The First Principles of Building a Brand

Look at the image below. Depending on where you are from, what you believe, and what experiences you have had, you may see nothing more than a simple symbol. But if you are Nigerian, there is a good chance that the symbol immediately reminds you of one person: Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

Image Credit: Favpng.com

What makes that interesting is that there is no photograph of him in the image. There is no name, political slogan, campaign message, party logo or presidential title. There is simply a visual symbol that has been repeatedly associated with him over a long period of time. The association has become strong enough that the symbol can function as a shortcut to the person. The State House has itself described the symbol associated with his cap as having become his "trademark."

There is another interesting layer to this. The same symbol can produce completely different emotional reactions in different Nigerians. One person may look at it with admiration, another may feel resentment, another may feel anger, while someone else may simply recognize it and move on. Those reactions can be influenced by political beliefs, personal experiences, and how people perceive Tinubu, his political career and the performance of the APC-led government. The important point here is not whether any particular reaction is right or wrong. The important point is that the symbol has accumulated meaning. It is no longer merely a shape.

That is branding.

And branding becomes much more interesting when it is considered from first principles rather than through the conventional language of logos, colour palettes, taglines and marketing campaigns.

Branding begins with association

At its most fundamental level, branding is about association. Human beings constantly use shortcuts to make sense of the world around them. We associate faces with people, sounds with places, smells with memories, colours with organizations, songs with periods of our lives and symbols with ideas. We do not consciously reconstruct every piece of information we have ever encountered whenever we recognize something familiar. The brain retrieves patterns and associations that have already been established.

A brand operates within that basic human tendency. When the same distinctive signal is repeatedly presented alongside the same person, product, organization, experience or idea, the mind begins to connect them. Eventually, the intermediary steps become unnecessary. The signal itself becomes sufficient to retrieve the association.

That is why a strong brand can sometimes be recognized before it is consciously processed. You see a particular colour combination, shape, sound, phrase or visual style and something immediately comes to mind. The association is doing the work.

This leads to the first principle of branding: you cannot simply declare an association into existence. You have to build it.

A company can say that it is innovative, trustworthy, premium, customer-centric or disruptive. A person can describe themselves as a thought leader, visionary, builder or expert. None of those descriptions automatically creates the corresponding perception. They are claims made by the sender. Branding begins when repeated experience gives other people enough evidence to form the association themselves.

Repetition turns a cue into a shortcut

One exposure rarely creates a strong brand. Repetition is what gives an association the opportunity to become familiar and eventually automatic.

Consider the Tinubu example again. The power of the cap is not that the physical object is inherently capable of communicating "Tinubu." A cap does not naturally mean Tinubu. The association exists because the visual cue has been repeatedly presented alongside him over a long period. It has appeared across different occasions, different outfits and different contexts, creating a consistent visual pattern that people can recognize even when the surrounding circumstances change.

This principle applies everywhere. A company's distinctive colour becomes recognizable because customers repeatedly encounter it. A founder becomes associated with a particular way of communicating because they communicate that way consistently. A musician becomes associated with a particular sound because they keep producing it. A footballer becomes associated with a particular celebration because they repeatedly perform it after scoring. A restaurant becomes associated with a particular experience because customers repeatedly encounter that experience.

Eventually, the brain stops treating every encounter as completely new information. It retrieves an existing association instead. This is one of the reasons consistency matters so much in branding. Consistency is not merely an aesthetic preference or something demanded by a brand guideline. It is one of the mechanisms through which memory is built.

But repetition alone is not enough

If repetition were all that mattered, every large company would automatically have a powerful brand. They do not. Something can be repeated thousands of times and remain forgettable.

The second principle is therefore distinctiveness. A brand needs something that can be recognized and remembered. That might be a visual identity, a particular tone of voice, a product experience, a way of behaving, a recurring idea, a characteristic phrase or some combination of these things. The more distinctive the cue, the easier it becomes for the mind to retrieve the association.

This is why branding is not simply about being consistent. It is about being consistently recognizable.

