Branding: The Icing,
The Cake and You

Every person has a reputation. Everyone you meet will form an opinion
about you, your pots or your company, even if they don’t know you yet. The
challenge is to manage your reputation, so that the opimion people have of
you is positive. This is what creates a brand.

As a potter, you may ask the question: “Isn’t branding just for corporations?
What do I care about branding—I make pots, not cars or coffee!’ But
branding really does apply to you—t’s not only about what you do, it’s about
what you do differently from everyone else. And since your handmade mug
serves the same function as any commercially-produced drinking vessel
(aesthetics aside!), getting your target market to recognise you and your work
and choose it over other alternatives is critical to keeping your practice viable
in the marketplace.

Brands have a number of different strategic functions, enabling you to:

* Differentiate yourself/your work from others

* Position your focused message in the hearts and minds of
your target audience

* Persist and be consistent in your marketing efforts

* Customise your offerings to reflect your personal brand

¢ Deliver your message clearly and swiftly

° Establish credibility

° Craft an emotional connection

As artists, craftspeople and small businesses, branding isn’t about slick
advertisements. It’s about getting your target market to see you as a
craftsperson with artistic brilliance.

Building a Brand

A brand is a promise of the value your clients will receive. In a complex
and competitive world—where it’s increasingly hard to know what’s real and
what’s not—having your customers not only acknowledge but support the

promise of your brand 1s the key to building a thriving business.

The icing on a cake 1s a promise of what’s inside, too—but branding is
about more than just icing! Branding is about making sure the cake is as
good as the icing makes it look. That means that your brand isn’t just your
logo, your business cards or your website—it’s about the whole experience.
Your brand 1s your pots, your customer service, your attitude when people
meet you at shows and when you take their order. Your brand is also made
of things like your style, delivering on time and how you solve customer
problems with your product or service. All the icing in the world won’t cover
up a badly-made pot or a cranky attitude with a customer just because they
want a replacement for a plate from a dinnerware set you made a few years
ago and don’t make anymore. Making a long-term customer starts with the
icing, but the quality of your ingredients keeps them coming back!

That doesn’t mean that you should dismiss the value of the icing, though—
it’s an important component in the branding process. It’s how you convince
your audience to test you out and explore your product further. That’s
why investing in great photos of your work is one of the most important
promotional things you can do to market yourself; professional photos with
strong visual interest get noticed. Whether they’re on your studio sale postcard
or in the application package you send to a show like Circle Craft or One
of A Kind, great photos get remembered and recirculated, and help draw

“Your brand
encompasses
the total
experience
of doing
business
with you”

people in. Because, if the icing isn’t tempting,
if the icing doesn’t reflect what’s inside, not
drawing in the right people 1s almost as much
of a loss as not being able to keep first-time
buyers from coming back to the richness that
is your brand.

Your brand—the holistic expression of you
and your pots—integrates all your marketing
around the core idea that you present. It allows
you to speak to your audience consistently,
so they can recognise anything you promote
yourself with immediately.

Your brand is how you speak of your
integrity as a craftsperson. It must be
meaningful to your audience, consistent in
execution (product, communications and
customer service), build relationships and
ultimately foster customer loyalty.

Your reputation is priceless in the
marketplace. If your brand 1s clear, distinctive
and easily understood, if tt expresses a unique,
compelling benefit that people believe in, it

will bring you all the business you can handle.
Greg Lui and Amber Kennedy

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