You Don’t Need a Logo. You Need a Brand Identity.

“I want to brand my business. I need a logo. Can you do this for me?” – Loosely based on client calls

Over the years I’ve heard this common misconception among prospective clients, and it drives me crazy. Without being critical, I kindly explain that “your logo is not your brand” time and time again.

WHAT IS A LOGO?

A logo is a visual that identifies your business. Like Nike’s “check”, Starbucks “mermaid”, or Coach’s “horsedrawn carriage”, these symbols identify these businesses. However, Nike, Starbucks, Coach, and other businesses (including yours) have more facets to their identity than just a logo.

While your logo is actually the first thing customers see, branding doesn’t start with a logo. Branding starts with strategy. In fact, if you want to strategically “brand” your business, you need to understand how to market your business by creating content around your why, who you are, your message, your audience and how you’ll solve their specific challenges.

While your audience can identify your style by looking at your logo, your logo doesn’t identify your business in totality. Your logo can be sleek and modern, fancy and feminine, simple and elegant, or big and bold. A few visual elements like color, typography, and style are combined into your logo, yet…

Your logo is still not your brand…neither is your Instagram account, website, product, service, etc. Your brand involves several key pillars that make up the entire “brand identity”.

So, WHAT IS A BRAND?

Simply defined:

Your brand involves the experience you provide your audience that shapes how they perceive you. In fact, your brand is not about you. It’s about your audience’s perception of you based on your brand pillars. These pillars include your mission, values, purpose, positioning, voice, tone, look and feel.

In short, your brand includes all of the experiences, ideas, opinions, and knowledge your audience has about you, your products, services, and business. It’s how they perceive your business on an emotional level and how your product or service actually benefits them.

This is why your logo is not your brand. Realistically, no single visual can represent all of the intricacies and depth that’s in you or your business.

WHICH ONE DO YOU NEED MOST?

Don’t misunderstand: If you want to position yourself as an expert and attract the right opportunities, you do need both a strong and strategic brand and unique logo. Ultimately, it’s about how your audience perceives and feels about you and your business. This is what impacts your success the most.

It’s the same reason why Super Bowl commercials leave a lasting impression, and yet, we can hardly ever remember the company…and if you can’t remember the company or how it made you feel, you definitely can’t recognize the logo. What’s most memorable is how you feel about the commercials.

Even with a strong brand, logos can take several revolutions before it feels right. I started Skye Media Group over 7 years ago and my logo has changed many times. Not because I couldn’t design it, but because I know the depth of my business and it has been a challenge to create one identifying mark that encompasses all that me and my business represent.

In your case, wanting a logo without strategic brand development is like running before you can walk. The logo development process should come as part of a more in-depth and comprehensive strategic brand development session that examines your vision, mission, communication, target market, unique sales proposition, etc. Uncovering these facets of your business will help you create and refine your products, services, message, visuals, action, etc. to hone in on what your customers think about you.

Many businesses think that creating a logo is a fun exercise – something to do just to be seen as more professional or official. This is a mistake. When you create your logo first without strategy, you wind up trying to add intent to it later through a “rebrand”. This means more time, money, and energy is spent because now you have to reverse-engineer your brand. Most business owners consider a “rebrand” because they feel their logo (or in their mind, brand) is outdated or no longer fits, and are motivated by bigger issues and opportunities.

Instead of thinking of your brand and logo as separate entities, they work together in building a cohesive, consistent, and effective identity for you and your business. What makes a great logo is not what it looks like, but what’s behind the design; that is, what you and your business stand for.