5: Find Your Focus
Pick your focus and personality
Your brand can’t be everything to everyone, especially at the start.
It’s important to find your focus and let that inform all the other parts of your brand as you build it.
Here are some questions and branding exercises to get you thinking about the focus and tone of your brand.
What’s your positioning statement?
A positioning statement is one or two lines that stake your claim in the market. This isn’t necessarily something you put on your website or business card—it’s just to help you answer the right questions about your brand and aids in creating your brand’s tagline.
Your positioning statement should go something like...
We offer [PRODUCT/SERVICE] for [TARGET MARKET] to [VALUE PROPOSITION].
Unlike [THE ALTERNATIVE], we [KEY DIFFERENTIATOR].
For example: We offer water bottles for hikers to stay hydrated, while reducing their carbon footprint. Unlike other water bottle brands, we plant a tree for every bottle you buy.
Your unique value proposition Links to an external site. is the one thing you’re competing on. Find it, go in on it, and make it a part of your brand's messaging.
Alternatively, if the company you want to start has a cause at its core (e.g., if you’re starting a social enterprise Links to an external site.), you can also write this out as a mission statement that makes a clear promise to your customers or to the world.
What words would you associate with your brand?
One way to look at brand building is to imagine your brand as a person. What would he or she be like? What kind of personality would your customers be attracted to?
This will help inform your voice on social media and the tone of all your creative, both visual and written.
A fun and useful branding exercise is pitching three to five adjectives that describe the type of brand that might resonate with your audience. I compiled this list of traits to help you get started.
What metaphors or concepts describe your brand?
Thinking about your brand as a metaphor, or personifying it, can help you identify the individual qualities you want it to have.
This can be a vehicle, an animal, a celebrity, a sports team, anything—as long as it has a prominent reputation in your mind that summons the sort of vibe you want your brand to give off.
For example, if I wanted to create a brand targeting entrepreneurs, I might choose to use the raccoon as a starting point: They’re scrappy survivors who will do anything to thrive.
If your brand was an animal, what animal would it be and why is it like that animal to you?