RE: Why is branding important? An in-depth look into Branding
Excellent article. You, @malicered, clearly know your stuff.
I wonder if you've discussed this in prior blogs (this is the first blog of yours I've read), but I have noticed the conspicuous absence of the value of Story. That is to say that User Experience, Branding Strategy, Marketing and Advertisement, etc. all revolve around and define the Brand, yes. Yet what the Brand actually does is convey a story to the audience.
According to Joseph Campbell, it is our stories, both individual and social, that define our lives. It's what we tell people when we seek to connect to one another, and it's what we tell ourselves when we are trying to figure out what to do in any given situation. It's the ethos a community or a nation is built around. Our values, beliefs, aspirations; all that jazz.
I think any Brand's job is to convey the story of a particular group (a company or entrepreneur, let's say) through various modes of communication (visual, textual, audible, textile), with the intent of creating value in their audience's lives by providing meaningful or practical content, be it a service or a product. Once the audience believes the Brand is valuable (and in order for it to be so it must resonate in some capacity with the personal story of each individual of their audience), only then will people be willing to pay or trade the company behind the Brand for what they have to offer.
I would love to read your perspective on that.
Wow, thank you @greateasternsun, pretty humbled by your post.
I don't have any formal education in branding or marketing, just a bunch of experience.
I think that the word Story can be interchanged with Goal, or plan. This may be a term in actual brand theory that you're referring to, but to me, the story, goal or plan, is situational to what the brand is trying to achieve. It is the X that is set by what is trying to be achieved by the entity.
Are you a company that just developed a programing language that is really easy to use and beginner friendly? Then X is what will reach your target audience. In this case, you're probably wanting your interfaces to be minimal, your design modern, your user experience should have a goal conveying the feelings of simple, responsive and intuitive.
In my experience, X should always come down to what is going to pull the interest of the most logical audience with the entity and it's brand.
Now if you wanted to incorporate more into a brand, not just what is going to work the best with the target audience. Then history of the entity can come into play, and be used to leverage a deeper meaning. This is something that Microsoft did with their brand, and it's definitely a good way to do things, especially if you're transitioning to modern practices.
This is, of course my perspective. I hope that is what you wanted to see!