What are some examples of poor brands versus good brands?

It’s hard to remember examples of poor brands because they don’t stick in the mind. The very definition of a bad brand is one that’s forgettable, offering nothing engaging or relevant that makes it memorable. A bad brand is a boring brand: it doesn’t catch attention, it doesn’t hold attention, it doesn’t command attention.

On the other hand, a good brand is the opposite. It sticks in your mind and is nearly impossible to forget. It has what we call “stickiness.” Being “sticky” is an essential attribute of a great brand. McDonald’s has a large number of sticky assets that enable you to remember them easily — the golden arches, the white, red, and yellow color scheme, the ads with large pictures of the food, the commercials with the jingle you can’t get out of your head, and even the smell of the food itself.

No one forgets McDonald’s or gets it mixed up with Arby’s or Burger King or Taco Bell, all of which are also great brands with stickiness, because each of them has found a way to stick in the customer’s mind (or should I say gut) that’s different from the others.

A great brand always finds a difference, an empty space where they can interact with customers in a different way than anyone else. And there’s always room for another great brand, no matter how many brands are already competing in an industry.

Are people who are great at marketing automatically good at creating brands and doing branding?

Well, no, they’re certainly not good at creating brands. Marketers are not brand creators, and I would advise them to state that on their websites. But they ought to be good at branding — which is the consistent application of a brand at a variety of touch points — because that’s the essence of what marketing is.

The best marketers usually avoid the word branding because they know it will give the false idea that they create brands. They instead say they create effective marketing campaigns that consistently get the message out about your existing brand. They don’t claim to create brands. That’s honest, and I applaud them for that.

In the same way, brand creators shouldn’t claim to be marketers simply to get a sale. If they have a marketing department in their organization, or if they work with marketing consultants, then they can fairly say they offer marketing, but brand creation specialists shouldn’t claim to be marketing experts when they’re not. There is a ton to know about marketing and it’s changing all the time. A great brand needs great marketers.

However, even though brand creators aren’t experts at everything marketing includes, brand creation does require strategic marketing thinking. That is, a brand needs to be clearly differentiated from other brands. So the brand creator has to discover what that difference is — what is authentically unique that can be used as a basis for the brand message and subsequent marketing.