After reading The Brand Gap by Marty Neumeier, I decided to summarize the lessons I learned from this book. I hope to encapsulate the essence of the book in this blog post for your benefit. The key lessons are in bold followed by a short explanation of the lesson.

A brand is not what you say it is, it is what they say it is.

A brand is a person’s gut feeling about a product, service or company. While companies can’t control what people think and say about them, they can influence it by communicating what makes them different.

Trust creation is a fundamental goal of brand design.

People need to trust a brand in order follow it. Therefore, trust creation is a fundamental goal of brand design. Trust is the ultimate shortcut to a buying decision, and the bedrock of modern branding.

So how does a company create trust with a user and in turn create a positive brand? Customers trust a brand when their experiences consistently meet or beat their expectations. In order to accomplish this companies have to be strategical as well as creative. And this is where the problem lies. There is a giant chasm between the way the left brain and the right brain thinks about creating a trustworthy brand. This is known as the brand gap.

Companies who learn how to bridge the gap have a tremendous advantage over those who don’t. To bridge this gap companies must master the five disciplines of branding:

  1. Differentiate
  2. Collaborate
  3. Innovate
  4. Validate
  5. Cultivate

Differentiate: You must be different to be noticed.

As humans, we naturally notice odd, unique or different things while we filter out irrelevant and extraneous things. In order to differentiate their brand in this modern age, companies need to move away from highlighting new features and what a product does to creating an experience for the user/customer and to connect with them on a personal level. Companies need to tap into, and align with the core values of their customers.

Collaborate: 1+1=11

When you collaborate, one plus one does not equal two, but eleven. When you collaborate you accelerate the innovation process. You can’t do it alone, so don’t bother trying. Neumeier quotes Peter Drucker in his book to explain that successful businesses are shifting from “ownership” to “partnership” and from “individual tasks” to “collaboration”.

Innovate: Are you willing to be creative?

To be innovate you must be creative. In order to creative you must by definition try something new. In order to be a leader in your industry, you can’t be a follower and copy everyone else. You must step off the well-beaten path and be a trail-blazer. It takes guts to be different and authentic: Do you have what it takes?

Validate: Create a dialogue, not a monologue.

The traditional communication model is as follows: a company sends a message (an ad, web page, e-mail) to their customer. That’s it. What’s wrong with this? There is no feedback from the customer! This is devastating for a business. In the new communication model, we close the feedback loop and have input from the customer. This allows us to make changes before sending a new message. Every time this process repeats trust grows and the relationship is strengthened. When you test your product with your target market and listen to their response, you have real quantitative data to work with. If your product or service is going to fail, you want to find as soon as possible and not waste your time and money.

Cultivate: Don’t act, be real.

Your brand must convey depth and an element of being human. Your company should be like a hero with flaws – a living brand. A brand is authentic when its external actions aligns with its internal culture, just like a human. Most people become very suspicious of a person that says one thing and does the complete opposite. Businesses are the same way.

In summary, if you follow these five disciplines you will be able to bridge the brand gap. This in turn will create trust with a user and in turn create a positive brand.

If you enjoyed my summary, I encourage you to read the book for yourself.

Thanks for your time. Feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts.

Jason