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Introduction – What is a Brand Really?
If you’ve ever asked “what is a brand”, you’re really asking why does someone choose one company over another. Most people assume a brand is a logo, colors, website, or other design aspects. But a logo by itself cannot persuade someone to make a purchasing decision.
So what actually is a brand, and why does it influence decisions so strongly? To understand this, we need to look beyond design and into how people form perceptions, memories, and emotional associations over time.
In this article and subsequent posts, we’ll break down what a brand really is, how branding works in practice, and why companies like Starbucks create such strong customer loyalty.
Brand and the Subconscious Mind
A brand is the collection of personal emotional connections a customer has with a company. These connections are built over time through repeated experiences with products or services.
Consider Starbucks.
Figure 1 shows a summary of positive experiences from Starbucks visits, including sensory and emotional elements such as smell, atmosphere, service, and environment.
Each experience contributes to an emotional response. Over time, these responses accumulate and strengthen brand affinity.
Fig. 1 – My Starbucks feel-good experiences.
Brand Consistency is important.
A brand connections does not form instantly. It develops through persistent and consistent experiences that reinforce how customers feel about a company.
Everytime you visit your local Starbucks, you you can count on the same home-sweet-home familiarity.
This consistency is not limited to a single location. It applies across stores—whether in different cities, states, or countries. Familiarity is one of the strongest drivers of brand trust.
Brand consistency one of the foundational aspects in building a strong brand.
Fig. 2 – Starbucks Brand Consistency
Brand and the Mission Statement
Starbucks understands that branding is the intentional process of building emotional connections with customers. However, these connections are not created arbitrarily. A brand cannot simply add “feel-good” elements without direction—this would lead to inconsistency and confusion.
Brand needs a focus or a starting point, and that is derived from the company Mission Statement. You can see this very clearly with companies that have successful Brands. Starbucks has a very clear mission:
“Nurture the Human Spirit, one person at a time, one cup at a time, one community at a time.”
This mission statement acts as the foundation for every business decision, including store design, hiring, customer experience, and product consistency. It ensures that all brand experiences align with the mission of the company.
Every element is evaluated against that purpose:
- Does it support comfort and human connection? → decor, atmosphere – YES
- Does it enhance the customer experience? → coffee quality, service – YES
- Does it distract from the core experience? → rock and roll music – NO
This persistent attention to alignment is what keeps the brand consistent and recognizable across locations.
Fig. 3 – Starbucks Mission
“Nurture the Human Spirit, one person at a time, one cup at a time, one community at a time.”
So, is the Logo still important? YES!
So what is the significance of a logo in branding?
A logo by itself cannot create personal connections with a company. However, it becomes the symbol that represents any connections that currently exists.
These connections must be attached to something tangible and easy to recognize. This can be a brand name, such as Starbucks, or a visual symbol like a logo.
The same can be said about the website, color pallette or other design aspects – they don’t create emotional connections, but they represent them.
Fig. 4 – Logo is the placeholder
How a Logo works at Starbucks!
When a customer has a positive experience—such as enjoying a coffee and thinking “Nice!”—the Starbucks logo on the cup is right in front of them, and that is where the association takes place.
The experience and the visual symbol become linked in memory at the same time.
The next time they see a Starbucks logo from down the street, the colors and shapes trigger those same “Nice” feelings. It creates an immediate emotional recall and subtly draws them back in for another cup.
In this way, the logo does not create brand awareness. It activates it through memory and emotional association.
Understanding the functional difference between brand vs logo is a fundamental first-step in Branding.
Fig. 5 – Emotion Logo connection
Photo by Omar Lopez (Unsplash)
A Case Study in Successfuly Building a Brand
I consulted with a small-mid sized Taiwan company which had a line of scientific light meters for various professional uses. Light meters are precision instruments mostly dominated by large Japanese Companies like Konica Minolta and Seconic.
Sizing up the competition.
The first thing I noticed was that Konica and Seconic websites had traditional instrumentation websites with pages containing arrays of products and specifications. I noticed these companies lacked educational materials on light meter application and light science. I suppose they assumed that people buying these meters already knew what they were buying and why. But this became our chance to distinguish ourselves.
Determining the Mission Statement
Most Taiwan companies don’t really have Mission Statements as was the case with my client – The first thing we did, was to come up with a meaningful one that distinguished ourselves from the big brands.
Become the “Light Meter Authority” by helping others explore, learn and discover the world of light and color.
This would also be our Brand focus to become the Teachers of Light and Color for the market.
Building the Brand and Mission into the Touchpoints
This company already had a product line of good quality light meters. Though the technology was hi-tech instrumentation in a niche market, the specs and features were not that different than the competition.
So we had to compete in other respects. We focused on creating touchpoints focused on education.
First we wrote handbooks on Light Science and Light Meter applications – in total we wrote 4 extensive handbooks that were 50 to 150 pages each. These handbooks were well-received and according to the CEO became the “Bibles” of the industry.
