Your Branding Specialist Started Halfway Through the Fucking Process

I have watched businesses spend an incredible amount of time trying to figure out their brand.

They develop mission statements.

They pick colors.

They debate fonts.

They redesign the logo six times.

They establish a tone of voice.

Someone makes a mood board.

Someone else decides the brand is an Explorer with a little bit of Sage energy.

Everybody goes home feeling productive.

There is only one small fucking problem.

Nobody clearly established what the business is supposed to be known for.

In my experience, this is where a lot of branding starts going wrong.

Not because logos are useless.

Not because colors do not matter.

Not because typography, language, packaging, positioning, photography, customer experience, or visual identity do not matter.

They absolutely fucking matter.

The problem is simpler:

You started halfway through the process.

Before I care what your business looks like, I want to know what your business does.

And before you tell me everything it could eventually do, I want to know the one thing you want people to know you for first.

That is branding.

Or, at least, that is where I think branding should start.

Nobody Gives a Fuck About Your Business

This is probably the least pleasant place to begin, but it is useful.

The customer does not give a fuck about your business simply because you started one.

You care.

Of course you care.

You spent money on it. You stayed awake thinking about it. You argued about the name. You found suppliers. You built the website. You signed the lease. You told your friends. Maybe you quit your job.

The customer did none of those things.

Maybe they met you eight seconds ago.

And whatever you sell, there is a reasonably good chance somebody else sells something that performs roughly the same basic function.

Shoes?

Congratulations. We have shoes.

Massage?

We figured that shit out too.

Coffee mugs?

Humanity is currently experiencing no meaningful mug shortage.

So the first branding problem is not:

What color represents our values?

It is:

Why the fuck should anybody remember you?

And I do not think the answer begins with a logo.

It begins with function.

This Is Not Something I Invented to Annoy Designers

The American Marketing Association distinguishes brand identity from brand positioning: the visual and symbolic elements that help people recognize a business, and the position that business is trying to occupy relative to its competitors. [1]

The Design Council's Double Diamond begins by discovering and defining the problem before developing and delivering a solution. [2]

Different language. Useful distinction.

Figure out what needs doing before you decide what the answer should look like.

My argument is about what happens when a business skips that work.

It can spend money designing something it later has to redesign. It can buy attention before it knows what it wants that attention to accomplish. It can ask five different suppliers to make five different interpretations of a business nobody has clearly explained.

Now everybody is busy.

And you are paying for all of it.

Start With What the Fuck You Do

My branding framework starts stupidly simple.

Ask two questions:

What is your function?

and

How will people use your function?

That is where I start.

Before the mission statement.

Before the logo.

Before the social-media strategy.

Before you start mailing free shit to people with 300,000 Instagram followers.

Tell me what you fucking do.

From there, I generally think about the market in three extremely simplified buckets.

These are not intended to replace every B2B, B2C, or category framework ever developed. They are a working model for forcing the business to think about why somebody wants the thing in the first place.

Lifestyle: What Can I Show Off?

The thing becomes part of me, my life, my taste, my identity, my environment, or how I want to be perceived.

Clothing. Cars. Food. Furniture. Fitness. Beauty. Restaurants. Personal services. Consumer products.

“Show off” does not necessarily mean standing on a table screaming about what you bought.

It means the choice can communicate something about you.

Necessity: What Do I Need to Function?

Something needs to fucking work.

The business needs accounting. Legal services. Software. Logistics. Equipment. Infrastructure. Professional services.

This is not limited to businesses.

If your air conditioning dies on a 100-degree day in Los Angeles, getting it repaired falls into this bucket too.

You are not buying an identity or an escape. You need something to fucking work.

The branding problem becomes heavily connected to capability, reliability, expertise, risk, efficiency, and trust.

Entertainment: What Do I Need to Distract Myself?

Take me somewhere.

Give me something to watch, hear, play, experience, obsess over, laugh at, cry about, or disappear into for a while.

Movies. Music. Games. Books. Sports. Creators. Characters. Worlds.

Obviously, these categories can overlap. A work tool can carry status. A game can connect friends. A beautiful mug can make an ordinary morning feel better.

Function does not have to mean a mechanical task. The Christensen Institute's Jobs to Be Done theory includes functional, social, and emotional dimensions of the progress people seek when choosing products and services. [3]

My three buckets are my own rough shorthand. They are not that theory or an exhaustive map of the market.

The point is to force yourself to answer:

What fundamental job is this brand performing in somebody's world?

Because once I understand that, I can start figuring out what the brand needs to mean.

Let Us Start a Really Fucking Stupid Company

Let us invent a company.

This is a hypothetical, not a client case study.

We are going to sell a coffee mug.

One mug.

That is the company.

I hereby present our revolutionary business:

ONE MUG

hold my coffee

That is it.

I have not selected our colors.

I have not commissioned the logo.

I do not know our font.

I do not know whether our brand archetype is The Regular Guy, The Innocent, The Caregiver, or The Motherfucker Who Holds Coffee.

We have not written a mission statement.

But you already understand the company.

What do we do?

We make a mug.

