When Your Brand Looks Right But Feels Wrong

Your brand can look damn good and still feel invisible, and that’s one of the most frustrating places to sit as a business owner. We’re talking about the moment the branding is done, the visuals look top tier, the socials are consistent… yet the message isn’t landing, the connection feels off, and nothing feels like it’s working. I break down why that happens, and why the fix is almost never another round of pretty design.

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Transcript

Welcome And The Core Problem

SPEAKER_00 0:03

You're listening to Brand and Butter. Straight talking, occasionally in your face, no BS, branding podcast for modern marketers and business owners. Here for those who want to understand the influence and power of branding and how pairing association, consumer behaviour, and design thinking can impact what people see, think, and feel. I'm your host, Tara Ladd, for sometimes funny, sometimes vulnerable, and often unapologetically blunt, founder and creative director of Brandon Design Agency, your one and only. Hey, hey, welcome to this week's episode of Brand and Butter. I think I'm about to lose my voice. So if it gets super croaky, that'd be it. I feel fine, which is wild. So you know, I lost my voice for like six weeks in 2024. And I don't know, feeling like I'm having a resurgence. Maybe we're talking too much. I mean, that's a given. Anyway, blah blah blah as usual. Going off topic, today I want to have a really good discussion on the feeling of when your brand looks good but it's still not working. And I think this is where we deal with a lot of people who just genuinely look. I don't want to judge anyone because really when you're thinking about the world of brand and marketing, it's really convoluted because everyone says certain things and with the world changing and what it used to be. And look, in traditional mm-hmm branding, it was logo color fonts. And so that was like embedded into everyone. You need logo, you need your colours, and you need your fonts. Whereas now it's like a like I've said the last few episodes, if you've tuned in, brand is fluid. So I would be thinking about how to make a dynamic brand identity now that is like transitional and can move with you as the conversations shift and change. And because that's happening so quickly now, if you have a static brand that you create, then you're going to stay stagnated or constantly be re, you know, redoing your brand every five seconds. What I mean by fluid is having movement within your visual identity, but also having movement within, I guess, your narrative and the conversations that you talk to. The way I explain it's so interesting because I kind of do a two-pronged approach here. So when I say the conversations that you talk to, I say to get quite niche. So it's like an umbrella, and I've used this, I'll just keep using the same analogy or metaphor, whatever it's called, just because it's easier to explain to people. That the way that I would explain it is that it used to be that, say you sell music, you would be talking to rock music, pop music, and classical music. And you would talk about all of those equally. Whereas now we're getting to the point where there is so much competition, you really need to kind of stay in one lane. So you would talk to, you know, it's what the the rock music, and you would then break that down into the subcategories of rock music, which would be pop rock and screamo and heavy metal and all of these different types of subgenres of rock music. And then you're getting really specific on the type. So you've got a really is my phone going off. Love that for me. I'm not gonna edit that out because authenticity. But yeah, so coming back, it would be talking to those subsets of the brand itself. And that way you are speaking to a really niche audience, but in depth, right? So you're capturing that loyalty. How I would explain it in terms of zooming out is for instance, I for you one and only wanted to talk to obviously brand identity, but from a much deeper level. But for my Tara Ladd brand, I wanted to take that to a completely different place. And by that I mean I talk about psych science and I'm talking about behavior because I'm studying all this stuff, right? So I'm gonna get a bachelor's in this. So it really interests me into how we behave as people, the way that we respond to our ideologies and biases, and all of this obviously factors into the way that I run your one and only, but I also wanted to talk a bigger game. I didn't want to just stay stuck in brand because it's actually so much bigger than brand. Now, brand plays a huge role in culture. However, when we're talking to behaviors of people and consumers, we're talking about individual identities. And that was my through line. It was identity. And so identity as a person is kind of what I speak to on your on Tara Lad and identity from a brand and slight consumer kink into there over on your one and only. Two of them combined. So I guess the way that I spoke to that is that I zoomed out. So instead of being, you know, so specific on brand on Tara Lad, I zoomed out to speak to identity as a whole. And then in your one and only, I zoomed right into the brand aspect. And that's kind of the way that I've been doing it. Everyone figures out their own way of doing it, but that took me freaking so long. I'm not even gonna lie. And doing your own stuff always does take you so long. So I guess I guess in most cases, a lot of people spend a lot of money on brand, right? Especially if