Branding is misunderstood by being reduced to its aesthetic component: visual identity. For many, whether specialists or not, branding is still just about the visual identity – name, logo, design, packaging, etc. Even more so, while the concept of branding and its understanding have evolved enormously over the years, the same old vision of branding is being preached, even by high-level marketers.*
“Brands are essentially patterns of familiarity, meaning, fondness, and reassurance that exist in the minds of people.”
“Branding is the perpetual process of identifying, creating, and managing the cumulative assets and actions that shape the perception of a brand in stakeholders’ minds.”
If you compare this definition to the official Cambridge definition, you can clearly see that the latter (Cambridge) offers more surface-level information, giving a false sense of understanding to the reader. This might be one of the reasons why most people think that definition is correct and choose it as the foundation of their knowledge-building on the subject. In truth, basing your learning about branding on a definition that reduces it to only one element (visual identity) makes every other branding-related concept fall short when trying to connect the dots.”
*by Brandingmag