When teams prepare for branding, many wonder where to begin and how to proceed. You can consider many things, but the first priority is to define your brand’s core experience. In an earlier column I described branding as the work of creating a value that separates you from others. That distinctive value can be restated as the core experience. So what exactly is the core experience? In plain terms, it is what people must encounter through your brand. Some call this a core value, but the word value can feel abstract and difficult, while experience is easier to grasp. You can think of it in two dimensions: the functional experience and the emotional experience.

ADP Branding, by Jun Woosung

Start with the functional core experience. This addresses the strength that differentiates the brand and, in a sense, its reason to exist in the market. If you imagine the brand as a person, it is the advantage that person alone possesses. Have you reflected on this for your own brand? Many find that nothing obvious comes to mind, because clear points of difference are hard to secure today. Leaving the root causes aside for now, how do we extract a functional core experience? In my work I begin with three questions.

The first is the brand’s origin story. Most brands have a specific reason they were born. In competitive markets that reason usually points to the strength that justified entry. If you look closely at the founding background, you can see the intention with which the brand began. In a category already crowded with rivals, a brand usually enters with at least one distinct strength that improves its chance of survival. As brands grow, priorities shift and early problems pile up, and I have often seen the founding reason become diluted. The brand slowly loses its character. If you are about to begin branding, revisit the origin first. If you are unsure, start a candid conversation with the founder or chief executive. The second question is why people should know the brand at all. If there is no reason for people to know you, there is little reason for the brand to exist. Clarifying this reason to exist is one of the most important steps in defining the core experience. The third question is what people would miss most if the brand did not exist. This links naturally to the second question. If your brand disappeared tomorrow, what inconvenience or loss would people feel? Thinking this through clarifies what could become your unique strength and offers a concrete argument for why you must exist.

By working through these questions, you identify what must be delivered to customers and what they must experience through the brand. That becomes the functional core experience. There are many other prompts I use, but these three are a solid start.

Now turn to the emotional core experience. It is the qualitative feeling people must have when they meet the brand. In plainer terms, it is the brand’s image, style, and character. If you consider the functional core you will find that many companies struggle to name one, because rivals offer similar functions and technology has largely leveled the field. Even strengths once thought unique are now easy to copy. We should still search for functional edges, but when they are not yet clear you can begin by setting an emotional core experience the brand will consistently uphold. The task is to articulate a character that belongs to your brand alone. This includes visual experience and modes of communication. Returning to the person analogy, you are defining a look, a style, and a distinct personality. Ask who your future customers are and how you want to be seen in the market. Map competitor images and your current image. If you look too similar, decide what character you will own. Choose the adjectives that truly fit. If you were to define a brand persona, what would it be?

Defining the core experience sits at the center of branding. If a brand were a person, you would be specifying what you do well on the functional side and how you differ in style and character on the emotional side. This is the basic groundwork for designing a brand that feels true to itself. The work is not easy, but if you skip it you begin without clear value or experiential pillars, and the customer will not receive a consistent impression.

Ultimately, the core experience is the most fundamental frame for a brand’s true self. The functional side determines what you do well. The emotional side determines how you are remembered. If these two pillars are unclear, branding will drift. So ask every team preparing for branding the following: what is your brand’s core experience today? If you do not have one, what must your customer experience through you without fail? Finding the answer to that question is the beginning of branding.