Just in case anyone is still confused (or new to the planet), your brand is not your logo.
Nor is it a colour palette, a mission statement, or a PDF file labelled ‘Brand Guidelines – Final_Final_Final V10.9’.
And it’s not a strapline either. Your brand is how your business shows up in the world. It defines how you operate, how people perceive you, “what they say about you when you’re not there”, and how you make decisions.
The best businesses don’t just have a brand; they live and breathe it. Every decision they make, every interaction they have, every tiny detail, from the way they answer the phone to the way they sign off emails aligns with their brand.
Then there’s the other type of business. The one that invests in a rebrand, only for it to be ignored by staff and misunderstood by customers. The one that claims to be “innovative” but still runs on outdated processes. The one that says it’s “customer-centric” but treats customer service like an afterthought.
Actually, any business that feels pleased with itself for being “customer-centric” needs more than a brand workshop to fix it.
So, which one are you? Do you truly live your brand, or is it just an expensive costume your business saves for special occasions? If you’re not sure, it’s time to put it to the test.
Does your team truly know your brand?
The first sign of a business that genuinely lives its brand is whether everyone inside it can confidently articulate your brand. Try asking five employees from different teams the same three questions:
What does our brand stand for?
What makes us different from our competitors?
What’s our brand personality?
If they all give similar answers, congratulations, your brand has infiltrated the collective consciousness of your organisation. If, however, you get five wildly different answers, or worse, blank stares, then it’s a sign that your brand is nothing more than words on a website.
A strong brand isn’t just understood by the marketing department; it’s second nature to everyone in the business, from senior leadership to the intern who’s been there three days.
If your own people don’t know what the brand stands for, how on earth can you expect your customers to?
Do you say one thing and do another?
It’s easy to claim your business stands for something. It’s much harder to prove it. A company that genuinely lives its brand aligns everything it does—product decisions, customer interactions, hiring policies—with its supposed values.
The best way to check whether you practise what you preach is to step into your customer’s shoes.
Look at how you present yourself to the world through your website, social media and advertising, and then experience your business as a customer would. Visit an office, call customer service, or go through the purchasing process online. Does the reality match the marketing? If you claim to be premium, does every touchpoint feel high-end? If you say you’re customer-first, are your teams actually prioritising customers, or just using it as a slogan?
If there’s a disconnect between what you say and what you do, customers will notice. And when they do, your brand will stop being something aspirational and start being something laughable.
Are your employees embodying the brand, or just being paid to be there?
A business that truly lives its brand doesn’t need to force employees to follow a set of brand values, they’ll do it naturally. If your company culture is strong, your brand will be visible in the way people work, talk, and make decisions. If it isn’t, you’ll find employees who see branding as a marketing exercise rather than something that guides their behaviour.
The best way to test this is to observe. Do internal meetings reflect the brand’s tone of voice? Do employees talk about the brand as something meaningful, or do they roll their eyes whenever it’s mentioned? If you ran an anonymous survey asking whether staff feel the brand is genuinely lived day-to-day, would the responses be overwhelmingly positive, or full of barely-disguised sarcasm?
Culture is one of the biggest indicators of whether a brand is real or just a shop window. If the people behind your business don’t believe in it, neither will your customers.
Do your customers see your brand the way you see it?
If you want to know whether your brand is truly embedded in your business, don’t just ask employees, ask your customers. A company that successfully lives its brand will find that customers instinctively understand what it stands for, without needing to be told.
To test this, ask a handful of your most loyal customers to describe your business in a few words. Compare their descriptions to your brand positioning. If they use the same language and ideas, you’re on the money. If they describe you in ways that bear no resemblance to the brand strategy you spent months fiddling about with, something’s gone wrong.
Customers don’t care about brand guidelines or carefully crafted mission statements. They care about how you make them feel, how easy you are to deal with, and whether their experience aligns with their expectations. If their perception of your brand doesn’t match the one you think you have, it’s time to take a long, hard look at why.
Is the brand part of decision-making, or just a marketing exercise?
One of the biggest signs that a brand is properly embedded in a business is whether it influences decision-making. A truly lived brand isn’t just something you roll out when it’s time for a new advertising campaign. Your brand should guide real-world choices, from product development to hiring decisions.
Look at the last few major decisions your company made. Were they influenced by your brand values, or were they purely driven by short-term gain? If you pride yourself on sustainability, did you choose the more ethical supplier, or did you go for the cheapest option? If your brand is built on personal service, are you investing in better customer experiences, or quietly cutting corners?
When brand strategy and business strategy are aligned, everything feels intentional. When they aren’t, branding becomes a hollow exercise: a nice to have, but ultimately meaningless.
What to do if your brand isn’t truly lived
If running these tests has left you feeling slightly uncomfortable, don’t worry. Most businesses have at least some level of brand inconsistency, and the good news is that it’s fixable.
The first step is to make sure your brand is clear and well-defined. If employees can’t articulate what your business stands for, it’s not their fault—it’s yours. Take the time to clarify your brand’s purpose, values, and personality, and communicate them in a way that sticks.
Next, embed the brand into your internal culture. Brand values shouldn’t just exist in a PowerPoint presentation (don’t get me started), they should be baked into how you recruit, train, and reward people. A brand that employees don’t believe in will never be fully realised in the outside world.
Then, take a hard look at how consistently your brand is showing up in the real world. If your customer experience doesn’t match your marketing, you’re creating brand dissonance. Close the gap by ensuring that what you say and what you do are working as one.
Finally, use your brand as a filter for decision-making.
Every major choice should be tested against the question: Does this align with who we are? If the answer is no, you either need to rethink the decision, or rethink whether your brand is serving you.
Final thought: A brand isn’t what you hope it is, it’s the one which people actually experience.
The difference between a brand that is truly lived and one that is just a marketing exercise is authenticity. A real brand is something you can see, feel, and experience at every level of a business. A pretend one is something someone once wrote on the About page and then immediately forgot.
If you want your brand to be more than just a label, test it. Ask employees what they think. Ask customers what they feel. Look at your own behaviour and see whether it aligns with what you claim to be. If the answer isn’t what you hoped for, don’t panic—just start fixing it.
Because in the end, a brand that isn’t meaningfully lived isn’t a brand at all. It’s just well dressed imposter. An expensive fib..
And now the salesy bit.
Have a look at our Applied Brand Advantage™. It’s a proven framework that our clients have used to reveal their brand’s unique voice, and find fearless new ways to express it. And it works.
Over to you.
