The Art of Branding: Reflection on the "Digital Branding and Storytelling" Course

As a content consultant who's been "in the field" for the past 6 years, I was very excited to enter this course. Branding is at the core of marketing because it helps you establish the very business that you're aiming to elevate in the digital space. Going into the course, my hope was to acquire a more extensive understanding of the landscape that is a "brand". To develop a more coherent view of how a company's internal and external factors go into understanding their identity and how they should strategize their interactions with a consumer base and fellow competitors.

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Week 1: Three Questions

At the beginning of the course, we worked to establish the basics by answering 3 simple questions: Who are we? What do we do? Why does it matter?

I've always appreciated questions like these because, to provide a well-rounded answer, you must do a fair amount of introspection. Interestingly enough, my original introspection was not quite thorough enough. I was great at providing insights on what the company does, but I didn't take enough of the customer standpoint into consideration.

Week 2: Differentiation & Brand Voice

Moving into the second week, we took the opportunity to breakdown the differences between the marketing strategies of Walmart and Target. One might think that two huge retail giants being equally successful must mean that they have the same campaigns. But it's how they are both incredibly different that is interesting. Walmart's constant optimizing of customer experience based on real-time feedback seems perfect for keeping up numbers and profits. However, I found myself incredibly surprised by Target's focus on creating a custom consumer-catered product experience. Utilizing survey data, Target indicated the needs of the consumers and noted things that they wished the current catalogue of products could do, Target would then create a new brand internally that answered those needs directly. I thought this was a genius idea on their part.

Choosing a character to fit my company's brand voice was a lot simpler than I had thought. I think bringing in this personification element to the workflow helps provide an additional template or framework that I can work within. It also helps to further humanize the company, so I can sell it on a human level.

Week 3: Archetypes

When learning about the kinds of brand archetypes that a company could fit in, I was excited to learn more about how I could break down my company into components that provide better insights. In using the Kaye Putnam Quiz, I learned that Next Wave Services was "The Girl/Guy Next Door".

Much like the concept of the Girl/Guy Archetype, Next Wave Services focuses its efforts on being an extremely approachable and understanding team. When it comes to consultations with prospective clients, the sales group focuses its conversations on understanding the business and the customer who owns it. 

Week 4: Brand Strategy

Coming into the final week of the course, my knowledge of how many layers a brand has has been elevated. This does a couple of things. One it helps me understand that there are many different perspectives from within a single brand that can be utilized to engage with an audience. On the other hand, it also makes the prospect of creating a brand from scratch for another business seem pretty daunting. A brand needs to be thoroughly thought out and cultivated. Brands are never simple, even if they are marketed as such. Today's consumers are savvy and are looking for dynamic brands to draw their attention and earn their cash. I definitely enjoyed this course and will definitely be referring back to it in the future.