The Difference Between Branding and Brand Identity with Jason Byer
Oct 31, 2022
Why does knowing the difference between branding and brand identity matter? Because entrepreneurs all too often approach brand-building in the wrong order. Jason Byer, Head of Marketing and Partnerships at Crowdspring joins Cash In On Camera to explain brand vs. brand identity along with practical next steps to build a stand-out business.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll hear…
▶️ [1:22] I think a lot of times when we say brand we think about Amazon and Nike and Starbucks and these large corporations, whereas we as individuals have brands. We as small companies have brands, right? And so we have to think about this. It's every interaction somebody has is part of this brand. And then the brand identity is a subset of branding. And the brand identity is everything visual about your company. And so this is the font that you use on your website. These are the colors that you use.
▶️ [3:20] Yeah. And so what I hear you say is that branding is really about your reputation, but at the same time, you don't necessarily have full control over how people are perceiving you. But there are things that you can do to help move people in a specific direction toward what you want that reputation to be about you, right? But you don't have full control over it because it's how other people perceive you in the marketplace based on all of the different touch points that you have indicated and some of those touch points are really interesting.
▶️[7:16] Jason, I wanna ask you about timing. because a lot of early-stage growing entrepreneurs might not necessarily have clarity yet on who their ideal target market is, and they're in the process of figuring that out. Is it better to hold off on the design process as you discover who your ideal client is? Or is it better to use a tool, maybe like Crowdspring? Where you can get some design elements made or some brand identity and do that brand piece first and understand, "Okay, well this is where I'm at this stage. I'm gonna just do the best I can with who it is that I think I'm serving."
▶️ [10:07] Yeah. Well, this is really helpful because I think it helps paint a picture of the importance of both sides of this. The brand, meaning the brand values, who you are, what you're about, and then the brand identity follows suit in terms of the pretty design aspect of how you represent that in the marketplace. and that refreshing is part of the process and there's nothing wrong with revisiting that every so often.
▶️ [13:59] Absolutely. The goal is not for the business owner to give creative direction. The goal of the business owner is to say, "Look, I understand the business. I understand the market better than you as a designer. I understand what we're trying to do. I understand who we're trying to sell to and why they're choosing us as opposed to somebody else." That's the role of a business owner in this relationship of brand identity. The role of the designer is skilled designers, and this is why at Crowdspring, we vet all of our designers manually to come onto the platform.
▶️ [17:48] Yeah, absolutely. We talked a little bit about it, the fact that you're getting dozens of different custom designs. We have 33 categories of branding and design. So everything from naming a business or a product to creating your core brand identities, like a logo or maybe some of the marketing materials, like t-shirts and flyers and postcards and presentations. All of these can be done. We can work within the can. So if you want to work and have Canva, we can customize those designs as well. There's a hundred percent money-back guarantee, literally everything.
[19:42] And so remember that you're speaking to other humans with the same concerns and worries and fears and hopes that you have. And I think when we can be genuine and lead with education and which is what we do at crowdSPRING, we try and, do things like this where we're outreach and talking about branding and trying to make it simpler leading with education, being genuine. And I think that's been very helpful too.