You’ve got a business. It’s a good business! Maybe you’re an organ-tuning company. Or a ride-sharing app that caters exclusively to dogs. Or a service that retrieves people’s credit cards that they leave behind at bars.
The truth is, when you’re trying to build your business’ brand, it doesn’t matter what you do. Well it does, obviously; especially to local organists and dogs who don’t own cars. But it matters more why you do it.
That’s where we start when we’re helping clients brand themselves. Literally. We draw a big circle, and write “WHY” in the middle. Then our deeply skilled Brand Strategist Ryan Hall, taps it with a dry-erase marker several times for emphasis. Then we lock the doors and nobody leaves until we figure it out.
Sometimes it’s grueling. Sometimes it’s breezy. But every time, it’s productive.
It’s a study in who you are and why you do what you do. It’s a reflection on the core beliefs at the heart of what you do. It’s a revelation of the inspiration that got you into the organ-tuning industry in the first place.
Once we have that “why,” we have everything. Not literally, of course; that would be ludicrous. But we have the idea from which everything else will come. Once we know why you do what you do, we have a better idea of the voice you want to use to speak to your prospective customers, of the best visual designs to embody what you stand for, of what to put on the web sites, billboards, videos, animations, or side of a bus that are going to tell the world your brand story.
It is the seed from which grows the rest of your brand, until it is a tree of many branches, blossoming with fruit, and housing families of happy squirrels.
Don’t like the tree metaphor? That’s probably because it isn’t the right branding for you. That’s why we’ve got to find your “why.”
You tune organs because music deserves to sound right. You pick up dogs because everybody has somewhere they belong. You retrieve credit cards because people should be allowed to forget themselves when they’re having a good time.
Imagine yourself, sitting there knowing the “why” of your brand. Think of all you could accomplish together; the messaging you could project; the potential clientele you could reach. You have everything to gain and all you have to do is get to know yourself a little better.
We can help with that. We’re very good at it.
So the next time you’re asking yourself, “…why do I do this?” while an impatient schnauzer taps his paw a block away, you’ll remember: It’s because of your “why.” Whatever that is.