Brand = Purpose + Need, But How Do You Discover Them?
Written by Ashley DeCarli
(2 min read)
Building a brand — one with the power to unlock business potential — starts long before color, design and taglines are on the table. It begins with discovery. You must search your business inside and out to unearth insights that will reveal the unique reason why customers should choose you. Once you have found it, you are then ready to build an identity around it. To get there, we recommend you start by exploring your business and brand in terms of their basic reasons for existence.
Building a brand — one with the power to unlock business potential — starts long before color, design and taglines are on the table. It begins with discovery.
A business, although it has a number of meaningful roles, exists for one reason beyond profit. A business is created to solve a problem — to fill an unmet need, to disrupt what’s long outdated or to simply improve upon what’s been done before. A fundamental problem-solution dynamic is the real driver behind every business. When you explore this dynamic at a deeper level, you discover the core belief and passion that lies well beneath the business surface. It is through the problem that business purpose is found and profit is made possible.
And as for brand, it exists to get people to care — plain and simple. It is what helps customers understand if and how your business fits in their life. Care and understanding are only achieved when a brand taps into an emotional territory. When it is built on a customer need that’s rooted in both function and feeling. Feeling is not found on the surface; it requires exploration beyond the obvious. But when you keep digging, you will strike an emotion and discover the need that makes people care.
From this “existence exploration” emerges the two most important elements in brand building, business purpose and customer need.
From this “existence exploration” emerges the two most important elements in brand building — business purpose and customer need. Their power lies in their emotive qualities, because emotion, not ration and logic, is the dominant force driving decision-making. Yes, factors such as price and convenience come into play, but they are not unique attributes nor do they invoke loyalty and evangelism. When you take purpose and need, and create a unique bond between them, you marry your business heart with that of your consumers’. You create a true connection and lasting reason for customers to choose you.