What is its function?

It holds coffee.

How will people use it?

Presumably by putting coffee in the fucking thing.

We have already accomplished something surprisingly important:

The business is legible.

That means people can understand what the fuck it does.

Have we given them a reason to choose it yet?

No.

We have established the starting point. “It holds coffee” describes the category. Now we still have to decide who this mug is for and why they would want this one.

Maybe it fits a particular use better. Maybe it is easier to hold. Maybe the customer just loves how it looks.

Those are directions to investigate. We have not proved demand for any of them.

Simple enough to understand is the beginning. It is not the entire business.

Your Brand Should Be Easy to Explain Before It Tries to Be Impressive

This is where I think a lot of new businesses fuck themselves.

They start by imagining the mature version of the company.

They do not want to sell a mug.

They want to build:

a premium lifestyle ecosystem centered around intentional moments, sustainable living, and authentic human connection.

Motherfucker.

You sell a mug.

Sell me the mug first.

This is especially important because founders look at enormous mature companies and copy what those companies are today.

They see companies selling shoes, shirts, bags, watches, subscriptions, accessories, experiences, and everything else imaginable.

So they conclude:

That is what a successful brand looks like.

No.

That is what a successful brand may look like after it has spent years or decades accumulating meaning.

You are looking at the finished building and using it as instructions for pouring the foundation.

Those are not the same fucking thing.

Become Known for One Thing First

ONE MUG does not need to launch with:

ONE MUG.

ONE TUMBLER.

ONE THERMOS.

ONE ESPRESSO CUP.

ONE TEA SET.

ONE WATER BOTTLE.

ONE HOODIE.

ONE FUCKING CANDLE.

We need people to understand one thing:

ONE MUG makes a mug.

This is not a permanent limitation.

It is a starting constraint for this example. One clear thing to be known for does not require every business to sell exactly one product.

Because a new company has another problem mature brands do not have:

Nobody has accumulated any reason to associate you with anything yet.

Your brand has no history.

No reputation.

No customer experience.

No cultural meaning.

No accumulated recognition.

If you have no existing audience or reputation to carry over, you are starting from zero.

So give the market something simple enough to learn.

Then the Logo Actually Has a Fucking Job

Now we can talk about visual identity.

Because I am not anti-logo.

I am not anti-color.

I am not anti-font.

I am not anti-brand-guide.

Look at my fucking website.

You are looking at branding.

What does it do?

You read articles of me talking shit about virtually everything business-related from the perspective of someone who has spent years sitting in the captain's seat.

That is the function.

The colors, typography, layout, language, profanity, article structure, and visual identity exist to reinforce that function.

Those things matter.

I just want them to do something.

What do I do?

I analyze business systems from an operator's perspective.

How do I do it?

Understand the system. Follow the fucking money.

What does the reader get?

Business analysis from somebody sitting in the captain's seat rather than somebody standing onshore explaining how boats theoretically work.

That is what the identity is there to communicate.

Then make the motherfucker look like something.

Now go back to ONE MUG.

If ONE MUG decides that simplicity is fundamental to the product, that should influence the visual system.

If the product is deliberately utilitarian, that should influence it.

If it is absurdly premium, that should influence it.

If it is playful, that should influence it.

If hold my coffee becomes part of the language, we already have the beginning of a voice.

Notice what happened there.

We did not sit in a conference room and decide:

Our tone is approachable, authentic, playful, and empowering.

We figured out what the company did.

The voice started emerging from the function.

Now the designer is not staring at a blank fucking Adobe Illustrator document trying to invent a personality for a company that has not decided what it is.

The designer has constraints.

Constraints are useful.

A Logo Identifies You. Your Brand Tells Me What That Identification Means.

This distinction matters.

Your logo is not your entire brand.

Your colors are not your entire brand.

Your typography is not your entire brand.

Your packaging is not your entire brand.

They are brand assets.

They help me recognize you.

But recognition and meaning are not identical.

If I see your logo and recognize it, great.

The more important question is:

What does recognizing it make me think?

That is the shit you are actually building over time.

A symbol can eventually carry enormous meaning because the business spent years teaching people what that symbol represents.

The symbol did not magically contain all of that meaning when some designer exported the first SVG.

The meaning develops through what the business does and what people experience, hear, and decide about it. Management does not get to control every interpretation.

Product by product.

Customer by customer.

Advertisement by advertisement.

Experience by experience.

Decision by decision.

Your Brand Should Affect How the Business Behaves

This is another place where the mission-statement-first model loses me.

Companies love having values.

Quality.

Integrity.

Innovation.

Sustainability.

Fucking fantastic.

What changed?

If a supposed brand principle never causes you to make a different product decision, reject something, spend differently, design differently, communicate differently, accept a cost, establish a constraint, or sacrifice an opportunity, I am not particularly impressed that you put it on the About page.

A brand becomes interesting when its principles start affecting operations.

ONE MUG says simplicity matters?

Cool.

Then maybe simplicity should show up in the product.

And the packaging.

And the website.

And the buying experience.

And the number of SKUs.

And customer service.

