INSIGHTS / BRAND & STRATEGY
WHAT DO PEOPLE REALLY THINK ABOUT YOUR BRAND?
Uberbrand on 6/07/2026
If you asked ten people who know your business to describe what your brand stands for, what would they say? More importantly, would they all say the same thing?
Positioning has been best described as a place held in the customer’s mind. The description comes from Al Ries and Jack Trout, the two advertising strategists who coined the term in 1981, and it has aged well because it locates the brand where it actually lives: not in your guidelines document, but in the perceptions of the people you serve. Every brand occupies such a place. The only question is whether it is the place you chose, or one that formed by accident while you were busy running the business.
Perception is now formed in more places than ever
The gap between what a company intends and what its audience perceives has always been the central problem of brand strategy. What has changed is how many places perception now forms. Prospective customers read reviews before they read your website. Candidates check what your employees say about you before they apply. And AI assistants now answer the question “what is this company like” on your behalf, drawing on everything published about you, whether you authored it or not.
You cannot control every one of those places. What you can control is the clarity and consistency of the idea they all reflect.
The essence: one idea that drives everything
A brand strategy is the roadmap from the position you currently hold to the position you want. It begins with understanding, honestly, what your audience thinks of you now, and it is summarised in what we call your essence: the single idea that drives everything your brand does.
The essence is not a tagline. It is usually only a few words, but each one carries weight: the brand’s underlying attributes and values, what it stands for, and its promise to the people it touches. Done well, it becomes the test every decision can be held against, from a product launch to the tone of a support email. From there it can be visualised, and even prototyped, to show how the brand comes to life.
You cannot close a gap you have not measured
Most leadership teams can recite what their brand is supposed to stand for. Far fewer can say with confidence how closely their audience’s view matches it, because they have never measured the distance between the two. That distance is where marketing budgets quietly leak: every dollar spent communicating a position your experience does not support is a dollar spent widening the credibility gap.
This is a measurement problem before it is a creative one, and it is where we now suggest every organisation starts.
Our Brand Health Diagnostic is a short, structured assessment built on the model described above. It shows you where your brand is clear, where it is inconsistent, and where the gap between intention and perception is largest. The results give you a specific starting point rather than a general sense of unease.
