Ben Guttmann
A brand isn't a logo. A brand isn't a color palette or font, and it isn't a package, mascot, or jingle. A brand is a promise – a promise that when you make choice X, you get experience Y. Everything else is just a representation of that promise, a mental shortcut that helps people figure out what to buy, who to vote for, who to donate to, or how to make any other selection. If you want to build a great brand, and if you want to do great marketing, you must start with that promise.
And in this free, one-week email crash course, I'll walk you through how to do just that. Sign-up below for your first lesson, right in your inbox:
Each of us makes thousands of decisions each and every day, from the mundane, like which coffee shop we visit on our commute, to the major, like which type of car are we going to drive. Brands, from Starbucks to Tesla, help us make these decisions, by providing useful mental shortcuts – brand X means one thing, and brand Y means something else. Instead of having to make a big, exhaustive pros and cons list for each choice, we can jump to the end by trusting the right brand. In our first lesson, which you'll receive in your inbox immediately, we'll learn what a brand actually is.
Before you draw a single pixel on any logo, you need to start with the words that make up your brand's promise. What does it mean to buy your product? What type of experience are you guaranteeing your customer? In this course, we'll start with the "why," your brand's essence, and grow your brand from there.
Brands, like people, are fuzzy things. To help define and build a brand, this framework helps you make use of three major verbal touchstones, your brand essence, arena, and positioning statement. Day by day, we'll walk you through each step of this process, and within just one week you'll be better at branding than 99% of all marketers.
Marketing without positioning is like driving without knowing where you're going (or how to use turn signals). You can certainly go somewhere, but is it the destination you wanted? Positioning is the hard work of answer three simple questions: What do you sell? Who do you sell it to? Why is it better than everything else? We'll go over each of these tools, and give you and easy-to-follow template for building a killer positioning statement.
Once you nail your promise, you can finally begin to bring it to life through your brand's experience, and ultimately, it's identity. We'll share examples of world-class brand experiences, frameworks to help make your brand real, and a few secret tips for how to design a brand that makes your competitors jealous.
My name is Ben Guttmann, and I started a marketing agency out of an old professor's basement in 2011, working with the local ice cream shop and camera repair store, and grew it to a multi-million dollar company working with some of the biggest brands in the world. After ten years, we sold our agency in 2021.
Now I teach and write about marketing, technology, and business, and I consult with brands and agencies looking to do big things. I've given this very same branding lesson to thousands of students over the past ten years, and clients have paid us lots and lots of money to apply it to them. And now, I'm sharing it with you for free – use it wisely!
After nearly a decade of teaching marketing, this branding lesson is my students' favorite each and every year. And in my career running an agency and an advisor, clients from local businesses to startups to Fortune 500 behemoths have routinely paid top dollar for me to work with them on this very process. Now, all you gotta do is drop your email below and over the next seven days it will land in your inbox for free. All I ask is that you use these tools to do great things.
