Regular Brandtalk readers know that I sometimes refer to something I call the Branding-Marketing-Sales Continuum. These are three disciplines that operate one after the other, resulting, finally, in a sale. Because, at the end of the day, someone has to sell something to someone. That’s what commerce is all about. The delivery of a good or service in exchange for legal tender. It starts with branding, which leads into marketing, which leads into sales. You can imagine the flow going from left to right, terminating with a sale at the far right end of the line. These are three distinct disciplines that have somewhat fuzzy borders. Here at Boardwalk, we’ve never seen a branding project that didn’t end up with us doing a little bit of marketing too. And everybody knows how porous the boundary between marketing and sales is. When I speak to groups about this, I can tell people understand me but I never quite feel they’re really getting it. So I’ve been searching for a good metaphor that people would really feel. And here on Veterans’s Day, I think I’ve found one. It’s imperfect, to be sure, and a little more militaristic than I’d like. But I guess I’m just thinking about our fighting men and women. With respect, I’d like to share it with you. It sprang from a discussion about how the US flag is displayed on our soldiers’ uniforms.

You’ve heard all the horror stories. Company A merges with Company B and, right off the bat, there’s trouble. The corporate culture at the two companies just don’t mesh. Company A tends towards formality. The men all wear ties. Things are done according to well-documented procedures. There’s a precise organizational chart with very specific titles. Everyone is accountable to someone else. At Company B, every day is casual Friday. No ties. No job titles. No set procedures for getting things done and reporting to management. Everybody just wings it. The two cultures just can’t get along. Even if some at Company A would like to loosen up a bit. Even if some at Company B feel a little more discipline would not be a bad thing. The cultures are just too entrenched to change. Nobody’s expectations are being met. And that leads to disruption and frustration. But, while everybody is dealing with the internal warfare, who’s looking at the new firm’s customers? It’s likely their expectations are not being met either and that can cause severe damage to the new company’s brand.

Marketing 2020 – Organizing for Growth is a comprehensive global marketing leadership initiative led by Kantar (formerly Kantar Millward Brown) in partnership with some other leading organizations. Already, their research has turned up some interesting, if not surprising, insights. I should say the findings are actually unsurprising to those of us who have been studying positioning and brand purpose for a while. Those who have only a passing interest may indeed find the research results to be eye-opening. It comes down to social purpose which is a cause a business may adopt in order to help make the world a better place. This differs from brand purpose, which is the purpose a market assigns to the brand, as in “I engage with the XYZ Brand to fulfill this purpose in my life.” Brand purpose has been around forever although marketers only started thinking about it in modern times. Social purpose is a relatively new phenomenon and, as such, hasn’t been studied all that much. But the folks at Marketing 2020 have taken a comprehensive look and guess what? Turns out that brands that adopt a social purpose actually do outperform those that do not.

Every company has a brand. B2C companies tend to take their brands seriously. They know how important it is for them to establish a rapport with consumers. They know their customers buy based on emotional factors. So they take care to wrap their messaging in the right kind of emotional triggers, using the right colors, fonts, imagery, etc. that will evoke the desired response from their target market. B2B businesses, on the other had, are notorious for ignoring their brands soon after giving birth to them. I’ve heard all the arguments. “We don’t need branding because we only have 25 potential customers and we know them all personally.” “Our customers set up purchasing committees to take all emotional connection out of the procurement process.” “Our customers buy on specs and price alone; they won’t respond to a fancy logo.” “Our products don’t sit on store shelves. We don’t need branding.” There are hundreds of excuses like this. And they’re all horse crap. If anything, the successful branding practices that B2C businesses use so successfully are even more effective when imported into the B2B world. That’s now more true than ever and it’s trending ever more rapidly in that direction. Because today, all businesses are operating in more and more of a B2H – business-to-human – world. Let’s take a closer look at that.

When children are first enrolled in kindergarten, they are tested so teachers can find out what each child does and doesn’t already know. Can they tell a circle from a square? Do they know their colors? The vast majority of them do already know these visual stimuli. Not so many, however, already know their numbers 0-9 or the entire alphabet A-Z. Visual literacy comes before reading or math skills. When you think about it, it’s pretty impressive, the degree of visual literacy we’ve mastered by age five. Not only do we have shapes and colors down cold but, even as kids, we can read facial expressions and body language with remarkable accuracy. By the time kids are twelve, they can read the room in an instant. They can tell what experiences seem attractive and what should be avoided, who seems nice and who’s probably a jerk. What’s amazing is that it all happens in the background, without us even having to really think about it. Marketers rely on our visual literacy every day. They tell us about their brands using visual clues, counting on our sophisticated “inner language” to add in meaning and read the story. It’s called semiotics: the study of signs and symbols and their use or interpretation. Marketers may straight-up tell us their advertising message. But, mostly, they use semiotics to get the brand story across. Here’s why.