Branding: a list of refusals, not a style guide

The article on the branding pillar describes decisions and objects, and notes that there is no undo. The article on visual identity handles the objects. This page handles the decisions, which is the part that happens before anybody opens a piece of software.

In a ten- to fifty-person business, a brand is not a universe. It is a short list: who you are addressing, what you refuse to do, and what you promise in terms that can be held against you.

Those three decide the name, the tone, the price level, what gets photographed, what gets said on the phone, and what the logo has to survive. Without them the design runs on taste — yours, and then the next supplier’s.

This article also handles the part nobody handles: here a name is typed with a thumb, on a phone keyboard, by people who will write it three or four different ways. That makes its spelling a commercial property rather than a preference.

The formula is the commonest in Algerian commerce, and it is structurally empty for a simple reason: it describes a position everybody claims and nobody can occupy alone.

The problem runs deeper than wording. Quality and low price are, in most trades, in real tension: one is paid for out of the other. A business announcing both announces that it has not decided, and the customer reads exactly that.

What works is naming the trade-off. "We are fifteen per cent more expensive and we replace without argument for two years." "We are the cheapest in the wilaya and we do not do bespoke." Both positions hold; the mixture does not.

There is a third route, more frequent in a local market than people think: availability. Being the one with the part in stock, who answers on Saturday, who delivers the same day in two communes. That is called neither quality nor price and it decides a great many purchases.

The test to put your position through: could a serious competitor claim the opposite and be right? If not, you do not have a position, you have a truism.

A single Algerian business is written several ways by its own customers, and you have to decide which one is yours before somebody decides for you.

There is the form in Latin characters, the form in Arabic characters, the everyday pronunciation in dialect which matches neither exactly, and the transcription variants everybody improvises while typing. Four entrances to the same business, of which only one appears on your sign.

The decision is easy to state and rarely taken: choose a reference form, write it identically everywhere — sign, invoice, business listing, accounts — and accept that the others exist.

Accepting that they exist means something concrete: your listing, your site and your accounts have to carry the variants written out somewhere, so that approximate searches find you. The article on local search explains the mechanism.

What we consistently advise against: a name whose Arabic form and Latin form do not resemble each other enough for anybody to understand they are the same business. Two brands in one is twice the work and half the recognition.

A brand is not what the document says, it is what the person answering the phone replies. That sentence is a commonplace and it has a practical consequence almost nobody draws.

Listen, or have somebody listen, to ten incoming conversations. Note how the business is introduced, what is promised, what is refused and in what tone. You will get the real brand, which is often different from the document’s and always more interesting.

The frequent gaps: the quoted price varies by who is calling, the lead time is guessed, the refusal is not owned — "we will see" instead of no — and the business name is not said when picking up.

The correction is not training. It is three sentences written down and pinned up beside the phone: how we introduce ourselves, what the promise is, and what the three refusals are. Half a page — the same half page as section 1.

It is also what makes a brand survivable in a business where people change. A thirty-page document does not transmit; three pinned-up sentences transmit in a morning, and it is the only format we have seen survive a replacement.

What we will refuse: running a workshop that produces adjectives. A document listing "authenticity, excellence, closeness" bills well, presents well, and settles no decision at all — which is the only use a brand should have.

We will refuse to draw anything before the name has passed the priority test described in section 4. Drawing on a name that will have to change is the most easily avoided expense in this entire pillar.

We will refuse to rename a business whose name works, whatever the director wants. Section 9’s list is handed over before the discussion, because it usually changes the discussion.

What we do: the half page of decisions — for whom, which refusals, which quantified promise — written with the director before any creative work; the name tests in order; the reference form chosen and the variants provided for; the three sentences pinned up by the phone; and the handover to visual identity and to registration, which are two other pages.

And what you can do this week without us: write down three things you refuse to do and ask three employees to cite them. Then dictate your business name to three people who do not know it and compare what they wrote. Those two exercises cost an hour and say most of it.