Are Branding and Positioning inter-changeable?
6 July 2009
A recent suggestion by a colleague that
Positioning and Branding were
interchangeable interested me, as someone who does get involved with
internal branding of corporates, so I looked through the thesaurus in
search of other alternate words to Branding. It was pretty
enlightening. Compare the associations with the following two
words:
Brand: Classification, badge,
identification, signature, symbol, emblem, stamp, label
Self:
Being, essence, personality, substance, texture, distinctiveness,
singularity, essential nature
Brand is associated with
external 'label' words, whereas self digs deeper into essence. And
essence is the true heart of a brand.
Self is used as a
modifier and also has many other meanings: self-important,
self-confident, self-respect, self-control, self-centred, selfish.
It's a great reminder that brand (self) can have positive or negative
connotations, and that self-perception may be completely different
from how others perceive you.
"What is your branding ~ or
positioning ~ or self?" A potentially provocative question!
Then
on further reflection I wonder if semantics is actually the real problem. Each
term may well mean different things to different people and in any
conversation, brief or proposal, you can never be sure that everyone
means the same thing when they use words like "Brand" and
"Positioning"
What do they each mean to you?
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