you've used someone that's really great, and they may be a gun at doing visual identities, right? So they may be absolutely amazing. The thing is, there is a real difference between the types of people that or agencies, studios. Studios is more boutique, agencies obviously much broader uh in what you do. So we call ourselves a studio, but we obviously have to have SEO for agency. Anyway, that's just a little. So we're very independent, specified in the psychology behavioral led space in terms of what we do, human-centric essentially, and we create brand systems. And so what we what I wanted to speak to is that there is brand strategy, which you would have is think of like a Venn diagram with three circles overlap, like a triangle. And the top one would be the consumer and the why as to why people buy, and that's like diving into the psych stuff. It's like research, it's analytics, and it's like deep thinking, which crosses over with strategy, right? So you have the strategy crossing over, overlapping with the the I call it. So let me just explain my framework. I'm like, how am I supposed to? I have three parts. I call it dissect DNA design. So dissect is looking at the psychology of things, and so from that space, it's so we're essentially uh all three because I have studied all three. That's what I did, expanded horizontally instead of vertically, and I've now got this really nice sweet spot of all three. Whereas I can speak to the research, I can dive into the strategy because I've done that for years, and then obviously I'm a designer, so I can actually execute. So I can do all three. And so what it is is that you can have someone that does just this like the the f the first two, or they might do the second two, and they don't necessarily do all three. And so a lot of the times people go to and a lot, and I most of the time when you're looking at phase three in terms of execution, they actually don't even know how to do strategy. That's a whole different kettle of fish as well. And so I learned strategy because I want I studied it. I did a whole accreditation when I was in my 20s, but it is also a whole different cat, like you have brand strategists. Like you go to a big agency, you have a strategist, you have a planner, you have a visual designer, you have an art director, you have a creative director who sits above both art director uh both the designer and the copywriter, you have a copywriter. And an art director can be both a um sorry, a creative director could be both an art director or a copywriter, it depends. And then you have an ECD, which then leads teams of these people. And so that's the structure. And so many people don't even know this, especially if they've started their own business off the cuff. No, no hate there, by the way. Then they won't know these internal structures and these, like, I guess these job roles, which are now kind of becoming hybrid anyway. But we're missing now we've got AI coming out, we're missing what these roles really are for. And deep thinking strategy work is really different from executing in terms of design. And I would kind of I know how to design, obviously, but I consider myself a better strategist. And so if I have a really big idea that I would like to execute visually, and it it goes beyond my capacity to visually execute that, then I bring in the people that I know. I'm like, look, can I get you in on this because I really want your style or I will really like and that's art direction. It's getting the best people for the job, not necessarily doing it because you can. And this is the difference between ego and fear. It's knowing the good, good people will ex it will outsource and bring in the right people for the project. And so what we're seeing at the moment is obviously designers that don't know strategy will charge out for strategy because obviously they get more money for it, but they actually don't know how to do it. So then these people are paying big money to get strategy and they're actually not getting strategy, they're just getting a visual identity and round and round and round we go. And so this isn't just visual identity either. This is also marketing. So if you don't have a brand strategy and you don't know who you are, what you do, what you're about, who you hear for, and I mean like in-depth, then you're just gonna start marketing a message that doesn't actually align to anything that you're trying to do. And so then people hit up the yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm going on a tangent. So essentially what I'm trying to say is that people will end up trying to change the way that they execute their marketing and it becomes tactical. So if you don't know the difference between tactical and strategic marketing, think of strategic as the long game and tactical is the short-term stuff. So if you've got a campaign or you're trying to sell, you know, you've got a challenge or you've got a course or you've got a product that's on sale, these are where you do tactical tactical marketing and you do the short-term stuff. Your strategic marketing is the long game. You need both of these things going at the same time because one builds trust and one gets sales, and both of them are intentional. However, when you start to look at the I guess the tactical stuff too much and you try to sell too much, then you miss the long-term brand building. And then on the opposing side, you do long-term brand building, but no tactical, and then you don't make the sales, but you build trust. I mean, you know, so it really is just um from a brand point