Brand Vs. Image: What’s The Difference, Anyway?

Because you can read, you know what this post’s about. What you don’t know is that it’s a special post. This week, I’m going to do exactly what I’ve been doing every other week (read: snark and call it marketing advice) but we’re breaking it up because I’m crazy like that. All of my examples this week are going to feature Erin from Durtbagz. Why? Well, because she rocks. And I really wanted some of her bagz. So I bribed her. Or maybe she bribed me. Doesn’t matter. My point(s)? One, you’ll see some Erin for the next few days. Two, I accept bribes. Keep that in mind. Moving on.

The other day, we talked about branding. Some people left stuff in comments and other people emailed me to indicate that they didn’t understand the difference between branding and image. I could come up with my own topic or I could just give the people what they want. Therefore, I give you…

Brand Vs. Image

Let’s keep the cow analogy and repeat from the other day:

“Conventionally, brands were used to identify cattle. They did not say the cow was a good cow or a bad cow. They did not convey the temperament of the cow. They just identified the cow.”

I’m going to add something to what I drunkenly wrote the other day. Brands are permanent. When a cow has “Joe The Tree-Hugging Vegan Farmer” on her ass, it’s there forever.

Therefore, your home business brand (whether it’s the flesh-searing kind or the mind-searing kind) can really be anything. It honestly doesn’t matter that much. You want to take the lower-case letter “Z”, put it in 72-point type, and plaster it from here to lunch, fine. Just make sure that everyone in your market sees that Z and thinks of you. Forever.

A brand represents your existence, but does not represent your qualities.

Image, however, has the added bonus responsibility of connoting something. It can represent you, but that’s not its primary role. Image says something about who you are, what you do, and how you do it.

Image can say you’re cool. Image can say you’re fast. Image can say you’re reliable.

Some real-life things you can actually apply

1. Brand is exclusive. Image is not.

Erin sells bags. But she doesn’t call them bags. She calls them bagz. Why? Because that’s her brand. Even in casual emails, she refers to them exclusively as bagz. She also spells “dirt” with a “u”, making it “durt.” Durt + bagz = Durtbagz and my little red squiggly spell check lines go crazy. Also, her bags have made-up street signs on them. Nobody else in the bag industry is doing this. It is her brand.

Her image, however, is cool. Her image is functional but still wearable by people under 50. Her image is low-maintenance and down-to-earth. Her image is “we understand what college kids want.”

Durtbagz with the Z and the U and the street signs is a brand. Cool, functional, low-maintenance and down-to-earth is her image. Nobody else can take her brand. Lots of people can take her image. This is why you need to have both.

2.) The line between brand and image is often very, very fuzzy.

Your brand can contribute to your image and your image can shape your brand. It’s kind of cool if they can intersect, but it’s not necessary. They probably shouldn’t actively conflict but you shouldn’t worry too much about it beyond that. You’ll want to take typeface, illustrations, and color schemes into consideration when building both your brand and your image, but we’ll talk about those later in the week.

3.) The most important thing to remember about both branding and image is consistency.

With a few exceptions, it doesn’t really matter what you present, as long as you continue to present it. If Erin all of a sudden decided to start selling upscale laptop cases, people would wonder what the hell was going on. If you went to her site and saw the blog section called “Dirty Laundry” instead of “Durty Laundry”, you would be confused. Does it really matter that she chose a “U” instead of an “I” when creating her brand? Does anybody really care? No, but it’s her brand now and it works. She didn’t need to hire a marketing company to do a research survey to discover that 78% of college students preferred “durt” to “dirt”. She just made a call and stuck with it.

As the week goes on we’ll talk more about what makes up a brand and image and how to keep your consistency. Fire questions in the comments if you’ve got ‘em. In the meantime, I leave you with…

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By Naomi Dunford - Dec 16, 2007 in Marketing School - 9 Comments