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Branding vs. Brand

It is important to make a distinction between the term Brand and Branding. If we use the analogy of an iceberg, things underneath the waterline are represented by the term Brand. They are not immediately seen by the audience, like employees, suppliers, and even the company's products or services, customers and other partners represent the brand.

In contrast, Branding is an activity that is visible and is considered the process of designing brand identity.  Items that are the result of branding include all identifying artifacts like the logo, icons, avatars, taglines and the company name. The output of branding activities consists also of a style guide, employee guidelines, the vision and mission statement and a list of company core values.

If we go one step further and create branded touchpoints like flyers, business cards, posters, etc., we consider this step Marketing. Marketing is illustrated as ships that come and go from the iceberg.
Brand Builder Box™ considers the entire process from brand identification to marketing deep branding. We start by looking at all components of the brand and analyze how well they represent the brand. We document every single finding and create a brand brief. A brand brief is like a storyboard that shows every team member the approach for the branding process.

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