Your Brand is Who You Are. Not What You Do.

Who you are and what you do are two different things.

Companies lose sight of this all the time in their branding. What they do becomes who they are and there’s no anchor, no identity beyond their services or products.

Your core values are an essential part of your brand, whether we’re talking about a person, employee, team, or company. It’s who you are in the good times — and bad.

This is so important because who you are ultimately fuels what you do and how well you do it.

So many of us had our lives turned upside down these past few weeks. Professionally, personally, all of it.

Now we find out who we are because what we do was taken from us — temporarily at least.

Some companies and people have made it clear who they really are by what they’ve done and said and how they treated people. That’s their brand now and for some it’s not good.

Some people have made it clear who they are by trying to help people — often complete strangers — find jobs or offer support in other ways such as references. They’re affirming their personal brand.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately as I am one of the tens of thousands who have lost their jobs in the DOGE layoffs. As I’m looking around for a place to land, I don’t want to lose site of who I am as I look to who I’ll work for and just settle without the company’s values aligning with mine.

So who am I? Just over 10 years ago I made a career switch from newspaper reporter. I started looking around for a consulting job and researched companies.

I found a company whose brand appealed to me. Not a big company, not one anyone would recognize. But three words I found on their website stood out to me as they described their purpose and values: “We over me.”

It appealed to one of my core values: teamwork. Values that helped shaped me a long time ago on cross country teams at Bend High School in Oregon. We worked hard. We cheered each other on. We picked each other up when one of us was having an off day.

We chose we over me and it helped us win a state title. I’ve never forgotten those lessons.

We over me is also a central tenet of my Christian faith. To serve. To help. To uplift.

I build. I affirm and elevate and hope to make things better when I leave them than when I found them. And I want people to join me.

We over me. That’s a brand and an identity.

How does your brand connect with your community? What's your why?

Your company’s brand is how you connect with your community. And communities you want to connect with.

Brand and culture are closely connected. It’s simple then: Good brands connect culture with community.

Think of Patagonia. Apple. Porsche. Rolex. Amazon.

They all have such a strong brand because they connect so well with their community.

These are all thoughts my friend and branding and marketing guru/mentor Josh Rowe said to me recently. Josh is marketing director at Harvard Innovation Labs, and formerly worked in marketing at Nike and New Balance.

I called him because I was really curious about how brands connect with audiences.

He told me a brand reflects what the community expects. Great brands know what their community wants.

Maybe their community wants low environmental impact. It might be technological innovation. I mean, what will you stand in a line for five hours for? For some people it’s an iPhone.

A brand’s community may want quality. Or performance.

Longevity. Sustainability. Luxury.

Josh talked about Porsche, for example. He said “Porsche” and these words popped into my head: Performance. Sleek. Engineering. Speed.

Or a Swiss watch. You expect it to last forever.

Then he asked me a question.

“You know who might be the strongest brand in America right now?”

I said I didn’t know.

“Trump.”

I wasn’t expecting that.

“They’re all in,” he said. “So much so that they are driving a Biden bus off the highway in Texas.”

 I really wasn’t expecting that. But it’s true. Sadly?

Anyway, good brands do a great job connecting their culture with their community. Foundering brands don’t do that.

They just give you a product. There’s no identity. No affinity. No connection. Hello Reebok, Kmart or Oldsmobile.

Brands need to create ambassadors to survive. Your product then, is a medium to connect your culture to a community, often through ambassadors.

Good companies have brand values. What are your brand values? How do you deliver them to that customer base or community?

Your brand is a mirror, reflecting you, your culture and your values.

This is why it’s so important for companies and organizations to establish their brand values.

Here’s a link from Ogilvy I found super valuable to help you with that: https://www.ogilvy.com/ideas/whats-big-ideal

Establishing brand values is essential. It can’t be a shotgun approach.

Josh said something that sticks with me. He quoted marketing guru Simon Sinek: It’s all about the why, not the what.

People connect with the why.

What’s your brand’s why?