Using Digital Marketing to proliferate the Brand.
We began to think of ways to distribute these handbooks through our website, in return for emails and permission to send notifications.
We then began writing educational articles that we posted to our website, and used our expanding email list to deliver notifications to get our customers to read and learn more about light.
We also posted these articles to social media sites like Linkedin.
We wrote one to two articles per month, which took effort then, but is now aided by AI.
Monitoring of our Branding Efforts
We took advantage of the vast resources on the internet to gauge our progress by the numbers. We used apps like Google Analytics, Ubersuggest and Mailchimp to help us monitor and track our efforts.
The Results
The realization was that, aside from scientists and academics, there were a lot of people and businesses that could make use of light meters, if they only understood the science and application better.
After we wrote the handbooks, we started our Digital Markeing efforts, and within 6 months we quadrupled our email lists, doubled website visitors, and increased meter sales by 18%. The CEO said that our “Authority” was most definitely enhanced and that Digital Marketing simply works!
It shows that building a brand is no quick fix – but with strategy, effort and time, anyone can do it..
This is an example of how even small companies can make an impact in markets dominated by big brands. They do this by distinguishing themselves through their unique mission which builds Brand trust by making a difference for the customer, that no one else is doing …
“Helping others explore, learn and discover the world of light and color.”
Where the Brand lies in your Brain.
If you ask any Starbucks customer why they prefer it, they are unlikely to list a detailed set of reasons. Most responses are simple and instinctive, such as “I like the environment” or “I like their Frappuccinos.”
The reason for this is that most brand-related experiences are emotional associations in the subconscious mind, in regions such as the hippocampus, where memory and emotion are processed.
Although we are not always aware of these memories, they remain active and influence how we make conscious decisions.
Fig. 6 – Hippocampus – Emotions and Memory
Brain and Hippocampus image by Danielsabinasz (edited) (link). CC Share Alike 4.0
The Gut Feeling
This is what creates the “gut feeling” described by Marty Neumeier in The Brand Gap—an intuitive response formed from accumulated experience rather than deliberate, conscious analysis.
This matters because marketing is more effective when it aligns with subconscious associations rather than purely logical arguments, a point also explored by Leslie Zane in The Power of Instinct.
Research in the Journal of Brand Management supports this idea, noting that much of human behavior is influenced by factors outside conscious awareness.
Fig. 7 – The Brand Gap by Marty Neumeier
Why Understanding Brand Matters for Marketers
Design or logo is often what comes to mind when people think of branding. However, these are only the surface level of what a brand truly is.
A brand is the collection of emotional associations or personal connections customers establish with a company over time. Branding is the process of intentionally shaping those connections through consistent feel-good experiences.
These experiences are then anchored to a visual symbol, such as a logo, allowing customers to quickly recognize and recall the emotional meaning associated with a company.
Although these connections are not always part of our conscious awareness, they strongly influence the decisions we make when purchasing products.
Understanding this process is the key to understanding what a brand really is and how it works.
In the next section we reveal a strategy to help you start to formulate your brand – “What is Brand? Secrets Revealed II“
Fig. 8 – Tip of the Iceberg
References:
Three laws of branding: Neuroscientific foundations of effective brand building. Journal of Brand Management (Dec 28, 2007).
The Brand Gap – How to Bridge the Distance Between Business Strategy and Design – Marty Neumeier (Copyright 2006)
The Power of Instinct – The New Rules of Persuasion in Business and Life – Leslie Zane (Copyright 2024)
Subliminal – HowYour Unconscious Mind Rules Behavior – Leanard Mlodinow (Feb 12, 2017)
If you are looking to boost your Brand and Marketing efforts please contact us.
Q and A
What is a brand?
A brand is the collection of emotional and psychological associations people form with a company over time. These associations are built through repeated experiences and influence how customers feel about and choose a business.
What is the difference between a brand and a logo?
A brand is the overall perception and emotional meaning people associate with a company. A logo is a visual symbol that represents that brand. The logo does not create the brand—it helps trigger recognition of existing brand associations.
What is branding?
Branding is the process of intentionally shaping how people perceive a company. It involves creating consistent experiences across multiple senses, such as sight, sound, taste, and smell, to build emotional associations over time.
Why is branding important?
Branding is important because it influences how customers feel about a company and affects their purchasing decisions. Strong branding builds trust, recognition, and emotional connection, which increases customer loyalty.
How is a brand created?
A brand is created through repeated customer experiences. Every interaction with a company contributes to emotional associations that build over time and become stored in memory, shaping overall perception.
What is brand meaning?
Brand meaning refers to the emotional and psychological significance people attach to a company. It is formed through personal experiences and determines how a brand is perceived beyond its products or services.
Why do customers develop “gut feelings” about brands?
Customers develop “gut feelings” because many brand associations are stored in subconscious memory. These emotional impressions influence decisions without requiring conscious analysis, leading to intuitive preferences.
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