If Your Business Sucks No Amount Of Branding Will Save It

But if you are a business owner trying to fix your branding, that explanation is about as useful as saying a body is how healthy you are. Cool. Now what the hell do I do?

That definition describes an outcome, not a to do list. And that is where most branding advice completely falls apart.

If we are going to make this useful, here is a better way to think about it.

Your brand is how someone would describe your company to a friend. That is it. Not your logo. Not your font. Not your color palette deck with forty seven shades of blue. It is the story that sticks.

For example, there is a dog food company that sends you your last bag of dog food for free and asks you to donate it instead of reordering. I am a dog owner. That story stuck with me. I have seen it maybe twice. I do not even remember the company’s name. But I remember the move.

Sure, there is logistics behind it. Shipping dog food is expensive. They probably cannot resell partial churn orders. They found a clever way to turn that into goodwill.

Does not matter. It is still a good thing. It is thoughtful. And it made an impression.

That is branding.

Now let us talk about why most branding does not matter.

I am going to say something that makes marketing people uncomfortable. For most small businesses, branding matters very little. Not zero. But way less than you have been led to believe.

Here is why.

I am forty four years old and until recently, I had never been to a Dairy Queen. Not once.

We were in Florida. I wanted ice cream. My daughter wanted ice cream. I could not find a local ice cream shop, so I pulled into a Dairy Queen because they sell ice cream. That was the decision.

We ordered two Blizzards. The guy handed them out the window and flipped one upside down. I remember thinking, okay, what the hell was that.

The Blizzard was good. Really good. Tasty. Not expensive. Two of them were around nine bucks. That is a win.

About a week later, we saw another Dairy Queen while we were out. Liz asked if we could stop and get ice cream again. Not because of the upside down thing. Not because of branding. Because it was nearby, affordable, and the ice cream was good.

That is the point.

The upside down thing was not a selling point. It was just a ritual.

Nobody chooses Dairy Queen because they get to watch a Blizzard defy gravity for two seconds. You go because you are already passing it, you want a Blizzard, it is affordable, and it tastes good. That is it.

Same thing with massive rebrands. Pepsi changes their logo. Coke tweaks theirs. Millions of dollars spent. I would bet real money it had zero impact on sales. Nobody wakes up and decides to switch soda brands because a logo really spoke to them.

Now, there are exceptions. Restaurants, for example. When Hardee’s repositioned themselves as a higher quality burger joint, I noticed. I tried it. That change did influence behavior.

So I am not saying branding never matters. I am saying it rarely matters, especially compared to execution.

If you are an electrician, plumber, HVAC company, or any local service business, here is the brutally boring truth. You grow by doing the basics exceptionally well.

Do good work. Give a shit about customers. Do not bullshit people. Do not say you will be there tomorrow and disappear. Charge fairly. Ask for reviews. Ask for referrals. Be discoverable online. Have a clean website. Have your Google Business Profile dialed in. Look legitimate on social media.

That is the recipe.

The shitty part is you need all of it. If even one piece slips, especially customer experience, growth dies fast.

I have been doing this long enough to spot it early. Reviews start to change tone. Response times slow down. Schedules get sloppy. When that happens, I usually have the same conversation with the owner.

I tell them exactly what is happening. They are too busy for their current capacity. Customers are starting to feel it. And if nothing changes, it will get worse fast.

At that point, there are only real options. Put another truck on the road. Hire more help. Tighten scheduling. Or consciously pull back work. If they do nothing, they drown and their brand becomes "he's always late, or they do shitty work".

That is not theory. It is pattern recognition.

So what is branding, practically speaking.

Branding is how you want people to perceive your business, and everything you do either reinforces that or damages it. Everything. Your logo on the side of your truck. How you drive that truck. How your website looks. How your emails read. How you talk to people. How you handle mistakes. How you show up when it is inconvenient.

If your logo is on your truck and you drive like an asshole, that is your brand. If your website looks like it was built in 2009 and never touched again, that is your brand. If your work is great but your communication sucks, that is your brand too.

None of this is magical. None of it is secret.

If you want to build a brand, here is the least sexy advice you will ever hear.

Treat people the way you want to be treated. Do good work. Keep your word. Do not cut corners. Put solid infrastructure in place. Look professional everywhere customers encounter you.

That is it.

No rituals. No buzzwords. No upside down Blizzards.

Just competence, consistency, and respect.

Everything else is decoration.