If Your Brand Is What Your Customer Says It Is: The Imperative of Seeing Their Reality
“YOUR BRAND ISN’T WHAT YOU SAY IT IS. IT’S WHAT THEY SAY IT IS.”
— Marty Neumeier, Author and Co-founder of Level C
This powerful declaration from Marty Neumeier cuts through conventional wisdom about branding. Contrary to popular belief, a brand is not merely a logo, a product, or even a promise a company makes. These are merely tools or intentions. A brand, in its truest sense, is a result — specifically, a customer’s gut feeling about a product, service, or company. It takes root in their heads and their hearts. Customers translate the raw materials thrown at them (every touchpoint, every interaction, every message). From these, they construct their own version of the brand. This means every customer creates a slightly different view, and collectively, these millions of individual “customer brands” shape a brand’s true reputation. That reputation, the living, evolving perception in the marketplace, is the brand.
If the brand is ultimately what they say it is, then a critical challenge emerges. How does an organisation truly measure and manage this collective “gut feeling” across millions of individual perceptions? How do you understand what’s happening within the Opaque Black Box of customer reality, especially when the Streetlight Effect tempts you to focus solely on internal metrics and controlled messaging? This profound ambiguity is directly connected to a fundamental business truth.
This is precisely where my diagnostic approach begins. My early work, including what I termed the Brand Diagnostic Assessment, evolved into the Organisational CT Scan – a refined methodology designed to bring light to organisations’ unseen. It meticulously measures an organisation’s customer experiences, touching every touchpoint from product design and messaging to overall product and service, brand culture, and employee behaviours. This in-depth diagnostic approach identifies why revenue vanishes unnoticed over time by quantifying the underlying emotional customer disconnects that traditional reporting often overlooks.
Over a decade of investigating and leading organisations to create brand value, delivering customer excellence. Experience consistently shows customers powerfully communicate this truth daily: “Your brand isn’t what you say it is. It’s what we say it is.” Understanding these intricate, often hidden, customer perceptions is the key to identifying where and how a company’s true, often uncaptured (upside) value—the “unknown unknowns” sits hidden in plain sight. This approach highlights fresh insights that profoundly strengthen and boost brand performance and revenue growth, breaking down what often seem like impossible-to-solve challenges for global industry leaders.
Ultimately, true brand value and customer excellence stem not from internal pronouncements or polished marketing but from diligently understanding and actively shaping the customer’s reality through verifiable, diagnostic insight. The imperative is clear: pay closer attention to what they truly feel and dare to look where others don’t.
