliver and make sure that it is different enough from your competitors while still not being like completely crazy. Um so that you can carve out a brand emotional aftertaste that is well suited to who you are and sets you apart in the marketplace without making you unpalatable.

So really good question. It's a challenging question, it's one that people spend a lot of money uh trying to solve and you know to varying degrees of success. But thanks for asking. If you like this video, go ahead and hit that subscribe button.