The marketing and communications world is a real catch-all. One thing is clear: in Switzerland, "branding" is one of the most misunderstood words of all.
For most people, branding means a logo. A brand guidelines document, a couple of colours, a typeface. Design work, essentially.
Except branding is much more than that. It's a strategic discipline, closer to consulting than to visual creation. The logo is just the tip of the iceberg: the most visible part, but also the most superficial.
And that confusion hides another, deeper one: brand identity, brand image, and branding are used as synonyms, in the same sentence, often to describe a logo. And yet they are three entirely different realities.
What if we told you that confusing these three concepts is one of the main reasons why so many companies invest in their brand without ever seeing results?
Here is what truly differentiates these three terms, so you can take your business to the next level.
Brand identity: what you decide
Brand identity is everything you deliberately create and control. It's the visible, intentional part of your brand: the part you build.
It includes:
- your name and your logo
- your colours, typography, and visual universe
- your tone of voice and the way you communicate
- your values and your positioning
- your promise
When a company entrusts us with building their brand, this is the first terrain we work on. We craft a coherent, distinctive identity that expresses who they are and what they stand for.
Brand identity is what you emit. It's the message you send to the world.
But this is where the trap lies: just because you send a message doesn't mean it's received the way you intended.
Brand image: what people think
Brand image is the exact opposite of identity. It's not what you say about yourself, it's what people feel and remember about you.
It lives in the minds of your clients, not in your brand guidelines.
Imagine your brand is a person. Identity is the way that person dresses, speaks, and presents themselves. Image is the reputation they have behind their back: what others say about them when they leave the room.
And this is where it gets uncomfortable: you don't control your brand image. You can only influence it.
You can design the most polished identity in the world. If the customer experience doesn't follow, if the product disappoints, if the service leaves a bad memory, the image that forms won't look anything like what you planned.
The gap between the two is the real indicator of a brand's health. An identity that says "premium" and an image that says "expensive for what it is"…that's exactly the kind of fracture no logo can fix.
Branding: the work that connects the two
So where does branding fit in all of this?
Branding is neither identity nor image. It's the active work of bringing the two closer together. It's the set of decisions and actions you take so that the perceived image matches the intended identity as closely as possible.
Branding is the bridge between what you want to be and what people believe you are.
It's not a project you launch and finish. It's a continuous discipline:
- every piece of content you put out
- every interaction with a client
- every product delivered
- every campaign
- every experience, from first contact to after-sales service
All of that is branding, whether you're steering it or not. Because even if you do nothing, an image forms anyway. The only question is whether it forms by accident or by intention.
Concretely, what does this work look like? Far from the logo, it plays out first at the strategic level.
- For BCV, we built the employer brand over nearly a year. From defining the positioning to crafting the employer promise, from workshops with internal teams to presentations to the executive committee: real foundational work that laid the strategic groundwork before any deployment. The strategy was then brought to life through videos broadcast on social media, in ATMs, at points of sale, and at the Paléo Festival. Strategic thinking came first. Visuals followed.
- For Groupe Mutuel, we rethought the marketing strategy for their PrimaFlex and VariaInvest products. We refocused the approach on emotions, on personas, and on a genuine humanisation of the offers, before bringing it to life with the sales teams in a fully redesigned brochure. Again, the strategic decision came before the visual. Never the other way around.
In both cases, none of these projects started with a logo. They started with a question: who does this brand want to be, and for whom?
In short: identity is what you decide. Image is what people perceive. Branding is the active work of building the brand, the discipline that shapes perception so it matches intention.
Why this distinction changes the way you act
This confusion has very real consequences.
The company that thinks its brand comes down to its identity redesigns its logo every three years and wonders why nothing changes. It works on what it emits, never on what is perceived.
The one that only cares about its image chases its reputation without ever having clearly defined who it wants to be. It reacts. It doesn't lead.
How do you know which one you are? Ask yourself these questions:
- Do you know precisely what identity you want to project?
- Have you ever asked your clients what they actually retain from you?
- Do those two answers look alike?
If you've never measured the gap between the two, you may have been doing branding blindly for years.
The strong brand isn't the one with the most beautiful logo. It's the one where the intended identity and the perceived image end up becoming one.
And the real question to ask isn't "is our identity well executed," but: does what people think of us actually resemble what we've decided to be?
Reach out to us if this article resonates with you!
