Your brand isn’t yours until you make it yours
Build Mode™ Issue 01.2025
Welcome to this issue of Build Mode, a monthly update with brand insights to help you level up your business. Thanks for being here. We have an ambitious group of professionals working in real estate, architecture, engineering, construction, marketing, design, and development. Today’s issue is about taking ownership of your brand.
Haven’t subscribed yet? Consider joining us below and get the next issue delivered straight to your inbox on the first of the month.The day after Christmas was probably my laziest yet most productive day of the year. ‘Lazy’ in that we moved slowly from one moment to the next. ‘Productive’ in that we bonded as a family in a way we hadn’t recently. We slept in, ate every meal together, built LEGO sets, played board games and video games, watched movies, and stayed in pajamas all day long. It’s also the day I got the idea for this month’s issue of Build Mode.
At one point during the day, all my children were building the LEGO sets they were just gifted. We opened the boxes together, each bag labeled with numbers so we knew where to start, and we followed the instructions step-by-step. Soon, the structure started to take shape. A sense of connection between us and the thing we were building was forming. While we might have started with a collection of random bricks of various shapes and colors, we completed a mini-masterpiece through a meditative and methodical process.
While its name comes from a different brand, this feeling — this psychological effect we were experiencing — has been coined the ‘IKEA effect.’ It applies to assembling IKEA furniture. It applies to building LEGO sets. It applies to customizing the colors on a pair of Nike By You sneakers. It even applies to the tiny toy inside a KINDER JOY egg. And in this issue, I’d like to share how it serves as a powerful lesson for building your brand too.
What is the IKEA effect?
The IKEA effect is the psychological effect of valuing something more because we’ve invested our own effort into creating it. In a Harvard Business School report published by professors Michael I. Norton, Daniel Mochon, and Dan Ariely, after running a series of studies, concluded that people who built their own products (in this case, IKEA furniture) were more likely to have an increased perceived value of that product.
Building or assembling your own product, like IKEA furniture or a LEGO build, provides a sense of accomplishment and achievement, and enhances your emotional connection to the product. The labor and time you put into it make it uniquely yours, because it was built differently: by you.
Developing your brand is similar. While you might consult with a brand partner, your active involvement in the brand-building process creates a necessary sense of ownership in the results. When it’s all said and done, your brand is yours to own and to manage.
Why does the IKEA effect matter to brand-building?
The most important takeaway from the IKEA effect is this:
To own your brand, you need to be actively involved in building your brand.
That doesn’t mean a do-it-yourself kind of process.
But it does mean being engaged in the process.
I was speaking to a couple business leaders the other day who had gone through a rebrand that was never fully adopted. The identity felt disconnected from their values, disconnected from what people truly loved about the brand, and disconnected from the owners who’ve never felt a sense of true ownership. Can you imagine?!... business owners not feeling ownership of their brand?
On the flip side, when you’re an active participant in building your brand, and invite a broad leadership team, everyone feels a sense of authorship. Being engaged — workshopping through exercises, clarifying your vision, providing input on design iterations — is more than just time spent. Every input is a LEGO brick added, coming together to create your own set. You’ll feel a deeper connection to your brand when you’ve actively contributed to its creation. And it becomes a valuable asset in your business, one that can be expressed in the market with confidence and clarity.
Don’t expect to outsource a project and get stellar results that hit the mark. Don’t expect to sit back and await brilliance to magically appear. ‘I’ll know it when I see it’ isn’t a brand strategy. Your brand strategy must come from within — from the inputs, the insights, the values, the foundation, and the customers that make up who you are. Your input isn’t just valuable. It’s essential.
What you can do you next
Whether you’re establishing a brand, refreshing a brand, or going through a brand initiative of any kind, to make the most of it, start by asking yourself…
‘Am I actively involved in shaping my brand?’
‘Do I feel connected and invested in my brand strategy and identity?’
‘Does my company’s leadership team have a shared sense of ownership in the brand?’
If not, maybe it’s time to consider how you and your organization can engage more deeply with your brand.
When you design systems of collaboration, you enable meaningful contributions. And when everyone contributes, it leads to better adoption, ambassadorship, and amplification of your brand. A structured approach to team involvement ensures that diverse perspectives are factored.
