The Difference Between Branding and Brand Identity

of branding, but today we're going to go one step deeper on that and really explain the difference between branding and brand identity. Jason Beyer from Crowdspring is here today. He is going to explain all of this to us so that we have a much better understanding of the difference between these things. And he's the head of marketing and partnerships at Crowdspring, which is a tool that you can use actually to create simple custom designs. So it's exciting to have you here, Jason. To talk about branding. I know we've already had a quick discussion, but now for our audience, really dig into this.

Absolutely. No, it's exciting. It's that secret sauce really that sets you apart.

So exactly what is, in your estimation, again, the definition, right? What is the definition of branding as you see it over there at Crowdspring?

Absolutely. It's, it's— we try and focus on the simplest definition here, and it's literally everything that how a customer interacts with your company, right? Every way a customer interacts or a client interacts with your company, that's branding, right? And so to give some concrete examples, that is how your customer— your voicemail when somebody calls you. This is your, your return policy. This is how quickly you return voicemails. This is your tone in emails. This is, this is your brand, right? And so everybody has one. I think a lot of times when we say brand, we think about Amazon and Nike and Starbucks and these large corporations, whereas we as individuals have brands, we as small companies have brands, right? And so we have to think about this. It's every interaction somebody has is part of this brand. And then the brand identity is a subset of branding. And the brand identity is everything visual about your company. And so this is the, the font that you use on your website. This is the colors that you use. These are the, the lines, you know, do you use harsh angles or is it a little bit more curved? All of this impacts how somebody perceives your company. Right. And so you can't have one without the other. Right. A lot of times we'll hear, well, which one's more important? You know, the brand identity, the visual or the actual brand that you're cultivating in the minds of the consumers? And it's— you can't answer that question. They're both important. The brand is taking place whether or not you're involved in the conversation as the business owner or not. People are developing a perception of your company. And this is important because we're trying to guide our customers. You know, it's It's hard to think about, but Nike can't tell us what to think about their company. They can guide us, though. They can tell us, you know, we're for athletes, we're for the everyday person, we produce premium wear, right? They can give us the talking points, but they can't tell us, you know, you have to know this about us and this is who we are and you must say, you know, these talking points. So think about that with us as, as small business owners or single-person shops are trying to grow and scale. People out there, our clients, our customers, our future customers, our prospects, they have a perception of our company and it's up to us to try to guide that. And we do that with branding. You know, we'll change our voicemail so that it sounds more on brand. It sounds more like what we want it to appear, how we want our company to appear. And we'll also change the visuals and make those changes. Does that make sense?

Yeah. And so what I hear you say is that branding is really about your reputation, but at the same time, you don't necessarily have full control over how people are perceiving you. But there are things that you can do to help move people in a specific direction toward what you want that reputation to be about you.

Right.

But you don't have full control over it because it's how other people perceive you in the marketplace based on all of the different touchpoints that you have indicated. And some of those touchpoints are really interesting. It's the voicemail message. It's your email signature. You know, it's all of the things, all the different touchpoints, which I think we don't really fully think about. We think about brand as the fun sexy part, right? It's the colors, it's the font, it's the design aspect of it. I'd love for you to share what is the right order, because both of them go hand in hand. But what is the right order in which to attack the brand versus the brand identity?

