Why brand is the only thing your clients can actually hold.
In a week where the city is sweltering and the queues at every ice cream van stretch around the corner, it’s hard not to think about vanilla. It’s the world’s favourite flavour. Universally loved, unpretentious, utterly reliable. And yet, order a scoop of ice cream from a van and by the time you’ve walked to the end of the street, you’ve forgotten it.
Now consider the artisan gelato parlour. Madagascan vanilla. Slow-churned. Served in a hand-pressed cone with a curl of honeycomb on top. Same base flavour. Completely different experience. You remember it. You go back. You tell people about it.
That’s brand.
Vanilla is, of course, a perfectly good flavour. Some would argue it’s underrated – complex, subtle, more interesting than it’s given credit for. The problem isn’t being vanilla. It’s not expressing who you are and your quality effectively.
Insurance sells a promise – and unlike most products, you can’t hold it, taste it or take it home. What you can feel is the service, the relationship, and if it ever comes to it, the claim experience. That’s your brand in action. Yet walk a conference floor or scan a row of insurance websites and you’ll find a sea of vanilla, this time in navy blue in colour, abstract swooshes and words like trusted and specialist doing a lot of heavy lifting for very little reward. The sector hides its light under a bushel – which is a missed opportunity, because insurance is anything but vanilla. Many policies, especially in the specialty world, are carefully crafted to capture opportunity, mitigate unaffordable risk and encourage safer behaviour. The sector underpins technological progress, environmental protection and economic stability. It just rarely says so.
In a relationship-driven market where trust is earned slowly and partnerships last decades, your brand is what makes your values visible before anyone makes contact. And values are the one thing a competitor can’t replicate. They can copy your product. They can undercut your price. They can hire your people. But they can’t be you.
A brand built on genuine, well-articulated values tells the right story before anyone’s picked up the phone. It attracts the clients you want to work with, and quietly filters out the ones you don’t. It gives everyone inside the business a clearer sense of what you’re building together.
That’s strategy.
We’d be the first to admit that not every business we meet has fully landed on this yet. Brand and the value it creates isn’t always an easy sell internally. But the organisations that do commit – that invest in understanding what makes them distinct and find the courage to show it – tend to be the ones building something more than a book of business. They’re building a brand people want to work with.
Are you a vanilla scoop or the artisan gelato? Same great flavour – just one of them is forgettable.
Your product is what you do. Your brand is why people choose you.
If you fancy meeting up to discuss your brand over some ice cream, then just email us on hello@ob.consulting
