Your company’s monopoly on a specific set of expectations

When your brand is still small, it’s easier to control.

Your identity messaging comes from a single source, which is you.

But once your work starts to get hundreds and thousands and even millions of impressions, you no longer have the ability to control things as much. Because at that point, it’s more important to create the experience that you’re big.

You need to give customers validation that the brand they’ve already heard about from somebody else is exactly what they thought it would be once they get there.

That’s all branding is. It’s your company’s monopoly on a specific set of expectations.

Forget about logos, taglines, colors, typography, advertisements and email campaigns. Branding is how people experience themselves in relation to you. Period.

I’ve spent many years building brands, for myself, for my clients, and for my employers. And if there was one aspect of the process people seem to struggle with the most, it’s the control piece.

Especially for legacy team members who have been around since day one. They take real offense to their brand’s evolution. It’s a grieving process for them. Watching that little sapling they worked so hard to shepherd grow up and take on a life of its own, that hurts.

Cat Stevens crooned about this in one of my favorite folk songs:

“You know I’ve seen a lot of what the world can do and it’s breaking my heart in two, but if you wanna leave, take good care, hope you make a lot of nice friends out there, just remember there’s a lot of bad and beware, beware.“

As in life, letting go is hard in business too. You feel sad, scared and helpless.

Because as time marches on, there’s less and less you can control. Potentially millions of people will come in contact with your brand, and all you can hope for is that you’ve done your job building its foundation, your work will speak for itself, and the customers who want to buy, will.

And once you get people behind the wheel of whatever you’re selling, they’ll drive it to some new and interesting places. Picking up new passengers along the way.

It’s the price you pay for growing up to be big and strong.

You lose more than you would ever sign up for, but you gain more than you could ever hope for.

What’s keeping your brand from making strides in a bigger direction?