I build brands the way a sculptor builds form—structurally, intentionally and from the inside out.
That probably has something to do with the fact that I was an artist before I became a brand strategist. I studied painting and sculpture and spent the early part of my career exhibiting my work before moving into corporate roles as an art director and communications director.
Sculpture taught me a lot. Most importantly, it taught me that you can make the outside exquisite and beautiful, but if the underlying structure isn’t sound, you will have a problem.
I see businesses make this mistake all the time. They focus on making things aesthetically pleasing—a pretty face for the business—whether that is the logo, the website, collateral or some other customer touchpoint, without building the structure or brand foundation underneath.
And hey, technology has made it incredibly easy to produce more—loads more—at wicked speed. If a business is unclear about who it is, why someone should choose it and what it wants to be known for, AI will only multiply that confusion.
I often describe this using a wall of speakers. Imagine every speaker is tuned to a different station. All you can hear is noise.
Now tune them all to the same station and you hear every single word.
Think of those speakers as employees talking to customers on behalf of the company and you can see how murky communications become with no clear and consistent message.
When I left corporate life and started my own firm, I began to see this same issue inside businesses. When the structure isn’t clear, employees interpret the company in their own words. Each department creates its own way of explaining the business, while leadership assumes everyone understands what makes the company unique. There is no single message amplified throughout the organization and the marketplace.
This is where brand becomes much bigger than marketing. A strong brand gives a business clarity around who it is, what makes it different and what brand promise people should consistently experience from it.
Leadership then has a powerful lens for decision-making. Employees understand how to deliver the promise in their individual roles, and marketing is equipped with a creative brief that starts every communication. Customers recognize the messaging and are now armed with the words to repeat to others, adding another speaker tuned to the same station, if you will.
This consistency builds trust, the most valuable thing a business can have.
What I’ve observed is that small and mid-sized businesses tend to invest in brand too late or too lightly. They build what they know to build, like the logo, website and marketing material. They are often unaware of the strategic foundation underneath that still needs to be built.
Brand foundation work answers questions like:
- What do we stand for?
- What do we do differently?
- Why should someone choose us?
- What promise are we making?
- How will our people deliver it?
Those answers become part of the infrastructure inside the business. When the brand foundation is strong, everyone is aligned around a singular promise and rowing in the same direction. Communication gets easier. People, processes and systems work together, and voilà, the business grows.
As with sculpture, the strength of what people see and experience depends on the structure the brand was built on.
Read more insight from Jennifer on Substack.