Absolutely. So, so the brand identity is stemming from the brand, right? Because you have to understand who's my audience. Why are they choosing me? Why are they not choosing a competitor? Right. And so, you know, one thing that drives me crazy sometimes is when you see, you know, a single person shop, a single coach or consultant, is they try to appear larger than they are. Right. They use the big Fortune 500 language. You know, we believe in synergy, you know, over here at, you know, our company. And so they're trying to create this perception, this brand that they're larger than the one-person shop. However, it's very quick for the consumer to see through that, right? To say, okay, it's obvious it's just you. I go to your LinkedIn and there's only one employee. You know, I go to your about page and, you know, it's just, it's just you, right? And so there's this disconnect between the brand and the perception that you're trying to show that is false, right? And so now there's doubt. Why are you trying to be bigger than you are? Do you not have any clients? We'd never want to create this type of doubt. And so we want to know why people choose us and then embrace that. Right. There's, there's strength and power in the consumer, the customer being able to talk directly to the owner in a one-person company that you don't get with a Fortune 500 company where, you know, you have to talk to business development reps before you can talk to account managers before, you know, you can keep moving up the ladder. And so you start with the brand, you start understanding You know, who are my— who's my audience? Um, if, if I'm taking any client at this stage in my business, you know, which ones are the ones I want to focus on? Which ones cause the least problem, pay on time, pay the most money, they're the most profitable, they're the most fun to work with? So if you're working with a lot of clients and you're just trying to take anybody that's breathing, you want to start to understand who's, who's the best, and then what do they all have in common?, right? Are they— do they share a certain geography? They share a certain problem, you know, are they, you know, certain life changes? Are they buying a home for the first time? Are they a first-time mom? Are they military veterans, right? These are all different little segments. And once you understand that, then the brand identity becomes a much smoother process from the branding process because you understand who you're talking to. And when you understand who you're talking to, you know, you know, should I use harsh angles and lines or should I have more curves and flow within to make it feel a little bit more delicate or fun? Should I be fun or serious in my colors and in my voice? You know, the tone that I'm using on the website. Colors play a huge role. We process imagery thousands of times faster than text.. And so we want to know, are we sending the right signal with this color? Right. If we're trying to create trust or if we're trying to create affluence, a feeling of affluence, we want to know which color palette to use.

Jason, I want to ask you about timing, because a lot of early stage growing entrepreneurs might not necessarily have the clarity yet on who their ideal target market is that they're in the process of figuring that out. Is it better to hold off on the design process as you discover who your ideal client is? Or is it better to, again, using a tool maybe like Crowdspring, right, where you can get some design elements made or some brand identity and do that brand piece first and understand, okay, well, this is where I'm at at this stage. I'm gonna just do the best I can with who it is that I think I'm serving. And then as things become more clear, and that could be year to year to year where you do almost like a reassessment or a rebranding of what you originally started with. Do you know what I mean?

Correct. Correct. You don't want— assuming, you know, you know, assuming you know what service you're selling and you know generally who it's going to, you might not know the nuance, right? You might not know the specifics about this audience, but you know what you're selling. You know likely who's going to buy it, you know likely their position at the companies and so forth. It's best to start with a strong custom brand and then refresh it because you don't want to have any doubt about why this might not have worked out, right? You want to put your best foot forward and say, okay, we attacked this market, we did it correctly, we had a strong brand and it didn't work out. Or hopefully it did work out and now we can keep iterating on that. But brands refresh themselves. This is not, this is not uncommon. We see this with large companies do this every several years where they make small changes. It's amazing to think, you know, how outdated some brands look, you know, decades later. And we look back and say, well, at the time it looked fine, right? It didn't look, didn't look out of place. But now we go back and look at old you know, Yahoo, or I'm trying to think of some, some consumer brands that are, that are a little bit more visible.

Well, you know what? I actually, I saw one recently, you know, Angie's List.

Yeah, exactly.

They just did a recent rebrand where I think now that's just called Angie.

Right.

And they refreshed it. And now to look back, I think, on what they had been using for, I don't even know, 15, 20 years. It seems so antiquated now. But, and you look at what they're doing now and you go, oh, okay, that makes sense for today. That may be an example of what I wanted.

One example. That's a perfect example because that's what I wanted to drive home is that, you know, when they, when they started, they were running a very successful company under the old brand. Right. But they just make adjustments to that. And so I definitely recommend, look, this doesn't have to be expensive. You know, Crowdspring has created a platform which $300 for a logo. This is not going to break the bank, but it's going to show your consumers. You don't want to show those initial customers that you have a sloppy presence. You don't want to create doubt that you're anything less than a professional that knows what they're doing in this industry.

Yeah, I think a lot of— well, this is really helpful because I think it helps paint a picture of the importance of both sides of this. The brand, meaning the brand values, who you are, what you're about, and then the brand identity follows suit in terms of the the pretty design aspect of how, you know, you represent that in the marketplace and that refreshing it is part of the process and there's nothing wrong with revisiting that every so often. What do you think are some of the biggest mistakes that you are seeing as you work? I think Crowdspring has worked with over like 65,000 different nonprofits and agencies and businesses, but what are some of the common mistakes that you're seeing people making as they develop their, or set out to develop their brand and their reputation online?

