Brand must be a forethought not an afterthought. It must inform how we build product, how we communicate with members, how and where we show up in the world, what our scope of care is, and more.
Brand, done right, is a form of defensibility. Branding communicates information. Branding evokes emotions in the consumer. Branding increases willingness to pay for objectively identical products. This is why there are lots of things that are commoditized that are still highly profitable – athletic clothing (Nike), groceries (Erewhon), gyms (Equinox), water (Liquid Death).
Doing brand right means making an active decision to invest in branding.
Equinox is probably the only gym chain with a dedicated creative director and a team of 18 “creatives.” It’s also probably the only gym chain that insists it is not a gym but a club.
Doing brand right means obsessively building for your core users and helping them identify as someone who uses your product.
Equinox unapologetically draws a line between the devotees and the non-believers. The CEO famously removed Equinox from newspaper gym listings. No more comparisons to competitors like Crunch. And despite January 1st being the best day for gym signups, Equinox doesn’t accept new members on this day. They even made a whole campaign called “We Don’t Speak January”.
Erewhon is simultaneously the most loved and hated grocery store on the planet. They build for their core customers at the exclusion of everyone else.
Apple, despite being one of the most ubiquitous products on earth, built for “the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things different.” As Apple famously advertised:
Soon, there will be just two kinds of people. Those that use computers, and those that use Apples.
Doing brand right means repeating the key things you stand for through verbal, visual and strategic choices.
For Equinox, “It’s not fitness. It’s life”. Slogans like “Commit to Something” and “We’re All Works in Progress” power the neurological flywheel that keeps members engaged with the brand (or should I say cult).
To recall one of my favorites from Steve Jobs:
Marketing is about values. It's a complicated and noisy world, and we're not going to get a chance to get people to remember much about us. No company is. So we have to be really clear about what we want them to know about us.
Every part of the brand identity must be intentional.
Our brand should inform everything we do. How do we write member comms? What does our website look like? What is the scope of our care? Who do we hire? Which distribution channels do we target?
To understand our brand, we need to answer the following three questions: