How to make sure your business is the brand people prefer
What if we told you that your logo is just one part of building a brand people recognise and trust? Branding expert and author Debbie O’Connor joined us on the Flying Solo podcast to explain how personality, connection and culture can help turn your business into a beloved brand.
Debbie O’Connor is the founder of White River Designs branding agency and author of Brand Magic: How to build a brand with personality. With over 20 years of experience helping entrepreneurs create popular brands that genuinely connect with their customers, she has discovered that businesses often overlook critical elements of building a brand.
“The visual side is only one element of branding; it’s not the essence of our brand. Branding is all about reputation-building,” Debbie told editor Cec Busby. “I believe a strong brand personality gives you something you can truly connect your customer to. It helps you define the language and tone you’re going to create, what kind of brand experience you want for your customers, and the type of culture you want.”
Debbie says this personality becomes the foundation for your overall branding and helps you remain consistent from the start.
“People think they need to mix things up, which often creates confusion. Staying consistent with your brand personality, core messaging, and your purpose is where you really start to create a connected brand,” she says.
What is your brand’s personality?
In her book Brand Magic, Debbie delves into the psychology of brand-building. She explains how understanding the 12 Personality Archetypes, as described by Carl Jung, can help you discover your brand’s ethos.
“Jung’s 12 archetypes are incredibly powerful because they sit in our unconscious bias,” Debbie explains. “We already know and understand these 12 different personalities or archetypes. We see them in fairy tales and the movies we watch today. This is an essential piece of the puzzle because it’s not about what you do; it’s all about how you do it. Ultimately, every hairdresser, dentist or concreter does the same thing. So, if you focus your personality simply on what you do, you push a boulder uphill.”
Debbie says a great example of the difference between your business and your brand personality can be observed in the fictional doctor portrayed by Robin Williams in the film Patch Adams.
“As a doctor, people might think that his personality is the caregiver,” she explains. “However, he uses the power of entertainment and laughter to help his patients. His brand personality is that of the entertainer, not the caregiver. What he does is caring, but his personality piece is all about being fun and light-hearted and not taking himself that seriously.
“As another example, compare Richard Branson with his company, Virgin. Branson has his own brand, which is that of the explorer. The explorer is a pioneer, a thrill-seeker. They’re doing things independently and love the thrill of the chase. However, Virgin is what we would call the rebel. Why? Because in the 1980s, when he named his business Virgin, that was very taboo. It shook up the status quo – going against the norm and being quite disruptive. As a brand, Virgin goes into different industries and does things differently. Richard Branson’s personality and brand are entirely separate from Virgin’s.
“For a small business, it’s about asking yourself, what do you want to become famous for? How do you do things that make you different to your competitors?” Debbie says.
Listen to Debbie O’Connor on the Flying Solo podcast:
The power of connection
According to Debbie, a good brand-building strategy should involve connecting with customers and clients in a more personable way rather than relying on a purely transactional relationship.
“Many business owners have realised that they have a business but don’t have a brand. The business is simply transactional, and a brand is all about connection. Once someone’s done a transaction, there’s no connection left.”
Debbie says building connections and rapport with customers can be as simple as injecting your brand’s personality into face-to-face and online customer interactions.
“Would you like to be known as fun and light-hearted? Or as a creative thinker? Personality can come in simply in how you greet someone or sign off an email,” Debbie says. “It is about asking yourself, what do we need to do to make sure that our brand connects with the customer, not just on a transactional basis? Where can we add some personality?”
One of Debbie’s favourite examples of a brand with a winning personality is the Australian sustainable toilet paper brand, Who Gives A Crap.
“It’s just toilet paper; there’s nothing amazing about it,” she explains. “However, there is something truly amazing about the brand. Firstly, the brand name is a clever double entendre – ‘who gives a crap’ about the world around us? Secondly, everything in the business is about sustainability, and they use part of their profit towards hygienic services in third-world countries. You can easily see that the business is more than simply selling toilet paper. They’ve taken something as mundane as toilet paper and turned it into a brand that connects with people and has a purpose behind it, and there’s that personality there as well. That is what makes people decide to buy toilet paper from them rather than from one of the big supermarkets.”
Culture can make or break a brand
If there’s one thing that can tear your hard-earned brand reputation apart, Debbie says it’s a lack of culture in your business. Happy staff are your best brand advocates, while unhappy staff can bring a business to its knees when they talk negatively about their experience in your company. This is why ensuring a strong and supportive team culture is so important.
“Your team is your biggest asset when it comes to your business; they can make or break it,” Debbie warns. “When you have a business imploding from the inside, your clients know about it. So, culture is a very important piece of the puzzle.
“Creating a culture in the business starts from the top. The leader is the one to set the scene and say, ‘this is how we treat each other and how we want our clients to be treated’. It’s not just an internal culture; it also becomes an external one.
“There’s no one thing that makes up a brand,” Debbie concludes. “It’s all these little elements that compound and create that brand, which is the reputation you want to give the world. That reputation is also about becoming an employer of choice, where people want to work for your company because they hear that you have a good environment and great working conditions.”
Debbie shared plenty more advice about building a solid brand reputation on the Flying Solo podcast. Listen to the full ep now!
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