Branding, REBRANDED.

It should come as no surprise, then, that the Black Sheep office had a roiling debate over how to describe ourselves. Yes, in the fashion of the mechanic with a clunker, or the famed shoeless cobbler, Black Sheep was looking to abandon the outdated tag proclaiming us “a marketing and publicity rebellion.” For, while this one thing is true, we’ve grown up a little since then, and we’ve expanded our vocabulary, so to speak.

And so we settled on “A Strategic Branding Agency.”

And that prompted an idea for a blog on how the word “branding” is inaccurately and inexplicably used to describe the strictly visual portion of a brand, and how we should do something about it.

And this is that blog.

In its more traditional, designer-y sense, “branding” is a combination of permanent visuals that accompany a business or organization — the logo, the type treatments, the color choices, treatment of photography and graphics and any combination thereof.  In reality, however, branding is ANY feature of a business or organization that makes it different from all the others.

Think about Target, or TOMS or Warby Parker. They didn’t stop with a color palette. Heck, these brands haven’t stopped yet — they travel, they support, they have friends, fans and followers.

But you don’t have to be worldwide to have a great and effective brand. If you support children’s charities in a monthly fundraiser at your restaurant, that’s part of your brand. If you distinguish your cleaning service from other cleaning services by hiring only staff who sing opera while they vacuum, that’s branding. If your tweets come from the point of view of a delightfully sassy jelly donut named Marisol, that’s hilarious. And branding.

The new “branding” isn’t a logo. Or even graphic design. The new branding is strategy. The new branding is owning your company’s presence, online and offline. It’s a force of personality that shows up everywhere your audience is. It’s being memorable. It’s relating inward and reaching outward. It’s inclusive and aware and all about doing good things.

And if it isn’t, well, we know where you can find some folks to fix that for you.

(Photo via Flickr/Rupert Ganzer