Brand Essence: Why Your Brand Will Remain Invisible Without It (with 3 SME Examples)

Without a clear brand essence, your SME looks just like every other business in the eyes of customers. Interchangeable. Replaceable. That’s exactly why many SMEs lose customers to competitors who aren’t better—just more precisely positioned. We’ll show you in five steps how to identify your brand essence and communicate it in a way that sticks.

What makes up a brand?

In theory, a brand consists of the following components, which in turn are part of the brand essence: 

• The visual design: logo, colors, and typography.
• The tone: How do you speak to your target audience? Formally or informally, with or without humor? 
• Brand value: What do you offer, and how does your target audience benefit from your offering?
• The brand attributes: What characteristics define the brand?

What exactly is a brand essence, and why is it so important?

Every brand has its own USP, or “Unique Selling Proposition.” This refers to your company’s unique selling point. To identify this USP, ask yourself what makes your company indispensable and sets it apart from the competition. 

Some definitions of brand essence also refer to the distillation of the brand’s values, talents, and achievements, which are bundled within this essence. But be careful: the brand essence is not the brand image.

Because a brand’s image is consciously established. It is shaped by factors such as the communication channels and methods a company uses. Or through the advertising it runs or the brand ambassadors it employs. The brand essence, on the other hand, emerges subconsciously, is emotional, creates a mood, and is less contrived.

It may, but does not necessarily have to, include the following values: 

• Reliability
• Innovation & Technology
• Affordable or high price
• Product quality
• Relevance to families
• Social responsibility
• Environmental awareness, animal and human rights

How do you define your brand essence?

The brand essence is not a rigid construct; it can change over time, much like a person’s character, which can also evolve. Nevertheless, fundamental values should remain the same—and usually do.

If that is not the case, or if a company abruptly changes its brand essence and thereby betrays its values, this can confuse customers and, in the worst case, lead to a boycott. This happened, for example, to a well-known natural cosmetics company (Santé), which suddenly merged with a cosmetics giant (L’Oréal) after more than thirty years.

The result: values such as environmental protection and animal rights were effectively abandoned overnight. Loyal customers were disappointed and responded to the company’s departure from its values with a so-called “shitstorm.” Some stores delisted the products. 

It is therefore important that these values remain intact for customers during a redesign or relaunch. Or that marketing sensitizes customers to a change in advance. 

The possibilities for doing so are manifold: interviews with management, blogs, podcasts, newsletters, posts, and much more. It has never been easier to reach the target audience.

The Nivea Brand Essence

A better example is the “Nivea” brand. The company has its roots in the manufacture of skin care products. From the very beginning, the product was associated with families and symbolized values such as trust, security, and reliability—until the early 21st century.

The company then expanded rapidly and broadened its product range. The result of this overly rapid growth: the brand essence became diluted, and sales figures dropped as a result. 

By refocusing on its core values, communicating them effectively to the outside world, and streamlining its product range, Nivea was able to regain its footing. Sales to the target audience have been on the rise ever since.

How do you identify and develop your brand essence?

When you define your brand essence, you have a “common thread” that supports your communication, marketing, and efforts to acquire new customers. 

Components of your brand essence

Broadly speaking, the brand’s core consists, simply put, of: 

• Your business and your industry.
• Your target audience

• Your market and, if applicable, the niche you serve.
• Corporate Identity
• Corporate design
• Corporate behavior
• Unique Selling Proposition (USP)
• Brand Management

Below, we’ll take a closer look at these components and explain how you can successfully identify and define your brand essence.

The Values of Your Brand Essence 

First, you should define your brand values. You can determine these in more detail by asking yourself the following questions: 

• Why was the company founded? For what reason? What is your mission and that of your employees?
• What do you want to achieve or change? What is your vision?
• When you look at your company in 5, 10, and 20 years, where do you want it to be?
• How well-known do you want it to be? Do you want to gain recognition locally or globally?
• What sets your employees apart? Why do they work at your company?
• What passion drives your company?

Perhaps you think these questions don’t apply to you because they address a rather dry topic, and you feel that it’s difficult to spark emotion with your products and commit to a vision and mission. But: Many topics have an emotional core that needs to be uncovered first. 

Let’s take garden fences as an example. At first glance, this product is also rather dry. But if you look at it from the customer’s perspective, you can quickly see that fences offer security and protection. They prevent animals or small children from simply running away. In the summer, a garden fence also provides privacy from nosy neighbors.

Some questions (vision, mission, and passion) may sound dramatic, but they are very important. They can always help you clearly define your USP—your unique selling proposition.  

Your Target Audience 

The key question here is: “What customer problems and challenges does your brand solve?” Customers buy because of a need, and this manifests itself in challenges and problems that your target audience cannot or does not want to solve on their own. Your brand should be the first thing that pops into your customers’ minds when they think of a solution.

Another question that arises in this context is: “What does your target audience look like, and which customer persona do you want to address?” Of course, you can have more than one target audience. However, it’s important that you clearly define the common ground and the needs of this target audience. 

And be careful: Make sure you don’t fall back on clichés or use empty buzzwords when formulating your values. Words like “innovation,” “customer-oriented,” or “highest quality” may point in a certain direction, but they don’t create a mental image for the customer, let alone evoke emotions.

Visually represent your brand essence

Your logo is part of your brand identity and influences how your company is perceived. To ensure your brand image and design are consistent, ask yourself the following questions beforehand:

• What does our visual language aim to communicate to our customers and future customers? 
• Are our brand values recognizable in the logo?
• Does this appeal to our target audience and resonate with them?

