5 Companies That Prove the Power of Branding
A wise man once said, “A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person.” That man was Jeff Bezos, the richest person in the universe.
The Jeff Bezos of the world, however, are few and far between. The vast majority of the global market is made up of small and midsize companies striving to one day become the next Amazon. If your company falls within this group, then it’s time to break from the pack and take that first step toward your empire. How? Like Bezos says, start with your brand.
Many companies are still unclear on the actual impact branding can have on their business, making the easy mistake of assuming that a business plan is far more important. That’s where they’re wrong, because branding should actually guide their business. That is, branding should be the first, and most significant, part of their business plan.
To illustrate the power of strong branding and what it could mean for your business, let’s take a look at some small-to-midsize companies who are absolutely crushing their competition — including the big dogs in their respective markets — because they focused on building a rock-solid brand (plus a pair of mammoth brands just to drive the point home). Each one of these companies exhibits very distinct qualities that make their brand stand out, whether it’s a covetable lifestyle, disruptive concept, or a world-changing mission. Click through and then think about what kind of brand your company is.
Glossier
In recent years, the beauty industry has seen some much-needed disruption from newer brands, but none stand out nearly as shiny and new as Glossier. Stemming from Into the Gloss, a beauty website that featured product reviews, beauty tips, and exclusive interviews with fashion and beauty influencers, Glossier was created as an extension, uniquely positioning itself as a “content-first” brand. Glossier has been able to develop a deep connection with its audience by leveraging content and allowing it to act as an open channel of dialogue between the brand and its customers, something that is clearly missing with major beauty companies. Founder and CEO Emily Weiss told TechCrunch last year that she built Glossier “around what women want, not just from a product perspective but from an engagement perspective, from a distribution perspective, and from a values perspective.”
It doesn’t hurt that Glossier’s products are refreshingly innovative — their most popular product, the Boy Brow, is a mascara that makes your brows thicker and is unlike anything offered by the cosmetics heavyweights — and the packaging is so high-quality you don’t even want to throw it out.
What Makes It Stand Out: Disruptive, innovative, outstanding design.
Warby Parker
When it comes to eyeglasses, there has been one name that has emerged and dominated the industry so deftly that it’s fair to say there are two distinct eras in eyeglass history: pre-Warby Parker and post-Warby Parker. Remember when you would have to drive to the LensCrafters store at the mall to get glasses? And it sort of felt like a chore? That was pre-Warby Parker. These days, buying a new pair of glasses feels like buying a new pair of shoes — it’s fun, fashionable, and cool. That’s post-Warby Parker.
Founders Neil Blumenthal and David Gilboa started Warby Parker after realizing that the eyeglass industry was essentially controlled by one main manufacturer that was licensing to brands who were dramatically marking up costs. They realized that they could make the same pair of glasses that would normally cost $500 for about $95, which became one of the brand’s signature features and most powerful differentiator. Unbeatable price aside, Warby Parker views its vintage-inspired frames as fashion accessories rather than necessities, which has redefined the entire eyeglass industry.
As if that wasn’t enough, with every pair of glasses purchased, the company also donates a pair to someone in need.
What Makes It Stand Out: Disruptive, innovative, and purposeful? That’s pretty much the trifecta of brand building right there.
Innocent
If you’ve been to the supermarket lately, then you probably know how crowded the juice aisle is these days, just in the premium category alone. Forget about the old-fashioned, from-concentrate brands. There’s been an explosion in healthier, premium juice and smoothie beverages in the last decade, and it’s no longer enough to tout “all-natural” or “100% real ingredients.” So how was UK juice company Innocent able to rack in $400 million in annual sales last year? (That’s more than Naked, Evolution Fresh, and Suja made in revenue, combined.) Easy: they built a great brand.
If you visit Innocent’s website, you immediately get a clear sense of what the company is all about. Their verbal identity is humorous, a bit self-deprecating, and all-around delightful. You feel like you’re reading the inner thoughts of a close friend, rather than marketing speak from a company. Likewise, Innocent’s visual identity is just as charming — in fact, it’s downright adorable. To align with the “innocent” theme, the brand’s logo is a cartoonish fruit anthropomorphized with just a set of eyes and topped with a halo. It makes you want to cup it gently in your hands and take it home.
Finally, backing the visual and verbal identity is a strong and clear message that the brand is all about tasting good (delicious fruit flavors), feeling good (all-natural ingredients and nutrients), and doing good (sustainability and recycling mission). It’s all about innocence.
What Makes It Stand Out: A very strong, winning brand personality.
