How Real Brands Build Trust and Consistency (Most Companies Miss This Entirely)

**Kayvon Kay** (0:00)
Most businesses think branding is what they say about themselves. They're completely wrong. Branding isn't about your message. It's about what people think when they hear your name. It's the long-term position, the consistency, the trust. And here's the thing most founders miss. Branding and marketing are not the same. They're two completely different systems. Today, we break down the three-part architecture that separates brands people love from brands people ignore.
Strategy, identity, execution. And the one mistake that's probably killing your brand right now. This is Howard Lim. He's rebranded companies that sold for $750 million.
He's IPO'd brands. And he's here to show you exactly where most businesses get it wrong. This is The Vault Unlocked. Let's unlock it.
Today is all about the difference. We have sales, we have marketing, and then we have branding. And today we are going to break down what we think branding is, what traditional branding really is, and what people think branding is today and how they see it. And today we have a special guest. I'm going to call him the branding expert, the master of all branding. Here we have him. Howard, how are you?

**Howard Lim** (1:24)
Good, good. Thank you. How are you doing?

**Kayvon Kay** (1:27)
Doing great. Thanks so much for being here. I'm just going to start us off because I think it's a big question that I actually ask. And I know that you have a unique way of answering it. So I want to ask a simple question.
What is branding?

**Howard Lim** (1:43)
Well, branding is a very deep and broad subject. And it's the most complex business language that we have in the arena of business. And there's actually three parts to branding. But ultimately, branding is not about what you say. It's about how everyone receives you as a brand. In other words, what matters most is what people think about you, what they're saying.
So people have a kind of like a one-way street. They say, oh, we're building a brand, you know, such and such. And they don't quite understand. It's not really what they're saying, although that influences the outcome. But it's about really what people think about your brand.

**Kayvon Kay** (2:26)
That's interesting because right there, I mean, boom, let's just kick it off. Ding, ding, ding. I love it.
What I just heard you say there is one of the cores of branding, where it almost is like where most people probably get it wrong, is we think branding is about what we want to say to the market, or what we're trying to say to the market. But true branding, understanding where branding actually what it really means, isn't what I'm saying to the market, it's what the market's perceiving what I'm saying.

**Howard Lim** (2:55)
Exactly.
And so with companies, what's most ideal, if they understand how to position their product and service information, and so therefore, the expectations is matched to the experience of that buyer, that client, or the customer, or consumer. So therefore, there's an actual, you could say, alignment between what they're saying, what's been received, and how that experience is actually matched to the expectation. Which sounds simple, but most companies, every company I've ever met, quite honestly, has it where there is not an equilibrium.

**Kayvon Kay** (3:36)
Okay.
So let's talk about this. How did you come up? I mean, talk a little bit about your past now, about how you've come up with this. Because obviously, you've seen, I know you've worked with some big companies, and you've created this entire organization, your business is around the idea of true branding. Where did you come up? How did you learn all about this? What's the history here?

**Howard Lim** (3:58)
Well, I was pretty fortunate because I was in school for eight years studying different, you could say different subjects, but overall came out with a degree in applied art and science. But the point being is this, I started off by looking at design and advertising. And the funny thing is, a big part of branding is strong designing, because it's all about how to engage people in their senses, especially out of our five senses, we use our eyes 90% of the time to perceive and evaluate things.
So graphic design is what I majored in applied art and design, but I also took on some other courses like computer science, for example. The point being that all came into the workings of my company. So branding is a twofold where it used to be divided when it came to firms.
You had graphic design firms and you had advertising firms like BBDO, Shia Day, and so forth and so on. They're all about positioning. Advertising is all about positioning. So when I was in school, I was studying both and I said, oh, there's something to this. And so I started building brands, literally coming out of college. But I used to call it image marketing because branding wasn't in the category just yet. So I knew we're doing more than just design, and I know that we're doing more than just advertising, that we're actually combining into, and that's really where hence branding came from, is those two core principles.