of view, that's just where we focus. We obviously are all about the identity aspect, so who you are and how you build that trust and what you need to do understand about the consumer, and all of these things is very much our wheelhouse. And so if we're working with someone on a campaign, we obviously are coming at it from a brand awareness point. So we will talk about how to gain exposure and how to build a deeper connection with an audience. And not all stories are are leading into where you need them to go either. So people will get on and start telling all these emotional stories, but then that's great. But if they're not actually leading to where you need them to go to, then you know, it's not story time with said brand insert here, you know what I mean? So you really need to understand the differences between the intention and what you're actually saying. And so everyone's doing all these things and they're ticking all these boxes, but the things aren't actually connecting. So let's look at it like um your assumption of it looks professional, so it is professional. So audience have figured this out. They are so all over it, and they are so sick of being burnt by brands that look good but actually don't have any substance. And so we're in the era of substance, we're in the era of trust. With everyone's like, oh, it's the attention economy. Sure, it is, but also it's the substance economy. It's just like people need to see more, they're over the surface level shit. They are so uh, I guess, overloaded and just worn out. I'm trying to find the right word, they're just over digital consumption that they need something of substance, and so people are just doom scrolling because nothing is resonating. Visuals have a part here to grab attention, so to you know, movement hooks and all of that stuff. But again, all of these things also factor into a visual identity. So edits and movement and you know, all of these things are actually part of a visual identity. If you just go and follow the next trend, but it actually doesn't fit with the brand narrative, then it looks stupid. So it's important to understand the brand strategy in order to know how to execute visually, how to execute what trends to follow, and how to execute what tactics you may use, and all of these things all become part of the plan, right? So if something feels broken, it's usually because someone's probably done something aesthetically, or as I said earlier this week, might have ticked a few people off. I don't know. But I was talking about how a lot of brands are actually time-based. So they have nailed the market viability, maybe unintentionally, intentionally, I don't know. Uh, that's the whole point is trying to time the market. But if you if you have built your product or your brand off a timed market, then eventually it's going to date. Right? This is what I call about brand longevity. Eventually it will date. And so what happens then is that your positioning is built off nothing and it collapses. And so this is why things aren't working because potentially you've created this nice looking, it's like dressing good and going to a party and then not talking to someone or being like a bland person for them to talk to. They want the personality-driven people that have good stories and they don't have to be loud. They just need to have some personality there for people to talk to. So we're at this point now where you can look as great as you want, but if there's nothing there that's worth trusting, audiences know the difference and they just won't connect with you. So why it's happening is because most design briefs are aesthetic briefs, right? So they're designing to look nice, not to align to a strategy. We have always been strategy aligned. In fact, a lot of the times when we've had people come to us wanting a visual identity and they don't want to get strategy, we say no. And the reason that we say no is because we end up building the strategy within the visual identity. And so they're just essentially paying for a visual identity. And if we're going to give them that work, like you need to pay for it. Um, same as anything. You know, we're all about helping people out, but also we also have you know kids to feed. So it really is about knowing the difference, right? So colours have meaning and fonts have meaning and curvatures of fonts, especially like like sharp edges versus round edges, capitals versus your uppercase versus lowercase. Like all of these things dictate something or translate a message. And so many people are just out here picking fonts willy-nilly, like as if it's just a game of, I don't know, I don't even know what I was gonna say there, but you know what I mean. They're thinking it's just for fun. Same with fonts. Just gonna eye drop this or I'm just gonna eye drop that. Um, even things like spacing in between your letters, alignment. Oh my god, alignment. Left. We are uh as a westernized country or westernized society, if this is who I'm speaking to right now, we read left to right, like an F pattern. So top left to the right, down, left, right, down, and that's how we read. That's the pattern in which we read. And so centered text and right aligned text and left aligned text, you're actually making it really hard for people to read. Then there's rulings and to length of sentences. For instance, you know, the the general rule of thumb is something like uh between eight to twelve uh words on a line before you shift return. All of these things are just they just I just know these things now, right? So for a new designer, these