Imagine ten companies using the same shade of blue, the same generic sans-serif typeface, the same corporate language and the same stock photography. They may all be consistent, but they are not necessarily memorable. There is very little for the mind to use as a distinguishing signal. Distinctiveness gives repetition something to reinforce. Without distinctiveness, repetition can produce familiarity with a category. With distinctiveness, repetition can produce association with a specific entity.

Recognition is only the beginning

There is an important distinction between being recognizable and having a strong brand. A person can recognize something without having any particular feeling about it. Recognition is simply the ability to identify the thing. Branding becomes more powerful when recognition begins to carry additional meaning.

Over time, repeated associations can accumulate layers of expectation and emotion. Recognition can lead to familiarity, familiarity can influence expectation, expectation can influence experience, and experience can generate emotion. Those emotions can subsequently influence behaviour. The process is not necessarily perfectly linear, but the underlying mechanism is important because it explains why a brand can become much more than an identifier.

Return to the image again. A person may see the symbol and immediately think of Tinubu. That association may then lead them to think about the political party associated with him, particular policies, events, economic conditions, speeches, personal experiences or arguments they have encountered. Those associations may then produce an emotional response. Someone who views his political leadership positively may experience the symbol very differently from someone who strongly disapproves of it.

The symbol itself has not changed. The accumulated meaning attached to it has.

That is one of the most important things to understand about branding. A brand does not necessarily produce one universal emotional response. It creates a network of associations in people's minds, and those associations can vary considerably across different audiences.

A brand does not control the meaning people attach to it

This is probably one of the most misunderstood aspects of branding. Organizations often think of branding as something they control completely, but they do not. They can control what they put into the world. They can control their logo, messaging, product, behaviour, packaging, communication and customer experience. They cannot completely control what people make of those things.

Interpretation happens in the mind of the audience.

This is particularly obvious with political figures, but the principle applies just as strongly to businesses. A company may believe it represents innovation while customers associate it with poor service. A luxury brand may intend to communicate exclusivity while a particular market sees it as overpriced. A founder may intend to project confidence while an audience interprets the same behaviour as arrogance.

The intention belongs to the sender. The association belongs to the receiver.

That does not mean a company or individual has no influence over its brand. Quite the opposite. Consistent behaviour gives people the material from which associations are formed. But there is a fundamental difference between managing the signals you put into the world and controlling the interpretation that people ultimately construct from those signals.

This is why behaviour is part of branding

If branding were only about visual identity, changing a logo would be enough to change a brand. Clearly, it is not.

People do not experience organizations as logos. They experience products, services, employees, founders, interfaces, policies, promises, conversations and outcomes. Every interaction provides another piece of evidence from which people form or reinforce an opinion.

A company that says it values customers but repeatedly makes customers struggle has created a contradiction between its stated identity and its experienced identity. A company that communicates simplicity but builds complicated products creates another contradiction. A founder who talks constantly about discipline but repeatedly misses commitments is also creating a brand, whether intentionally or not.

Everything you repeatedly do can therefore become part of your brand.

Your product decisions can become branding. Your customer service can become branding. Your writing can become branding. Your speed can become branding. Your standards can become branding. Your mistakes can become branding. Even the way you respond when things go wrong can become branding.

People are constantly collecting evidence, whether they realize it or not.

Personal branding follows the same mechanics

Personal branding is sometimes presented as a performance in which someone deliberately constructs an online persona. There is certainly an element of presentation involved, but the deeper mechanism is much simpler. People become associated with patterns.

Someone who repeatedly writes insightful explanations can become associated with insight. Someone who repeatedly builds difficult things can become associated with execution. Someone who consistently teaches can become associated with knowledge. Someone who repeatedly communicates a particular philosophy can become associated with that philosophy. Someone who consistently dresses in a distinctive way can become associated with that visual identity.

The important word is repeatedly.

One LinkedIn post does not create a personal brand. One conference appearance does not create a personal brand. One unusual outfit does not create a personal brand. One successful product does not necessarily create a personal brand. Those things can contribute to a brand, but they do not establish a durable association on their own.

