Brand SpiralBrand Spiral
With a logo. Meet an imaginary coffee roaster: this is Little Fire's logo. It looks good. But without brand foundations, it's just decoration. What's it built on?
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“Sure, I sell coffee. But I'm up at five so this neighborhood starts the day with a cup someone actually cared about.”
The core of a brand isn't the product. It's the purpose.
Customers don't just buy what you sell. They also feel why you do it. That's your purpose: the reason your business exists beyond making money. It's the core everything else grows from.
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Your brandCan you say in one sentence why your business exists?
“In twenty years, this street has a coffee culture of its own. And it started at our counter.”
Your vision is the place you're heading.
A vision is a picture of the future: what your neighborhood and your customers' lives look like if you succeed. Not a business plan, but a direction you can make today's decisions by.
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Your brandCan you describe where your business is headed in ten or twenty years?
“So every morning I roast small batches, by hand, slowly, for the three blocks around us.”
Your mission is what you do for your vision, every single day.
Your mission is what you do today to make the vision real: for whom, what and how. You don't write it once. You do it again every morning.
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Your brandDo you know what you do every day to get there?
“Last year a supplier offered beans at half the price. Nobody could tell me where they came from, so I said no. Honesty, patience, craft: those don't get cut.”
Values steer how you decide and how you behave.
Values show in your decisions, not in nice words on your website. You find out what you really value when it costs money and you still don't budge.
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Your brandCan you name the two or three things you won't compromise on, even when it costs more?
“We keep it casual. Our roaster has a name: Big Bertha. If something's funny, we laugh.”
People choose brands the way they choose friends.
If your brand were a person, what would it be like? How does it talk, what makes it laugh, what would it never say? That's how people recognize you, before they even see your logo.
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Your brandCan you describe what your brand is like when it speaks?
“I'm not roasting for the whole city. I'm roasting for three blocks. And I know most of them by name.”
Talk to everyone and you talk to no one.
You can only speak clearly if you know to whom: what they want, what they worry about, where you meet them. And who you're not talking to.
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Your brandDo you know exactly who your brand is for, and who it isn't?
“There are five coffee shops within walking distance. We're the only one that roasts its own beans, right here, every morning.”
First you need a place in your customer's mind. Then the sentence that says it.
Positioning is the place you hold in your customer's mind compared to the others: why they should choose you. Your message puts that place into one sentence.
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Your brandCan you say how you're different from your competitors?
“Same logo as at the start. But now there's something behind it: we know why we roast, for whom, and how.”
The logo isn't the foundation. It's the result.
Logo, colors, type and images are the visible form of your foundations. When your purpose, your tone and your place stand behind them, the logo finally says something.
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Your brandDo you have a visual identity that grows out of these foundations?
“On the cup sleeve, on Instagram, on Google Maps. Everywhere, the same roaster says hello.”
A brand is built on repetition: say the same thing, again and again, unchanged.
The cup, the website, Instagram, a reply email: people remember you when they see and hear the same thing everywhere. You don't have to say it perfectly once. You have to say it the same way, every time.
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Your brandDoes the same brand speak everywhere your customers meet you?
Your spiral
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Brand Spiral
Your brand isn't your logo. It's the picture that forms in your customers' minds. You can't put it on a table, which is why it's hard to see what it's made of.
Péter Serfőző's brand spiral makes it visible. A brand doesn't appear all at once. It grows: it starts from a core, your purpose, and builds outward turn by turn, to the logo and beyond.
We'll walk you through it with an imaginary coffee roaster, Little Fire, in nine turns. It's also a quick check of your own brand: at every turn, mark where you stand: Got it, Sort of or Not yet. Three minutes, and at the end you get your own spiral.
Use the buttons to move on, or the arrow keys on a computer.