Marketing vs. brand—made easy

Brand is usually associated with the marketing world. For some the definition of brand means your logo or logo type. Today brand has come to encompass much more than marketing to include your product or service, the quality you provide, how you treat your customers and the total experience provided by your company. It goes across all business functions and is determined by your employees, customers, suppliers and stakeholders.

Effective marketing activities are key in developing your brand but they are not the same as your brand. Marketing activities are things you do, brand is how you or your products are known or perceived in the marketplace. I’m always amused when someone says “We do branding” – to me branding is something you do with a piece of hot iron to the backside of a cow. Remember, others tell you what your brand is.

While working with my Artrepreneurship students at the Center For Innovation, I found that more often than not that a good visual can explain a concept much better than pages of text. If you understand what brand is then the strategies behind your marketing activities become much clearer.

I ran across a great visual to explain marketing versus brand. I have also seen it in text form and decided to modify it for people in the creative sector. I first started with free clip art to create the visual before I stopped and thought to myself, “What in the heck are you doing?” (See my article Support your local creative enterprises) .

I enlisted the help of Brandon Roth, one of my talented students, to create the graphics. He is a young and talented entrepreneur who runs a graphics design studio while pursuing a degree in fine art. (You can find out more about him on his webpage Rothworks).

Okay, here it is. I hope it explains the difference between marketing and brand, makes you smile and say, “Now I get it!”

I look forward to having you as a regular reader, and if you have some comments or ideas, please drop me a line.
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