Branding + Marketing = 1

Rummaging around John Jantsch's Duct Tape Marketing site I saw an interesting post on branding and marketing.  John's focus is on marketing insights for small business and he likes to keep it simple (my favorite word) for business owners who don't have marketing as their day jobs. John presents some practical definitions of branding and marketing:

• Marketing is getting someone who has a need to know, [to] like and trust you.
• Branding is the art of becoming knowable, likable and trustable.

But the major point for me comes later in his note:

• If marketing is doing then branding is being. Often the two are so integrated strategically and tactically that it’s hard to say one comes before or is more important than the other.

While a case can be made that defines marketing differently from branding, it's more useful to stand back and see that good marketing and good branding are interchangeable. We marketers should resist the urge to further define and dissect the arts and sciences of our profession.

We need to keep it simple when we explain ourselves to non-marketers and resist the urge to build impressive complexity. They don't care about and don't need the subtleties. In my view, it's all about reputation. Marketing is building an effective reputation, and branding is pretty much the same thing.

Photo credit