When the same signals continue appearing over months and years, people begin to recognize a pattern. Eventually, they do not need to see the entire history behind the pattern. A small cue can be enough to retrieve it.

That is when a personal brand starts becoming powerful.

Time is an ingredient

There is a reason genuine brands are difficult to manufacture overnight. Association requires memory, and memory requires exposure. Advertising, distribution and social media can accelerate exposure, but they cannot completely remove the underlying requirement that people need enough encounters to form a meaningful association.

This is why branding is fundamentally a long-term process. A company can redesign its visual identity overnight, but it cannot redesign what millions of people associate with the company overnight. A person can announce a new identity tomorrow, but the audience still has the accumulated memory of everything that came before.

Consistency over time therefore has a compounding effect. Every new encounter can reinforce an existing association, and the effect of a later encounter is not necessarily the same as the effect of the first because the later encounter is interpreted through everything that came before it. Once an association exists, subsequent experiences have something to attach themselves to.

This is part of what makes an established brand so difficult to replicate. A competitor can copy the visible elements of a brand, but it cannot instantly reproduce the accumulated history that gives those elements meaning.

The strongest brands become shorthand

At the highest level, branding turns complexity into shorthand.

Think about what happens when someone mentions a company you know well. You do not retrieve its entire corporate history from memory. You retrieve a compressed representation. Perhaps you think of its product. Perhaps you think of its customer experience. Perhaps you think of its founder. Perhaps you think of its reputation. Perhaps you think of a particular advertisement. Perhaps you simply picture its logo.

That compressed representation is extremely valuable because it allows people to make decisions without reconstructing every piece of information they have ever encountered about the entity. The brand becomes a mental shortcut.

This is one reason brands matter economically. They can reduce uncertainty. When people already have an association with something, they do not approach every interaction as if they are encountering it for the first time. They carry expectations into the next encounter.

A strong brand therefore does not merely help people recognize you. It helps them anticipate you.

The real objective is not recognition

This is where much of the conventional conversation around branding stops too early. People often say that the objective of branding is recognition, and recognition certainly matters, but recognition is only the first milestone. The deeper objective is meaningful association.

You want people to recognize something and immediately retrieve a set of expectations around it. What does this person represent? What can I expect from this company? What kind of experience will I have? What does this product stand for? What does this person consistently do? What comes to mind when I encounter this symbol?

Those associations are what give a brand its substance.

Importantly, not all associations have to be positive for a brand to be powerful. The Tinubu example makes that particularly obvious. The same visual cue can evoke admiration in one person and resentment in another, while remaining highly effective as an identifier. From a branding perspective, the interesting achievement is not that everyone feels the same thing. It is that the cue reliably causes people to think of the same entity.

Meaning can be contested while recognition remains extraordinarily strong.

So what are the first principles?

Strip away the terminology, the brand guidelines, the marketing departments and the endless conversations about fonts and colour palettes, and branding becomes surprisingly straightforward. People remember patterns, patterns emerge from repeated exposure, repeated exposure creates associations, and distinctive associations become recognizable shortcuts. As those shortcuts accumulate meaning through continued experience, they begin to influence expectations and emotions, and those expectations and emotions can influence behaviour.

That behaviour then creates new experiences, which can reinforce or weaken the existing association. Branding is therefore not a one-time activity. It is an ongoing feedback loop between what you repeatedly put into the world and what people repeatedly experience from you.

This is why branding is not something you simply create and announce. It is something you consistently cause people to experience.

Your logo is one signal. Your product is another. Your words are another. Your behaviour is another. Your standards are another. Your mistakes are another. Your response to those mistakes is another. Over enough time, these signals begin to form a pattern in other people's minds.

Eventually, people can encounter only a fragment of that pattern and still retrieve the whole.

A symbol can be enough. A phrase can be enough. A colour can be enough. A sound can be enough. A style of writing can be enough. A particular behaviour can be enough. A cap can be enough.

And when that happens, you have crossed an important threshold in branding. People no longer need you to explain who you are because they have already learned to recognize the pattern.

That is what a brand ultimately is. It is not what you say you are.

It is what you have consistently given people enough reason to remember you as.