Butte Creek MillI’m going to let you in on a secret…I LOVE to bake from scratch-it’s really a passion. To me there is nothing more satisfying than taking a bunch of raw ingredients and mixing them together in the right proportions to create something tasty and soul satisfying. Each recipe is different, french bread just requires four ingredients, where tiramisu may take an untold number of ingredients to achieve that balance of perfection on a fork.

Branding, to me, is a lot like baking. Sure you can open a box of pre-mixed ingredients add a few items from your pantry stir and bake and you will have a chocolate cake, but there is no substitute for a real, made from scratch baking.

As anyone who bakes from scratch will tell you, it’s not much harder than baking from a box, you just need a bit, of several different ingredients mixed together in the right proportion to create something tasty, memorable, and unique. Because you’re making it yourself, you can modify ingredients to suit your taste.

Branding is no different. The ingredients need to be combined in the right proportion, the right order, treated carefully, given time to let the flavors come together, and to become the end product. In branding, like baking, if you miss a critical ingredient the brand will suffer. If you rush it, it won’t be as good as the recipe made with time, care, and love. When you take the time, the chocolate cake (or brand) can be uniquely your own, complete, authentic, and something everyone gravitates to.

Of course you can make a chocolate cake from box – and you can buy your brand from one of the cookie cutter branding companies out there. But if you do either, you’re depriving yourself and your company from fully realizing the enjoyment and satisfaction that comes from doing the job yourself.

About the Author:

Tisha Oehmen

Tisha Oehmen is a professional brand strategist and a leader in the branding field. She has been named a member of the Global Guru’s Top 30 Brand Gurus. She is also the co-founder of Oregon-based Paradux Media Group and the best-selling author of the book, Finding Brand: The Brand Book Tutorial.

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1 Comment

  1. Paradux Media Group on January 29, 2011 at 9:07 pm

    It’s always nice to see your post picked up by a curated news source. This post was picked up on The Customer Collective.

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