Branding is the template that your name, logo, products and services are delivered in.
It’s everything that tells the customer its you without you having to say its you.
In one of my imaginary case study businesses “The Yard Barber”, the whole theme of the business is presented and structured similar to a barber. Instead of scissors and hair clippers, we find hedge shears and mowers. The service rates are displayed in the vintage style of a barbershop chalkboard. If it weren't for the word yard in the name and a logo featuring a beard fashioned from green grass, one might mistake it for an actual barber, and by the time you realise its a yard maintenance company you’re unlikely to forget it. When the team does your property they’re dressed in aprons (like a barber).. They give your yard the same level of detail a barber gives their customers beard. At this point you could almost call it a gimmick, a schtick.. But i think committing to the gimmick so well that people don’t refer to it as a gimmick, is just plain old good branding.
To paraphrase Seth Godin, branding is the expectation or memories your customers have of your company.
Branding strongly plays into marketing however i would consider marketing the specific methods you use to reach customers whether thats through making youtube videos, google ads or various other ways of getting your business in front of potential customers.
If a youtube video is marketing, then branding is the colour of the thumbnail you use on your video.
When launching NATIVE, my business partner made an ad that had our product in the centre set against a gradient background transitioning from dark grey at the bottom to light grey at the top. Our logo was to the top left and the product details in small white text at the bottom left. I said “looks good” and posted it on Instagram announcing the release of our first product.
I then mimicked this exact template myself with every single official product release for the next 5 years. I’ve received countless compliments on the clean and consistent style and sold a whole lot of product all over the world thanks to those images. Our packaging is just black with a thin white logo and the product's name on each box. Other than a few team riders' signature models, our product range has been predominantly black and silver.
It’s definitely nothing special, but, done elegantly and consistently over a 5-year period, we’ve created one of the most recognisable, yet minimalist, brands in our industry.
You need to pick something that you can maintain for a long time. The longer you run with it, the stronger it gets.