One is waiting too long to start having this process. You know, most of us get into a business, you know, because we enjoy, you know, what we're doing. You know, we enjoy that service and we're creating a job. We're not necessarily thinking about creating a brand. You know, when you create a brand, you're thinking about something you can sell, you know, or something that's going to be very large. And a lot of times we're just creating, we're creating a job. And that's fine. But you wanna make sure that you can charge a premium for your services. And the way you do that is by creating a strong, you know, brand and a strong visual identity. And a lot of people, what they do is outside of waiting too long to start having this conversation is they'll look to try to save some money, right? And so they're looking for free generators that, you know, have pretty colors that, that, you know, mash things together, or they're going with their sister's cousin's best friend who, you know, knows design and is gonna cut them a deal. The problem with all these scenarios is that a lot of times they're not very custom. They're not meant for you. And the problem with a generic logo is almost as bad as not having a logo, right? Because what is a logo? Why have one at all? Like what, I know we need one for Facebook in the avatar section and, you know, we need one when we create a company profile somewhere and it asks for our logo. But outside of that, Why have a logo? And the answer is it's a shorthand for your brand. It's a very quick and succinct way to communicate thousands of times faster than your elevator pitch, what you do and who you're for. Right. And if your logo's generic, it's not answering those questions. It's, it's not telling somebody this is for me. Right. Instead, it's saying this is for anybody that, you know, is in this industry. Right. This is for anybody that's running a consulting firm or a coffee shop. I mean, think of an example like that. A coffee shop that uses some generic imagery like a coffee mug, right? A realtor that uses the— you can cringe and picture all of the visuals like the keys, you know, that they use. It's not speaking to them and their unique solution in the market, right? And so having a custom logo, again, doesn't have to be expensive, a couple hundred dollars. But it allows you to be able to communicate specifically to your audience in a way that something generic just cannot do.

It speaks also, I think, to the quality and the skill set of a designer themselves, right? It's the actual process of being able to figure out, okay, here's what we're trying to say and how am I going to say that through a shape, you know, a logo design, so to speak. And You know, I think about some of the, you know, the logos and the designs that we often see with some of the big brands. I mean, they're often like really smart. You know, I just think about like FedEx, for example. Right. You know, we have FedEx and if you really look at FedEx and look at the logo, it looks like FedEx, but there's actually an arrow in there. You know, you can see these different nuance things that once you see it, you see it.

Very memorable.

Exactly. But it takes a skilled designer to be able to think that through and incorporate those designs within you know, what it is they're creating. But I'd love for you to speak to the quality of designers and the skill set that's required to really be able to interpret that and make a visual identity that actually means something.

Absolutely. The goal is not for the business owner to give creative direction. The goal of the business owner is to say, look, I understand the business. I understand the market better than you as a designer. I understand what we're trying to do. I understand who we're trying to sell to and why they're choosing us. As opposed to somebody else. That's the role of a business owner in this, in this relationship of brand identity. The role of the designer, they're a skilled designer, and this is why at Crowdspring we vet all of our designers manually to come onto the platform. This isn't like Upwork or God forbid Fiverr where just anybody can come and start submitting designs, right? It's a curated group because what we want of our designers, of any good designer, is to go to the business owner and say, okay, um, you know, tell me about your market, tell me about who you serve, tell me about why you're different. And then as a designer, I will tell you what's the best colors, I will tell you what's the best shape, and, and invite you into that process to give feedback, right? And so what we do is you get dozens of different custom designs back. Think about that, dozens of custom designs. And then as a business owner, you're able to say, wow, I never thought about this style. I never thought about this direction, or I would love to merge these two different directions or elements together. But we're not asking our business owners to design the brand. We're asking them for their knowledge in their industry. And then we're telling our designers, you know, use this to be able to create, you know, strong imagery that makes sense today, that follows today's best practices, and that's what's critical. There's a lot of tools that make designing easy, right? So I use Canva, but it does not make me a designer, right? So the do-it-yourself tools can be helpful for some areas where you just need to slap together a couple of things for a Facebook post and you need it to look okay. But when you get into some of the more nuanced elements like your brand identity, you know, your core brand identity is your logo. That's the foundation. You don't want to try and design this yourself. You're going to spend a lot more time and you're going to get something that's subpar compared to somebody who's actually studied this.

