This is part 2 of a 13 part series identifying who Wildstory is, what the intricacies of branding are, and how this can all benefit you.
Video Transcript
Keith Roberts 0:04
Can you tell me how do you define a brand, branding, brand strategy, and brand storytelling?
Marc Gutman 0:11
So it's a great question. And it's a super confusing kind of discipline and, you know, brand and branding. It's a relatively young discipline and, and it's really hot right now. And I'll talk about why it's really hot, but it's evolving. And so there's a lot of confusion around these words. And for me, you know, the definition of a brand is not your logo. It's not your corporate identity, it's not your product.
It's not even a promise, a lot of people say a brand is a promise. And it's certainly not all the impressions that you make across your company or brand. But really, the definition that I like to go by is that it's, it's a gut feeling that someone has about your products or services. And it's a gut feeling because we are crazy, emotional, intuitive creatures as humans, right, like, we are not logical, we like to think that we're logical, but we're not we're emotional. And it becomes a gut feeling. Because also, as business owners, we have this misconception that we control the brand. And we don't, or customers control the brand, it's created by the customers. And so it's created and owned by the customers, not the company, not our brand teams, not agency, not an agency. Like that's a crazy concept to me to think about.
Even when I like I sit in this every day. And I think about, like what is a brand, the idea that we work on brands that we don't really control it, we do our best to create a brand we do our best to influence what a brand is, but we don't actually control or own it. And in the truest sense, and why brands even exist is because people use brands to simplify buying choices, you know like we're living in this crazy world. And I'll talk about that a little later, where we just have infinite choice. And so we don't know how to categorize all that information. And brands really exist to help us simplify buying choices. And kind of back to the idea of like a brand isn't what you say it is, but what the outward outside world says it is like one of my favorite quotes of all time is from Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world. So I, I take him as an authority on this topic. And he's super customer-centric.
He's all about customers. He you know, I really value his outlook on things and he says that a brand is simply it's what people say about you, and you're not in the room. And if you think about that for a second, that's a super, super easy definition, whether that's a personal brand, right? What are people saying about you and I, Keith, when we're not in the room, or what are they saying about our company, and that's, and that's really when people are speaking their truth, you know, you know, people will tell you that they love your company or love what you're doing or that they need you. But really, it's about like when you're not around and what they're saying about you that's the true testament of your brand.
