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Understanding Your Brand
Branding has been my advertising career for decades.
I state that first because there is a lot of conflicting information out there and it should be made clear that my experience is all first-hand. This is not hearsay or reposts of other’s wisdom. It is both educated, highly trained, and hard-won, knowledge. It is also still imperfect – but this is the horse’s mouth, as it were.
Hopefully by sharing this, others will help me in areas of writing and publishing where I am weak.
Anyway, here goes:
WHAT IS A BRAND?
You might think that my statement above as being an experienced professional is my brand. Nope. That’s my advertisement. We in the ad business CALL it a brand because the intention is to force our brand into exactly that mold. I want my brand to be “Lazarus is an intelligent and knowledgeable professional brand developer”. It’s not.
A brand is the collective illusory image your customers hold in their minds about you.
Whatever you claim as your brand, has to be reinforced with your audience through interaction. Anybody can say “I am a good at branding” – but until that is proven, it’s just an ad.
Keeping this about writers and writing, your brand starts with your name and encompasses the entirety of your audiences experience with you. All. Of. It. Not just your writing. Your readings. Your stage presence. Your social media presence. Your interviews. Your websites. Your correspondence. Your booth/table presence. How you treat people in line next to you. How much you tip. Who you get into a twitter war with. Even what brands you buy or even hock.
HOW TO CREATE YOUR BRAND STATEMENT
In order:- Understand who you are and what you create. – This is actually a huge topic by itself for another Forum Topic.
- Synthesize that down to under 20 words. You’re a writer – this should be the easy part, right? This is called and “Elevator Pitch” but you need to treat it as your Mission Statement.
- Put yourself in position to share that statement. This means meeting your audience wherever they are. Your audience includes readers, other writers, publishing professionals, and media.
- Put it out there. See how people respond. What do they say. Do their eyes light up and say ‘Cool!’, are they repulsed, or do they look confused?*
- Reword and Repeat Steps 2-4 forever.
Dos:
- Be pleasant!
- Keep it positive. Only positive sentences. Only statements.
- K.I.S.S. Keep it simple, stupid. You don’t need all 20 words. If you can do 10, your great. The point is to communicate. Impress with your meaning, not you language. You’re a writer – this should be easy too, right?
- Practice.
DON’TS:
- No literary terms in the original Elevator pitch. You can use them in Filler Pitches that follow-up the EP if someone asks you for more information. Why? Because being a genius doesn’t help if you alienate your customer. A genius finds a way to sell in simple and efficient terms.
- Nothing generic. Generic is worse than boring, it means you don’t actually have a brand.
- No contradictions.
- No literal comparisons. As in “Unlike novels that are like X, I write like Y”
- Never – and I mean NEVER – compare yourself to another writer. Beside being gauche and politically sensitive and making you appear to have an ego trip if the other writer outsells you – you would be giving your competitor free advertising. As soon as you drop Stephen King’s name – that is who they will think about. Not you.
- Wil Wheaton’s Rule.
Once you have your Elevator Pitch as your Brand Statement – everything else is just embellishment.
HOW TO ESTABLISH YOUR BRAND
Do everything you would normally do – but better and on purpose and keeping you brand statement IN YOUR HEART.
Your statement say what you want to be thought of – but as a person, you can’t be someone you aren’t. If you try to be, you will be found out and you will lose.
If you are like JK Rowling and put your life into your work, your non-writing actions will speak to the same audience as true and pure and it will all work together.
But there are countless examples of authors whose brands fractured between what the public accepts. HP Lovecraft has two brands now. One his is literary legacy and the other is his personal one. It could be argued that Ray Bradbury’s brand fractured when he finally confronted fans about the meaning behind Fahrenheit 451. Fans cherished it as an call-to-arms against censorship – but he wrote it because he hated television. And there are more happening now because of social media than have ever happened before.You are creating worlds for your audiencs to love already.
They are eager to love the world you craft around your brand (look at Pat Rothfuss).
You just need to craft it as well as any series you publish – if not better.—-
Feel free to ask any general or specific questions. I will try to answer when I can.
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3 Replies
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Thanks for sharing this! One drawback of the forums is that there is no “like” button people can hit after they read your post. But I “like” it and appreciate your wisdom. Branding is something I’m trying to feel out myself right now, and this helps.
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This is great. Seriously. Probably the best thing I’ve come across in all the articles and workshops, etc. on branding.
I think there’s a common misconception for a lot of us on the difference between “brand” and “advertisement” (or maybe it’s just me.)Any thoughts on the best way to handle a “re-branding”?