are things that they're learning. Uh and for an older designer or a veteran designer, these are things that just come natural because you've learnt them the whole time. So I'm really hoping that these younger designers get the opportunity to be able to test and play because now everyone's going to bloody Canva or AI and they're missing that experience. I'm really hoping in 10 years' time we don't lose the next generation of creatives or designers because we still really need these people. So design's not the hard part. Design is the execution. It's like saying I'm going to an event. Your strategy is creating the event. Where are you going? What are you doing? Who's going to be there? What dress code do I have? All of these things, like you're writing an invitation. And the dress code is the answer to that, to that invitation. The same thing as the design brief answers the strategy. So if you don't have a strategy, you you're winging it. You're like, I'm just gonna chuck on this dress and hope to God that it's gonna be a dressy party, and then you're overdressed and you're like, uh, orcs. So it really is about understanding the the the rules, the outline, the plan, the invitation. Without that, and everyone's like, I have a strategy. I'm like, okay, and they don't. Uh I know people that think that they've gone and got strategy and they've got like small parts of it, but they've got puzzle pieces that are completely missing. For instance, the adaptation of an audience that has evolved beyond where we are right now and how we consume things. Very, very, very different. So now with things moving so quickly, we need to be moving quickly with the way that we create our identities. So I'm creating identities at the moment that are fluid and moving. So things that can retire quickly and be introduced quickly through design, design styles or uh imagery or all of these types of things that you can transition in and out to stay fresh and to stay relevant. So what people think is true, I guess, in terms of a reframe, if we're gonna think of it like that, is that the design isn't actually a decoration, right? It's it's how it's how it translates. So if you're dressing in a full cocktail dress with elaborate, I don't know if you're a woman, I'm gonna just full preface there, you know, full high heels, you looking the part, blazer on, looking a million bucks, the people are gonna know you're going somewhere elaborate, right? Like versus chucking on some jeans and some sneakers and a t-shirt. That tells you something, right? It tells you, it communicates something before someone's ever said anything. So words are so important that they help to assist the design, but design helps to assist the words. If you've got the wrong things marrying up here, big, big, big disconnect. This is a huge thing. People go and pick a pick a colour or pick a graphic or left align something and chuck an image on and a graph and a moving thing, and before you know it, it's none of it makes sense. People are like, what the what the hell's going on here? And then they're trying to read the order. Hierarchy, hugely important. The way you format, what is the key thing that we need to look at here? Is it the font or is it the image? For instance, you could have a product, a lot of product brands do this, Chanel do this. You have an image of a person holding the product, but they're looking at the product, like a perfume, for instance, if we're gonna visualize this. And so what you do as consumers, it's been proven through eye tracking software, is that we will always look at the person's face first. And then you will see where their eyes are going. And if their eyes are looking directly at the product, then you that is what we call an eye gaze. And you will follow the direction of the eye gaze to the thing that you want them to lead. That is called priming. And all of these things are done through psychology. So if you know these things, you can go back through a lot of the stuff that I've designed on Instagram, on my personal page, and on uh your one and only, and you can see how I've used these tactics. There is a very specific way to make sure that people read things in an order and it dictates a message. So when the strategy is right and I guess you know what you're saying, the design is so easy. And so is the messages and the and the communication that you're trying to do. When the strategy is missing, the design is just something that looks nice, like it doesn't actually translate anything. And so it doesn't matter how nice and how pretty it looks, if it's not converting someone, it it doesn't work, they're not gonna feel anything. So the best brand design isn't the most pretty or the the nicest looking, even though you know that can help get attention on the first glance. It's the one that's the most accurate, right? This is the heart of it. This is what we need to understand. You have to put your strategy in the center of everything because you can change your visual identity. The sound of the soundness of the brand strategy can stay the same. You can change the visual identity around the brand strategy as things move and evolve, but the strategy really needs to kind of stay the same. Like you shouldn't be changing who you are, it's your whole identity. You can change your outfit. Do you know what I mean? I wouldn't go and change that. I shouldn't have said that. People are like, oh, well, now I'm gonna change everything. No, I mean like keep the fixtures of the foundational parts, but you can adapt other things outside. Like, so what I was saying