The art of creating shared experiences

Think about an experience you recently had with someone. An experience that you had to be there to feel and understand fully. The inside joke no one but you and that other person get. Perhaps it's the hardship or challenge you faced together. Running into that glass door, only to see that someone else saw it and they are laughing too (personal experience). Even negative experiences such as you and your neighbor both being frustrated with another neighbor's dog constantly barking; that's a shared experience. Again, that was another personal experience.

Whether the shared experience is fun, challenging, good, or bad, shared experiences are powerful.

Shared experiences are personal, and they resonate at a deep emotional level. Our connection to our shared experiences forges such a deep connection that we can often recount minor details from that experience. Everything means more.

Guess what? That's how I define branding.

Branding is the art of creating shared experiences.

I know that's not a definition that you've heard before, but thinking about it like that makes branding more tangible and takes it beyond logos and visuals. I may be biased, but when you think of branding as the art of creating shared experiences, now branding becomes both critical and continual.

Branding is critical & continual.

Branding often gets put into the category of being a one-off event. You go through a rebrand, change your logo, change your name, or get a new website, and then you're done. When branding is about creating shared experiences, the act of branding continues as you put slogans, logos, and websites to work.

Without the continual act of using design and verbal elements to create shared experiences, improvements are simply a makeover. Branding as a makeover is rooted in aesthetics and feelings instead of becoming solutions that transform and grow your business or nonprofit.

Branding as a shared experience will increase revenue for your business, improve how your audience responds and engages with your marketing, differentiate your organization better, and create more buy-in and contribution from your nonprofit's donors. Now, branding is critical because you need to create shared experiences continually.