Branding and marketing are mission critical to every company, yet they are two of the most widely misunderstood business activities, even within the organization. Contrary to what many think, the two are not the same. If you consider marketing as the wheel of a bicycle, then its various spokes would include everything from advertising to public relations to promotions. A mistake we see far too often is for companies to lump branding into that wheel when, in reality, branding is the bike itself.

To put it in more business-specific terms, marketing is—by its very nature—a push activity. All efforts undertaken by the marketing department are designed to push out a message to customers or push out a proposition to buy, or engage in some way. Branding, on the other hand, is all about the pull. The right brand pulls customers toward you because they resonate with what your company represents, its personality, its culture, its beliefs and its standard of excellence. In this way it is bigger than marketing as it is the driving force behind all business activity.

Branding offers your business something unique, intangible and priceless.

Unlike marketing, a brand has the luxury of being subtle. The goal of any great branding exercise or strategy is to evoke a certain emotion without being overt or giving a hard sell. If you have to spell out for the audience what you want them to feel or how you want them to act, your brand has already missed the mark. Think of some of your favorite brands – generally speaking they align with at least a part of your core values or your own personal aspirations. The brand didn’t have to tell you to buy their product, you wanted to associate with the company or the product because you saw an inherent value.

Another major difference is that branding is built on longevity. A brand is a foundation from which all company activities and decisions can flow. Marketing, on the other hand, can ebb and change to fit a myriad of initiatives or strategies. Brands are built to be permanent, and as such they take careful consideration, highly strategic thought and very purposeful action that cannot be easily undone. Just ask any organization who has had to undergo a brand overhaul—in many ways it feels like you’re having to build the business from scratch.

Finally, branding breeds loyalty. Everything your company does—from sales to marketing to product development to IT to customer service—reflects the brand. If you give a customer a good experience, they equate those feelings with your brand and suddenly you’ve turned a one time sales engagement into a lifelong, loyal advocate. Marketing, on the other hand, focuses on a more immediate goal—typically a hard sell that encourages the customer to act now. If you need a customer today, market to them. But if you need a customer for life, it’s time you focus on your brand.

At Reed Hill, we purposefully built an agency of lifelong branders. Our team was strategically designed to deliver brand excellence, and we do so by building the foundation of the brand from the various spokes on the bicycle wheel. The right design, website, collateral, advertising and public relations activities are part of the strategic tools used to design a brand experience, and our experts across the various disciplines ensure that everything a company does resonates with its brand.