Businesses with Soul
Recently I read a quote in a newsletter that stopped me in my tracks.
“The world is shifting so digitally in every sense. But there’s still room – and people still want – real, physical places that don’t feel sterile. Where you come in and they know your name and you know their name. If you build a place like that, a place with soul, people will rally around it. People love their neighbourhood spots. They protect places that are uniquely their own, businesses that try to do good for their local community.”
-Alec Ginsberg of C.O. Bigelow, For Starters
I mean. He hit the nail on the head. How many of your favorite spots are your favorites because you always sit in the same booth, or the barista starts your coffee order as soon as you walk in the door? How much more personal is a spot that is the only place in the world where you can order that one meal that instantly takes you back to your childhood? You don’t get that at Starbucks. Scaling to be like Starbucks isn’t inherently bad – I’m just saying it’s not the path for every business, and that’s ok.
In business today, success is often measured by scale.. It feels like the biggest questions are “how can we automate this” and “how big can we grow and how fast”. While there’s a time and a place for those questions, sometimes I wonder if the question should shift to be “should we automate this” and “should we grow bigger or should we go deeper”.
The branding process is not one size fits all. Sometimes the answer is to modernize and simplify, but most of the time the answer is to lean into the things that already make a business loved by its community. Specific business goals, audience, and industry all play into strategy, but at the root of it we’re looking for one big thing:
What is it about your business that customers love and feel attached to?
When we find that big thing, the rest of the brand just makes sense. Everything from your logo design to the type of paper you print your menus on all point back to that big thing. Your big thing is your soul. It should shine through in every touchpoint of your business.
Investing in your brand doesn’t just have to be for franchises. It doesn’t have to look corporate or clean or modern or sterile. Your brand can be functional and support growth without losing all character. And your brand isn’t just your logo! Every choice you make in your business – your website, your menus, the label on your product, the scent of the candle you keep lit, your product or service, how your employees interact with customers, all the way down to something as mundane as your bathroom signage – each of these touchpoints is an opportunity to surprise and delight your customers and show them a little bit of that soul.
The best projects we work on start with a solid strategy and end with a big picture look at how your brand is interacted with in the real world. Without the foundation, without finding your soul first, everything seems to fall short and feel… off. Without the big picture, your brand lives as a digital thing that packs half of the punch. But once we find your soul and bring it to the world? That’s where the magic happens.
Lila Jimenez