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As I explained in my first post, a brand is not a logo or a website or a design. A brand is a promise, what people trust, feel, and believe you or your product to be. Branding is how you express that promise to people. Here’s some tips to help you define your brand — only then can you express it through branding.

First, your brand will ultimately be defined by other people, mostly your customers and potential customers. They will make up their minds about you and you will usually have to live with it. Your job in building your brand is to try and influence them before their minds are made up. It is easier when they don’t yet know you and harder when they do.

Therefore, your brand can not be just anything you want it to be. It needs to be based on some truth about you, as well as client needs. Otherwise your brand will be rejected as not credible. Your brand also needs to be flexible so that it can evolve as you or the market change over time.

For example, while Polaroid’s brand was successfully built around innovation in instant imaging, its brand become too closely associated with chemical imaging in the minds of consumers and has struggled to stay connected with people in a digital world.

Second, be clear about what you need your brand to achieve at a strategic level. For most people this will be to set you apart from your competitors, to make you top of mind and memorable. By default, a brand should also say who you are not. A strong, healthy brand never tries to be all things to all people. Strategically your brand offers a way for clients and potential clients to quickly and easily categorize you. When they need what you’ve got, you want them to know exactly who to call. Ideally your brand should also make you look like the original or the best solution, making it hard for others to copy you.

Here are some great examples of photographers who have done this successfully.

Terry Richardson has one of the strongest brands I have ever seen. He has no logo and no real design to his website. Yet he stands out. He is unique, highly memorable. He shoots some of the world’s most famous people with a small, inexpensive digital camera. Why is his brand so strong? In a world full of smartly presented photographers who all look, shoot, and feel similar, Terry is distinctly different. (Check out the video, where Terry talks about his approach and his new Belvedere Vodka campaign.)

Another example is Australian landscape photographer Peter Lik. In a market saturated with great landscape photography, much of which never sells, Peter’s business generates more than $30,000,000 per year (US!!). Peter’s photography, while brilliant, is hardly the sole reason for his success. The essence of Peter Lik’s brand is the creation of a photographic experience. In particular, his galleries are must-see destinations. What you buy is not just a beautiful picture but a small part of everything that you experience in Peter’s world.

The critical third stage in defining your brand is determining what the attributes are that make up your brand. Attributes are like brand DNA. These are the tangible and intangible, emotional and functional characteristics that you and your business, product, or service are — or could credibly become. If expressed and managed correctly, these attributes become the reasons for people to trust and do business with you.

Here’s an example. I asked 10 people who know of Peter Lik to give me 20 words that describe what they believe him to be. I put every word, including those repeated, into Wordle, which creates a prioritized word cloud showing most-used bigger and least-used smaller. This this is a visual representation of Peter Lik’s brand attributes, according to these 10 people.

You’ll notice that the functional description of him as a “landscape photographer” is rated low. From a brand perspective, this is excellent because being a landscape photographer is just the cost of entry, it is not enough to define him as unique. Peter has purposefully built his brand around the attributes that help set him apart. That is how a strong brand works.

So, how do you determine your attributes? Here are eight questions that will help you find them. The depth and honesty to which you answer these question will determine the ultimate quality and strength of your brand. Other people’s input is also important, so also ask your friends, family, staff, and customers.

1. Why do people buy products and services in your market?
   List the functional reasons (a record of my wedding, thank-you gifts for friends & family) as well as the emotional reasons (memories, a sense of family and belonging).
2. What are people’s specific needs that influence their purchase?
   Needs can also be functional (photographer needs to have a good reputation, work weekdays, be affordable) or needs can be emotional (photographer needs to be trendy and hi-profile, I need to like him/her). People’s needs can be based on fear (my friend’s wedding pictures were awful, she was devastated) or on hope (I remember looking through my grandparents’ wedding album, I want to have the same thing for my grandchildren).
3. How do you meet these needs?
   These can be functional or emotional, tangible or intangible. Try to break them down into things you share with your competitors and things that only you (or very few people) do.
4. In what areas can you prove superior performance?
   What are you absolutely the best at?
5. What special advantages do you have?
   (e.g. ownership, accreditations, endorsements, famous people you have shot)
6. In what areas would you like to move into and specialize in?
   (e.g. video weddings or off-beat weddings)
7. What do you and or your business stand for?
   Think about your values and beliefs and identify personal passions you have that might help you connect with customers.
8. What is surprising, original, or memorable about you?
   (e.g. you drive around town in a specially painted bright pink VW beetle with white hubs… and always wear bright pink glasses.)

If you don’t have a list of 50 or more answers from the above questions, you need to dig deeper. From this list you can cull the attributes on which to build a strong, ownable brand. I’ll talk about how to do that in my next post.