The Brand Essence in Online Marketing

We’ve all been there: When you’re online, you’re practically bombarded with advertising messages, and the flood of information has long since become unmanageable. To stand out from the crowd and achieve quick success, you need a strong and meaningful brand essence that sparks emotion. Apart from that, your brand essence does the following:

• It communicates your core message with precision.
• It is the essence of your brand and
• clearly communicates what your brand stands for.

These three points are reflected in effective online marketing—from corporate design to logo, branding, and more. Don’t be afraid to ask some slightly quirky questions. If your company were a car, what brand would it be? And why? 

Believe it or not, you can use humorous answers like these wonderfully for your online and content marketing to encourage your community to engage. In addition to social media posts, it’s also worth using this hook for a newsletter. By the way: You can find 5 expert tips for successful online business marketing here.

Does a brand essence change over time?

Once you’ve defined your brand essence, it’s important to stay the course and not dilute it with poor decisions, as Nivea did. Make sure your brand presents a consistent image. It’s also helpful to use internal communication to regularly remind employees of the company’s values. 

Over time, the brand essence can change due to various influences. However, this should never happen abruptly, as it did with Santé, but rather naturally and gradually. An example: Some meat product manufacturers are adding vegan and vegetarian products to their range and are therefore gradually moving away from their original product. This also shifts the brand’s values. However, this happens at a pace that is easily digestible for existing customers.

What are some good examples of a brand essence?

Here are some good examples of brand essences for inspiration: 

1. BMW’s brand essence: Driving pleasure

In all its sales and service initiatives, BMW asks itself: “How can we make driving a pleasure for our drivers?” This clearly sets its brand essence apart from Audi (technology-focused) and Mercedes (status-focused). This has led to slogans like “The Ultimate Driving Machine,” “Pure Driving Pleasure,” or “Designed for Driving Pleasure.”

2. Disneyland’s Brand Essence: Enchantment

Customers who visit Disneyland are meant to have a magical experience that makes them happy. That’s why the parks are specially designed—even trash cans are embellished so as not to pull people out of your world. Slogans include “Where Dreams Come True” and “We Create Enchantment.”

3. Coca-Cola’s Brand Essence: Happiness

Coca-Cola is special because only two people know its recipe. And the company plays on this in its marketing. It knows: Coca-Cola is unique, and enjoying an original Coke makes people happy. That’s why the company also addresses customer satisfaction in its Brand Guide. 

4. Volvo: Safety 

Since 1959, Volvo has stood for safety, thereby appealing to a completely different target audience than BMW, Mercedes, or Audi. In fact, Volvo was the first company to introduce the three-point seatbelt, which is now standard in all cars.

5. L’Oréal Paris: Female Self-Confidence

In its Brand Style Guide, L’Oréal defines its target audience as follows: “I am a beautiful, independent, and powerful woman. I am valuable, and I want people to see that.” This forms the basis of its brand essence: having the self-confidence to attract attention and invest in oneself.

6. Adidas: Be relentless

Adidas wants customers to feel the power that lies dormant within them when they use its products. Boundaries are meant to be crossed to become the best version of oneself. It is a powerful moment that the brand aims to ignite in its customers. 

“Impossible is Nothing” or “Bring it on!” are slogans that emerged from this brand essence. This sets the company apart from Nike, which focuses its brand essence on victory and derives its marketing efforts from that. 

Formulating a brand essence for solo self-employed individuals

Perhaps you’re a solo entrepreneur and are wondering how to formulate your brand essence. How about a text like this:

“I’m Anna Müller, and I help stressed-out employees become stress-free and handle matters more calmly. How I’m able to do this: Because I’ve walked the path to a more relaxed version of myself: From an overworked IT professional in a large corporation with leadership responsibilities to a solo entrepreneur. 

‘Letting things slide’ while still being successful in your career is a mindset you have toward yourself. I love being a support to my clients in this process and teaching them methods and exercises for stress reduction.”   

Conclusion: Develop your brand essence with Waterproof Web Wizard

Let’s be clear: The foundation of every marketing initiative is an authentic brand essence. Okay, admittedly: The introspection required to develop your brand essence isn’t exactly easy.

We’re happy to support you in this process as well as with other initiatives such as <adata-wpil href="https://waterproof-web-wizard.de/blog/was-ist-google-my-business/" class="lnk">SEO, online marketing, <adata-wpil href="https://waterproof-web-wizard.de/blog/was-ist-google-my-business/" class="lnk">or building your website with <adata-wpil href="https://waterproof-web-wizard.de/blog/typo3-website-erstellen-leitfaden/" class="lnk">TYPO3 or WordPress.</adata-wpil></adata-wpil></adata-wpil>

By the way: We’re an agency that first listens to what you need before imposing a solution on you. Your goals are our top priority, which is why we discuss all decisions with you and your team first.

This way, we can succeed together. Whether it’s an online store or the needs of offline customers: if there’s no connection between the two, nothing can really work well.

You can reach us by phone at +49 751 95 89 92 17 or contact us via our contact form. Feel free to read our customer reviews to get a better sense of who we are.

Want to sharpen your brand essence?

In a 60-minute workshop, we’ll work with you to define the essence of your brand—which you can then reflect in every website, every offer, and every conversation. Request a workshop.