And the language.

Now we are building consistency from the inside out.

Not:

Our brand value is simplicity.

But:

Here are seventeen decisions we made differently because simplicity matters to us.

That is a fucking brand.

Then You Earn the Right to Branch Out

Suppose ONE MUG works.

People buy the mug.

People recognize ONE MUG.

Customers like the product.

The business has accumulated some meaning.

Now somebody says:

“I love this thing, but I cannot take it in my car.”

Interesting.

Maybe ONE MUG develops a travel mug.

Not because our annual strategy deck says CATEGORY EXPANSION.

Because the existing function revealed an adjacent problem.

Then maybe customers want an espresso version.

Fine.

Now we have another adjacent problem.

The brand expands:

Mug → travel mug → espresso cup → broader drinkware

and eventually the market may understand ONE MUG as something broader than the literal original mug.

That is important.

The product that creates the brand can eventually become narrower than the meaning of the brand itself.

But you earn that expansion.

You do not establish customer acceptance just by declaring it on launch day.

Successful Brands Have Permission You Do Not Have Yet

This is one of the easiest mistakes to make when studying giant companies.

An established brand may bring existing associations to a new product. That can help, but it does not guarantee people will want the extension.

A new business without that history has less to draw on.

A familiar company may already have taught its customers:

This is who we are.

This is what we make.

This is what our products feel like.

This is what owning them says about you.

This is what you can expect from us.

That accumulated meaning becomes an asset.

So when the company expands, the new product can borrow meaning from the established brand.

If nobody knows your startup yet, you do not have that account to withdraw from.

You are fucking broke.

Build the account first.

And Please Stop Hiring Distribution Before You Know What You Are Distributing

This is where this becomes more than a branding argument.

I repeatedly see new businesses jump almost immediately to:

We need social media.

Okay.

Why?

We need awareness.

Awareness of what?

Our brand.

What is the brand?

Here is our Instagram.

Oh my goodness.

Social media is capable of distributing brand expression.

Advertising can distribute it.

Influencers can distribute it.

Public relations can distribute it.

Events can distribute it.

Celebrity partnerships can distribute it.

Distribution can help you test an offer and learn what people respond to. But amplification alone does not settle what you are amplifying.

If you have not established what you do, how people use it, who it is for, what you want to become known for, and what meaning you are trying to create around it, you are asking somebody to distribute an unfinished thought.

And then businesses wonder why they are popular on social media but still are not getting any business.

A Good Branding Specialist May Already Know This

“But Terry, the designer might help us figure out what the business is.”

Yes.

A good one might ask exactly these questions. A sketch, a name, a prototype, or a conversation about the website can expose a problem the founder could not explain.

The Design Council describes iteration, research, learning, prototyping, and testing throughout its design process. [2]

So this does not have to be a neat little production line where thinking ends on Tuesday and design begins on Wednesday.

And sometimes appearance is a major part of the reason someone buys. Art. Fashion. A gift. A mug that makes somebody laugh.

That is a function too.

I am not demanding that every business look like industrial plumbing. I am asking what the design is doing for the person choosing it.

A mission can help answer that.

So can a designer.

So can a customer.

If your branding specialist starts by discovering those answers, they did not start halfway through the process.

And if you hired someone only to make a logo, do not blame them for failing to invent the business you never briefed them on.

The person paying for the work has a job here too.

What Would Prove Me Wrong?

My claim is simple: when nobody understands the offer, more visual polish by itself may leave the important problem untouched.

So do not settle this by asking whether I like your fucking logo.

Put the work in front of people you actually want as customers. Let them see it without the founder standing beside them explaining what every element means.

What do they think you sell?

Who do they think it is for?

Why would they choose it?

What do they remember later?

Then look at what they do.

For ONE MUG, do they buy the mug at a price that leaves the business enough money after its costs?

Understanding is one test.

A viable business is another.

If people understand the offer, choose it for a reason the business can deliver, and the economics work, a process that began with a visual idea may have served the business perfectly well.

I do not get to call it broken just because the founder started with a sketch.

If clarifying the offer changes nothing, examine another explanation: the product, price, distribution, or the experience itself.

And if a design change improves the relevant result while the underlying offer stays the same, give the design its fucking credit.

Compare reasonably similar audiences and conditions before claiming you know what caused the change.

My preferred order is a working approach.

It has to survive contact with customers.

Branding Does Not Start With the Fucking Colors

So if I were starting a business tomorrow, I would not begin with:

What is our mission statement?

What is our logo?

What colors represent us?

What is our tone of voice?

I would start here:

What do we do?

Then:

How will people use what we do?

Then:

What do we want to become known for first?

Then:

Why should anybody choose or remember us?

Then:

What decisions does that force us to make?

Now give me the designer.

Now give me the writer.

Now give me the packaging.

Now give me the website.

Now give me the advertising.

Now give me social.

Because now all of those people have something to fucking work with.

The mission statement can come later.

Maybe we will even choose some colors.

But first:

What the fuck do you do?

If you cannot answer that simply, I do not give a shit what shade of blue communicates trust.