To get organizational contribution, here’s how you can structure your team for an effective, brand-building process:
Core Team:
These are the day-to-day decision-makers and key contributors driving the project forward. For a small firm, the core team might just be the founding partners. In larger organizations, the core team could include founding partners, principals of the firm, plus an operations or marketing lead or manager. If you have a brand partner, this is the team that should be actively involved with them, providing thoughtful input, responding to questions, providing resources, reviewing iterations, asking questions, and challenging assumptions to push the envelope.
Extended Team:
For medium to large firms, with sizable executive teams, consider forming an extension of the core team. This would include the core team, plus executives, department heads, or C-suite leaders. They may be less actively involved in an initiative but still have influence and provide strategic direction while trusting the core team to make tactical decisions.
(Note: some decision-makers like to hang out here, on the periphery, throwing the core team for a loop with off-the-cuff remarks. But, if you want to make decisions, you need to be a part of the core team.)
Specialized Groups:
While your core team and extended teams have visibility and influence within the organization as a whole, it’s equally important to tap into specific segments of your business for specialized insights. For example, a national architecture firm with multiple offices might have a group of studio directors. Or a real estate firm might have different teams for investments, development, management, or construction. Or a contractor with vast levels of experience might have an emerging leaders group, affinity groups, on-site teams, and corporate office teams. Each of these specialized groups bring a unique point of view of the organization that are important to acknowledge and factor into your brand strategy.
Whole Organization:
Outside of these formalized groups, it’s possible to solicit input from your company as a whole. Using structured questionnaires to gather diverse perspectives – without conducting focus groups or individual meetings – is an effective way to gather input at scale, and with data analytics and AI tools, analysis of large amounts of data is manageable.
(For even more brand insights from outside your organization, consider how to gather quantitative and qualitative data from external partners like past clients, prospective clients, collaborators, or a panel of subject matter experts. A topic for another day...)
By designing a collaborative process and inviting meaningful contributions, you foster a sense of authorship and responsibility across your organization. This not only strengthens internal alignment but also positions your brand with higher perceived value, resonating more with the people you reach. Communication then doesn’t just come from the brand but from all of the brand ambassadors within your company. Each one with hands-on involvement in building your brand, your masterpiece.
That’s all for this edition of Build Mode! Thanks for being here.
Hopefully you’ve gotten something useful from this breakdown and learned how critical your contributions are to building your own brand. Did it resonate? Let me know, and if you need help designing the systems for effective collaboration, this is an area where I can support you. As always, feel free to get in touch.
Best.
Kenny Isidoro
See my latest on Instagram, LinkedIn, or feel free to book a call.
Responsibility equals accountability equals ownership. And a sense of ownership is the most powerful weapon a team or organization can have.
— Pat Summitt
Work zone
Some other things I've been up toListening:
The Obstacle is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trial into Triumph by Ryan Holiday is a book I’ve been listening to lately that’s really resonating. I seem to share many of the same beliefs as the Stoics did and this book is all about how we can find solutions to our modern-day problems by learning from Ancient Greek philosophies.
Eating:
Tacos. And burritos. And sipping on margaritas! I’m excited about a new project I’ve just started to position a beloved restaurant for a new era (thanks to a referral from a good friend!). Watch this space for updates.
Thanking:
To my clients, collaborators, and connections, thank you for your partnership and support this past year. I posted a short recap of the year on LinkedIn. Among the things I set out to do at the start of the year was to launch this email series. I’ve now written 12 editions and plan to continue. I’m not sure how or if it’ll evolve just yet, but when it does, you’ll be the first to know!
If and when you're ready to build your brand, there are three ways I can help.
Brand audit
A free analysis of your brand, plus other industry players, with recommendations for increasing its effectiveness in your business. Get your free audit.
Brand partnership
A new, subscription-based service model to support your firm's practice and build its reputation through branding and marketing. Register your interest.
Custom-built brand
A core service guiding business leaders through a linear process of defining or redefining your brand in four phases: discover, define, develop, and deliver. Discuss your project.
Subscribe to Build Mode™
a monthly update with brand insights and how they can apply to your practice and your projects. Issues drop on the first of each month. Feel free to unsubscribe if the updates aren't valuable for you. No hard feelings.