How can I become a great brand? How can I make this brand sustainable? What will bring value to my brand? Just what is my story, and how do I tell it? And, my favorite question and the most important by far:

What the hell is branding?

Branding is more than a logo. It’s more than a website. It’s more than a business card. It’s more than the colors and typefaces you choose to represent your company. Your brand is your voice in the marketplace, and it is your proposition for disruption. It is your opportunity to create something with lasting impact. It is how you tell your story, and it is absolutely key to your success and your survival.

Most entrepreneurs go to market not with a brand, but with an idea—an idea that can be so soulful and personal that it can be challenging to present and explain to others. You think everyone should intrinsically understand it, as you do—but they don’t. And that’s why you need to develop effective brand messaging.

One of the most frequent comments I hear is, “People just don’t understand us, our value and what we do, but we are absolutely the best at it.” That statement is a problem.

Branding is your story, and if you can’t tell it, then nobody will get it.

If you ever catch yourself making that sort of statement, take a step back. Because it is total BS. No one is that special. This is business, not Dr. Phil, and if you cannot communicate the value of what you bring to the market, the economy and the world, well then, you have a problem.

Branding is about knowing what you stand for and how you communicate the values and character of your product or service. As a company founder, this is not so much a design choice as it is a leadership decision. Your job as chief is to know exactly, concisely and in context what you stand for. You are the lone author of your story, your mission and your reason for being. How you tell it is your job.

In Michael Johnson’s Branding: In Five and a Half Steps, he strips everyday brands down to their basic components, with case studies that enable us to understand why we select one product or service over another and allow us to comprehend how seemingly subtle influences can affect key life decisions. The first part of the book shows how the birth of a brand begins not with finding a solution but rather with identifying the correct question―the missing gap in the market―to which an answer is needed. Johnson proceeds to unveil hidden elements involved in creating a successful brand―from the strapline that gives the brand a narrative and a purpose to clever uses of typography that unite design and language.

With more than 1,000 vibrant illustrations showcasing the world’s most successful corporate identities, as well as generic templates enabling you to create your own brand or ad with ease,Branding explores every step of the development process required to create the simplest and most immediately compelling brands.