I, I love Canva too. I mean, I use it, I recommend it. It is great for putting together, you know, some, some elements that you might need for a social post or something of that nature. But where I think that what you're speaking to is the brand identity. If you have some idea of what those assets are, or have created those assets that couldn't you integrate that in and use Canva as a tool by which to create new projects or new artwork based upon the work that's been done with the brand identity rather than using Canva to in and of itself create it from the start without having that knowledge base of what you just described, these seasoned, vetted, creators and designers who understand how to make that come to life.

Canva becomes a lot easier to work with if you know your colors, you know your font, you know whether or not you use hard angles or soft shapes. It becomes much simpler to create on-brand imagery. And why, why do we care if it's on brand and it all looks the same? It's hard to sell to a prospect, right? We've got to communicate with them maybe dozens of times and we're going to be doing, you know, social posts and emails and postcards and flyers and all of these different ideas. We want them all to tie together, right? We want somebody to see one element and think of our brand and then see the other element somewhere else and still think of our brand. We don't want them to have to work to say, wait a minute, is this the same, the same company? We want to be very obvious that, that all of this belongs under the same company.

Yeah, I agree. No, that's great, Jason. Thank you so much for the, for this. This is really helpful. And I did show the website on the screen. I'll show it again, but Tell us a little bit more about Crowdspring and how people can get in touch and learn more about what you do.

Yeah, absolutely. We talked a little bit about it. The fact that you're getting dozens of different custom designs. We have 33 categories of branding and design. So everything from naming a business or a product to creating your core brand identity like a logo, or maybe some of the marketing materials like t-shirts and, and flyers and postcards and presentations. All of these can be done. Uh, we can work within Canva. So, so if you want to work, uh, and have Canva, we can customize those designs as well. There's a 100% money-back guarantee, literally everything, uh, credit card processing fees. I mean, so it's, it's, uh, no risk to getting started. It's affordable, uh, $300. And the best way, if you want something for free, uh, we do a free custom brand review. And so this is our brand identity grading service. It provides a 10-page custom report, all completely free. It's done by a human. We're looking specifically at your brand. We give you both a grade out of 100 and provide areas that we think could be improved, right? So we'll be looking at, you know, the colors and the font selections and other areas of your brand.

That's awesome. And that can be all accessed through your website, correct?

It can. And I'll provide you a link for the Brand Identity Grader or reach out directly if you need to speak to me. It's jason@crowdspring.com.

Fantastic. Last thing. What is a tip, tool, tactic, or technique? It could be related to branding or unrelated. Something that's really working for you to market yourself, Jason, or to market CrowdSpring. What is something that's really, you know, above and beyond really working for you these days to market?

I think being genuine, right? Being genuine with, with, you know, things like outreach. I mean, you think of like how, how, you know, we got together and, you know, it's really just remembering that the person on the other side of an email or LinkedIn message is a human. They've got struggles, they've got challenges, they've got kids and jobs and hobbies. And, you know, life is hectic. And I think a lot of times we just look at people on the other side as a prospect or a client. Right. And so remember that, you know, you're speaking to other humans with the same concerns and worries and fears and hopes that you have. And I think when we can be genuine and lead with, you know, education, and which is what we do at Crowdspring, we try and, you know, do things like this where, where we're outreach and, and talking about branding and trying to make it simpler, you know, leading with education, being genuine. And I think that's, uh, that's been very helpful to realize.

Yeah, that's fantastic. I think that's, that's what we need more of, I think, as well. So that's, that's great. Thank you so much for coming on Cash In On Camera today and sharing your tips on branding versus brand identity. I think we all have learned a lot, and I'm sure we're going to continue our conversations. I have a feeling.

Perfect.

All right, thank you so much, Jason.

Thanks. Bye-bye.