before about staying fluid. So I've spoken about Mars before, but they brought in like a sustainable packet, and when they did that, it increased their sales something like 20%. I remember when I was learning about this, we were learning all about Mars, and they were like one of the first to bring in neuroscience into the way that they dictate consumer psych. And they use like EEG machines. So basically, an EEG is someone goes in like an FMI, it's an FMRI, sorry, um, like a, you know, what do you call them? MRI, well, it's like an MRI, but they scan your brain and the activity. So as you're given stimuli, things light up in your brain as to how you're responding to this. And they are able to get a better look at, I guess, the way that you respond unconsciously, because you don't know. A lot of the times people are like focus groups are biased so people will come in and be like, oh, I've got 12 people. The thing is with those types of things is that people can change their decision based on group, groupthink. So if someone's ever if everyone's picking the same thing, there'll be that one person that may not go against the grain and just choose to stay with the group. This has been proven with scientists, by the way, because they start to doubt themselves. So this is where I guess the single minded things matter. But also it depends on what you're asking them, where you're asking them, and the intention of why you're asking them. So yeah, our biases will always come out in our decisions. And that's why fMRI machines are cool because your brain does things that you can't see. So I guess if your brand feels off, uh it's probably not your designer's fault. Like I'm gonna give them credit, but it is the brief's fault. So if the brief isn't clear, then the designer is going to create. This is why I say it's only as good as the brief gets. If the brief isn't clear, you're going to be designing the wrong thing. And writing a good brief is hard. So that's where the psychology and the research and understanding the strategy come in. Because when you do the research, you're able to analyze who it is that you need to be speaking to, what it is that you're trying to do, market viability, product viability, all of these things that you want to do with your brand need to come from research. No one does the research. So then you actually go through and you create the strategy based off the research and what your intentions are, and then you create the design. So if nothing's working for you right now, chances are that the brand's probably not communicating. And if you're trying to talk to certain audiences and you're not communicating to the right people, you need to find out what the gap is. That's the research. So what you can do right now, so before you go and book the designer or you know, book a marketer, you need to pull up your current brand and ask what it's communicating. And do it through someone that doesn't know your brand. So if you can ask someone around, like maybe a family member that doesn't actually know what you do, like let's face it, my mum probably wouldn't know what I do. She even asked me this the other day. I've only been doing it for 20 years. However, I've changed. I get it. But when you find that gap, it'll be really, really easy for you to be able to understand where you need to be targeting or at least a starting point. So just a slight push, we have our brand gap finder. It's free. Just go on, it's like a scorecard. You can even ask people around you and you can get that done and you can find gaps through that. And you can download that. I'll chuck it in the show notes. So don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. I hate that saying, I shouldn't have said that. Sorry. But don't throw out the brand just because something isn't working. Most of the time you're missing just a tiny little piece of the puzzle. And once you find that, everything will kick off again. It's at the moment, everything feels hard because the market's moving. When you know how to assess the market and I guess where it's going, it's much easier to be able to execute the next step of what you need to do. And then you can start to put a plan together. Until then, you're flying blind and hoping to God that you can just make the right assumptions of what is happening. And nobody wants to guess right now. So that's it this week. We will be diving into this over the next few weeks. Again, I've got a workshop in-person workshop that I will be running in Sydney. Uh, it will be in where I live, out near Camden. So, you know, if you want to go for a drive, that's just where it's gonna be. And we will be doing that in early June. So we will release tickets out in May, and I'll put a wait list up soon. But this will be on an identity realignment. I want to get really in-depth here. This will be really intimate, no more than 20 people, and have a really good solid day where you can, you know, riff things out with me one-on-one and we can go into this. But until then, just keep an eye out. Um, if you're in our emails, that will be coming out soon. But until then, don't freak yourself out. If it's hard, it's because you care, and we will help you get out of it. Until then, I will chat to you next week. Bye. Did you like that episode? I hope so. Because if you did, why don't you head over to whatever platform you listen on and rate and review? It's much appreciated and helps others know what we're about. If you want to follow us, you can find us at your one and only underscore AU on Instagram or head to www.youwan and only.com.au