Make Your Brand Shine: Defining Brand Auras
The number of brands striving to make an impression on the digital world and its avid consumers is staggering. We are swarmed by ads daily, many promoting similar products. When competition is so fierce, you have to bolster your branding to make your brand shine. Defining your brand aura is a great place to start.
Once consumers recognize and appreciate your brand aura, seeing a bit of themselves in its presence, they'll be all in on your brand.
What is a brand aura?
Firstly, what is an aura? As defined by Merriam Webster, an aura can be “a distinctive atmosphere surrounding a given source” and “an energy field that is held to emanate from a living being.” This is up to interpretation. Everyone has their own ideas of what constitutes an aura, whether leaning spiritual or simply descriptive.
You can think of a brand aura as the energy your brand radiates. This determines how your brand is perceived by people and their gut reaction when encountering it.
Storynomics has a great quote about this concept:
“Each brand radiates a presence in the world, surrounded by its own unique aura…This essential quality has been earned through decades of hard work, so when a marketing story stars a corporation or its product, the brand’s aura should become the protagonist's persona and the storytelling should reinforce this personality.” (Storynomics, page 101)
Gucci radiates luxury. Red Bull radiates explosive energy. Jeep radiates an adventurous spirit and ruggedness.
Speaking of Jeep, take a look at this clip introducing their autonomous off-road feature. Jeep’s brand aura is strong throughout the entire video, reflected in the rugged desert setting, the dramatic action music, and the recurrent mention of adventure. It feels like a Jeep ad.
A brand aura captures the essence of a brand world and distills it for customer consumption.
Ensuring you have a consistent, recognizable brand aura is an imperative aspect of immersive brand worldbuilding.
To make your brand shine, it can’t have a muddled aura that leaves consumers confused about what your brand is and what it promotes and/or values.
Defining your brand aura to make your brand shine
Your brand aura should naturally arise as you double up on your branding efforts, but it’s a smart idea to begin defining it right out of the gate.
What adjectives do you want people to ascribe to your brand? What feelings do you hope to elicit? Uncover the elements of your brand’s overall energy.
If you’re in healthcare marketing, maybe you’d want to radiate sincerity, competency, transparency, empathy, etc.
Once you determine the qualities of your aura, you can infuse it with all you do, attracting consumers sharing similar energies.
If Amanda radiates positivity, she’d likely be attracted to a high-energy, joyful brand aura. This plays into badging and how loyal customers flaunt brands that they connect with to express their values or facets of their personality.
Making your brand the main character
Why does all of this make your brand shine? Because it makes your brand unique and centers it. A focused brand is more appealing than one that tries to do everything and relate to everyone.
A brand like Dove shines with an incredibly powerful aura. Dove’s website, commercials, social media pages, and so on all radiate acceptance, compassion, confidence. Its aura is genuine, welcoming in like-minded individuals who appreciate “real beauty.”
Dove’s thoroughly developed aura elicits feelings of warmth in consumers and nurtures the loyalty of its active customers.
Your brand should be as fleshed out as a main character because you want it to play a starring role in as many consumers’ lives as possible.
An unwavering brand aura is the key.
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