‘The Brand Gap’

When I first read ‘The Brand Gap’, the famous demystification of “the brand” by Marty Neumeier, I was struck by how much the brand development process is like the UX process. It’s something I never thought to be true. I thought brands were something evil executives thought up in a room full of whiskey (Smoking is good for you! A bucket of fried chicken is a great dinner!).

But no. Brand development involves user testing, jam sessions (sort of) and creativity.

Five easy steps to a great brand (in theory)

Here’s a quick review of the ’12-step programme’ (minus 7 steps) of brand building. All words must end in ‘ate’:

• Differentiate — Be different and focus
• Collaborate — Work with other people (the jamming session)
• Innovate — Be creative, not just strategic
• Validate — User test
• Cultivate — Let your brand grow with your company

How important is a brand, really?

‘The Brand Gap’ calls a brand a ‘gut feeling.’ It’s what other people think of your company. But how much does that affect the work of a company?

If what a company sells is of quality and must be of quality to make sure their customer base remains and grows, then how does their brand really affect that?

A thought experiment

Let’s play a game, shall we? We at iQ know what we do. And we know what our clients think about us (we’ve asked them).

We know what a broader audience thinks of us, sometimes, by paying attention when we get mentioned online, and through the interactions we have with people face to face, through our own events and initiatives like iQ Boot Camp and The iQ Prize, plus all the knowledge-sharing and networking groups we participate in here in Dublin and beyond.

But our peers are a mysterious group. So we’d like to see what you – our intelligent, informed blogging audience – think too. And we realised, we’ve never really asked you.

So let’s do a test.

Case in point: This year, we upped our game and started publishing and participating a lot more. Features, blog posts, getting out there and talking – we tried to do the things we’d always wanted to do, but just weren’t able to do when we were a younger, smaller (thinner, better-looking) team. We didn’t just want to post stuff, we wanted a strategy.

But what do you think? Has this expansion broken the first branding rule (Differentiate: Be different and focus)?

We can pretend this is a Rorschach test. Leave a comment with the first word that comes to your mind, when you see this:

Thanks for playing!