Branding Isn't What You Think It Is

Tonight’s Pairing
☕ An espresso martini
🍫 Dark chocolate
On the table: What people remember after they’ve forgotten your name.

There are businesses with beautiful branding that nobody remembers.

And there are businesses with objectively average branding that people can’t stop talking about.

That’s because branding has very little to do with design.

As I’m sitting down to write this, I just left my monthly marketing strategy meeting with Kenzie, our associate brand manager. We spent nearly an hour deep in this.

I’ve been building our brand since 2023 and we recently found out we have to change our name. I wrote all about it in this article:

But after a lot of thought (and a little wine), I kept asking myself the same question:

If I take the name away... what’s actually left?

Because if all we built was a name, we never really built much of anything at all.

That’s the exact topic these meetings consistently circle back to. Not our name or our logo. Not our fonts. Not what we’re posting this week on instagram. But the feeling someone has when they’re within our four walls.

Last week’s article was about the discipline nobody sees. The leases. The margins. The numbers most owners never run.

Today I’m talking about the discipline they do see. The discipline they feel.

The brand.

If you’re building something right now or you’re not even sure what you’ve built, and it feels like something’s missing, keep reading.