Obviously Awesome by April Dunford
A strong brand, that drives business results, comes from a clear and regularly updated brand position
Many entrepreneurial lifetimes ago, I co-owned an agency that built and launched brands. Our clientele wasn’t sexy: file management, pool coatings, and rural SMS notifications. I was the master of niche industries, which never got me far at social gatherings.
Our branding “process” combined my original ideas mashed with a cobbled-together branding framework I scraped off the internet. I’m forever grateful for that not-to-be-named multinational branding agency in Chicago who never secured their web file directory… 😬
A few weeks back, I stumbled across April Dunford, hunting for new podcasts on Spotify. Forty-five minutes and one Amazon order later, I was deep into her first book, Obviously Awesome. The book astounded me. In less than 200 pages, April outlined a simple, practical, and easy-to-follow framework for branding and more specifically, brand positioning. I reflected on my bloated and expensive agency days and how easy (and more impactful) our job would have been with a resource like this.
So what exactly is brand positioning?
Brand positioning comes before branding.
Brand positioning is the plan, strategy, and details a business will use to build a brand that will impact its market/clients/employees.
Which leads to the question, what is a brand?
This one is hard to be exact, but I generally look at a brand as the collection of ways you connect with your audience (clients, employees, vendors, etc.). A brand is a generalized term to summarize all of the dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of ways your company and its message reach people.
A strong brand position means your brand reaches and influences the right people in the way you intend. This allows you to find more of your best kind of customers (when used in marketing) or to deepen the connection and impact of your employees (when used internally).
*"Great positioning resonates with your best-fit customers right now..." - April Dunford
Biggest Takeaway: Branding doesn’t have to be complicated. Right now, your market (and, truthfully, your best customers) has all the information you need to properly update and align your brand to become the most powerful asset for growth.
Here are my notes, action items, and lessons learned…