SoulCycle
There are gyms, and then there’s SoulCycle. The former are mostly variations of each other, while the latter stands out far away from the crowd. At its core, SoulCycle offers indoor cycling classes, but the brand is defined by so much more. While the company has received some flak for being cult-like, what its critics don’t know — or refuse to admit — is that this is actually a reflection of successful branding. Amid countless spin classes popping up over the last decade, SoulCycle broke (cycled?) from the pack by building a lifestyle brand, emphasizing community engagement, and redefining corporate culture.
Built around the theme of “soul,” SoulCycle offers various services well beyond its cycling classes. For example, its “Your Soul Matters” team regular communicates with riders through email and on social media. In addition to its instructor training program, the company also launched Soul University, which aims to further scale its signature culture and hospitality services. Speaking of company culture, that’s where SoulCycle truly pushes boundaries. The company requires every single employee to start their work training by manning the front desk of a SoulCycle studio. That means even its CEO, Melanie Whelan, has had to sign people in and spray rental shoes.
What Makes It Stand Out: A culture-driven lifestyle brand.
Toms
Fashion is notorious for being an ethically challenged industry, but one person decided to go against the grain in a remarkable way. Blake Mycoskie founded Toms in response to a bittersweet life experience in which he came across abject poverty while exploring his new favorite country of Argentina. He saw that countless children were living without shoes on their feet, a gut-wrenching image that would spark the entire concept of his new shoe company.
From the beginning, Toms’ business model was built around the “One for One” concept, which donates a pair of shoes to a kid in need for every pair purchased. Imagine buying a pair of shoes knowing that your purchase would allow a child to have shoes on their feet. Without a doubt, you’d view your pair of Toms differently than the rest of your shoe rack, and you’d probably feel compelled to tell your friends about your purchase and encourage them to buy a pair of their own. (This is precisely why Toms rarely advertises, because it doesn’t have to.)
It is this “storydoing” model that Mycoskie created that has helped his company reach a valuation of $625 million in under 10 years. Today, the company has expanded beyond shoes to also provide sight, clean water, and safe birth to those in need.
What Makes It Stand Out: A strong, clear brand purpose.
Coca-Cola vs. Pepsi
To really drive the point home, let’s end on a couple of brands that nearly everyone is familiar with: Coca-Cola and Pepsi. There is perhaps no better allegory for the importance of branding than the long and bitter rivalry between these two.
Both of these soda brands are household names, but just stop and think about it for a second. When you close your eyes and think about Coca-Cola, what do you see? Most likely, you’ll have a clear picture of summers spanning back to your childhood, road trips with friends, Christmases with your rowdy relatives, and many other events in between. Now, what do you picture when you think about Pepsi? The images are most likely more muddy and vague. Perhaps you think of that Pepsi Clear commercial paired with that Van Halen song because it was a highly controversial product when it came out. But overall, Pepsi hasn’t been embedded into your mind and heart the way Coke has.
What makes this difference? Coca-Cola is one of the strongest, longest-established brands in history. It’s had a consistent positioning since its inception in 1886: Coca-Cola is a refreshing break in your busy day, it’s happiness in a bottle, and it’s meant to be shared with friends. And while I may have given logos a hard time earlier, that’s not to say they’re not extremely important. Coca-Cola’s font, the Spencerian Script, may have been a hot, new typeface in the 19th century, but the company’s decision to keep it for the next 130 years has made it timeless and iconic. The same goes with the shape of its bottle and the distinct Coca-Cola red, a color that psychologists have associated with passion, excitement, and even increased appetite.
Furthermore, Coca-Cola cleverly avoided being pigeonholed as a summer beverage by heavily emphasizing Christmas and winter in its messaging. By putting a classic portrait of Santa Claus on its bottles and cans during the holiday season and creating marketing campaigns leveraging cold-weather imagery (who can forget those polar bears?), consumers easily think of Coca-Cola all year round.
On the other hand, Pepsi has primarily built its brand around, well, challenging Coca-Cola. By doing so, Pepsi has boxed itself in as a “challenger brand,” focusing much of its existence trying to unseat Coke instead of focusing on building its own strong brand. Of course, Pepsi has had some strong marketing campaigns in its equally long history. In fact, its most successful campaign, one that nearly toppled the Coca-Cola empire, was the Pepsi Challenge of 1983, which invited soda consumers to participate in a blind taste test and choose their preferred cola based on taste alone. It turned out that most people preferred the flavor of Pepsi. Therein lies what is perhaps the most significant takeaway of this Coke vs. Pepsi comparison.
It turns out taste, arguably the most important factor to consider when creating a food or beverage product, was no match for branding. Because even after Pepsi won the taste test challenge, Coca-Cola still won the Cola Wars. Why? Because by that point, its brand was so strong, and the emotional connection with consumers was so deep, the company was pretty much unstoppable.