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Thank you Alicia,
On RE-BRANDING:
There are several reasons one might wish to do this – but they should all be considered carefully because they are almost, but not quite, starting from scratch.
Some possible reasons include:
- to distance oneself from previous works
- to distance oneself from old relationships (e.g., professional ones like former agents&publishers)
- because your brand isn’t gaining enough awareness
- because your brand my have bee coopted by someone with more media presense (e.g., your name happens to be the same as the character in a new movie – and everyone is confused)
You should not re-brand without considering all of the factors involved.
Some reasons why you shouldn’t rebrand include:
- some media circus around something unaffiliated with your brand is causing you temporary trouble (e.g., when the mega-band Anthrax was attacked 20 years after releasing their first album by people upset because of the anthrax-laced postal scare)
- you’ve already re-branded at least once already
- you don’t actually know what your brand currently is
SHOULD YOU RE-BRAND?:
Answer the following questions:
- Are you ready to commit to the new brand fully? (And not just ‘testing’ it out?)
- Is your current brand dead or toxic?
- Do you have a core following that will adopt the new brand easily?
- Do you already know what your brand is and know why it isn’t working for you? (You need a Brand before you can Re-Brand. If you don’t have one yet, skip this and learn how to Grand first.)
- Are you sure that you don’t just need to shore your brand up or wait out a tough period?
- Are you sure you aren’t giving into a whim or a trend?
- Are you sure you don’t want to just ADD to your existing brand (e.g., Every time Stephen King uses a psuedonym, it was released to the public announcing that it was actually Stephen King using another name. He never ‘rebranded’. He added a new segment to his brand by applying a new name. Eventually, those novels were republished under Stephen King, because the public accepted the ‘new’ product as part of his brand.)
- Have you listed out all of the positives and negatives of re-branding? Are the positives significant? Are the negatives insignificant?
If you treated those questions as homework, did the homework, and answered YES to all of them – then you can choose to re-brand.
If any of these are no or even a maybe, just work on your current brand.
HOW TO REBRAND:
(strong caution: really really don’t do this if you don’t have to)
Follow every single step of creating a brand. Really. It’s the same thing.
That means to define in detail what that brand is supposed to be and who it’s for. Develop products for it, present it, and manage it – all as if it’s brand new.
Be careful when overlapping with your old brand. Why? Because overlapped audiences will resist the new brand for lots oof reasons. Even if they support you – they will still brag to others about how “they knew you when you were still ABC” instead of “XYZ”. My wife changed both her first name (to her middle name) and (when we married) took my last name. There are still people out there using her original first name. They claim it’s out of habit – but since they only knew her for 2 years and it’s been 20 years since changing it – it is not a habit. It’s their ego demanding they reinforce that their relationship with her goes back that far – which honestly pushes her away. It took the introduction of Facebook to get some old friends to accept my new name (reinforcement is key) – even though my own mother called me Lazarus since High School. Audience refusing a re-brand undermines it on many levels. If you are forced to rebrand to the same audience, make sure the audience will accept it or be willing to lose them and weather the backlash.
The most important part of re-branding, though, is RE-ENFORCEMENT! You have to push louder and harder than with your original brand. You have to be more well-defined and embody this new brand in a way that no one can ignore.
Echo changed her art when she changed her name.
I changed changed how I dressed and acted when I changed my name.We weren’t just a new name on an old favorite.
Because a brand is NOT a name. A brand is the experience you give your audience. If you don’t change that, then you haven’t changed your brand at all.
As authors, you will produce new works with new themes/styles/messages, etc. You will change how you interact with your fans – whatever that means to you (e.g., more reclusive, more extraverted, more humorous, less tolerant of trolls, etc.). You will work hard at doing those things. You won’t just slap on an old name and be the same old thing.
This is why it’s not recommended to re-brand. It is so difficult to do.
Major corporations get away with it for a couple of reasons. First, they can fire the boss and change their corporate culture faster and more easily than a human being can do that for themselves (because they literally change the mix of people involved). Second, their audience rarely cares enough. Did anyone really care when Datsun turned into Nissan? No. Or when British Petroleum turned into Beyond Petroleum? No. Did anyone care when Coke became New Coke? There were riots.
Which brings me back to this point:
- Do you have a core following that will adopt the new brand easily?
If you misjudge this – you will lose both your re-brand, and your ability to re-brand in the future. Because your brand is not your message – but your audience’s interpretation, only they get to decide what the brand actually is. If they tell you you can’t change it once – they will double-down telling you you can’t change it a second or third time.
That’s all I can think of now.
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