The Law of Perception 👓🕶️ EBH

The answer to the question, "where does a brand actually live?"

Law #1: The Law of Strategy
Law #2: The Law of Focus
Law #3: The Law of Perception

I often catch myself deploying seemingly endless metaphors when I teach people about branding. It’s a filter. It’s cement blocks we drop in the ocean. It’s what people say about us. It’s an emotional connection. It’s a living organism. A brand is context. Or it’s the personification of the organization.

Look, I love metaphors 6.4 times more than most people, but this seems excessive. We all know what a brand is, right? We’ve been surrounded by them our entire lives. They influence us in big ways and small. Heck, we make a living by building and using them.

In a way, asking anyone in the modern world what a brand is, is a lot like asking a fish what water is. We’re surrounded and inundated by it, that we often lose sight of what it is. 

Because, when you pull the layers back, you start to realize that a brand isn’t… anything. 

It isn’t something you can see. It isn’t something you can touch. For all the time, money, and energy we put into our brands, they aren’t really ours. 

“Your” brand exists solely in other people’s heads. While it can be influenced and nudged, that brand is 100% how others perceive your company, your products, and what it’s like to work there.

This law is very much a double-edged sword. First because as something that isn’t “real” in any sense of the word, we cannot directly affect it. 

So how can you be responsible for the brand if you have no direct impact on it? Through influence.

If we add another metaphor to the mix, the brand is like a bird’s nest. When building a nest, the bird picks up what it can where it can. Whatever it finds becomes the nest. In a city, a bird next might have coffee stirrers and bits of receipts. In a forest, it will be made of pine needles and twigs. In an open area, it will be made of grass and straw. The only way you can change a birds nest is to change what materials are available and accessible to it. 

Like a bird collecting material for a nest, your brand is made up of all sorts of experiences and touchpoints the person had with your brand. You can’t change how someone sees your brand, but you can surround them with new messages and proof points. With intention, you can seed the ground with the things you want to become the nest. You can’t get into the next and make it into something new (if you do, the bird will never enter it again because it is no longer the bird’s), all you can do is make it easy for the bird to build the nest you want it to make.

That means, changing brand perception can take time. But the good news is that once set, it can take a lot of time to change it again. 

But because it isn’t “real” it allows us to expand the parameters of the game in a way that gives us almost infinite options on how to approach our world. Options that extend way beyond the logo and website.

Would changing the script that customer service uses influence people’s perception of the brand? Yes.

Would changing the outgoing voicemail message change people’s perception? Yes. (And I know someone who became interested in a company specifically because of that outgoing message, so try and fight me.)

Would making sure every interviewee gets a box of cookies delivered to their home change perception? Oh yes.

None of these things are classically seen as something that employer branding needs to worry about, but when you see that the name of the game is perception influence, you can find so many ways to influence that perception.

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What was the response to my last $25 workshop?

It was excellent. Never thought about looking at content and EB this way. It's given me renewed energy. 

This one is co-hosted with Rachel Kennedy (trust me, this is a major value add), meaning you get two trainers for your $25. What a bargain!

***This Newsletter Contains No ChatGPT***

-James Ellis [LinkedIn] [Website]

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