Branding vs identity. What’s the difference?

Branding
The core of branding consists of mission and values, its vision of the world, tone of voice — everything that concerns the ideology of the brand and what connects it with the client. For example, Google’s vision is “to provide access to the world’s information in one click.” and they need to develop people’s perceptions, ideas and feelings about their brand that are connected to this statement.

Identity
Illustrates the visual perception of the brand: colors, font, logo, graphic elements, typography and voice. For example, everyone recognizes IKEA by the yellow and blue colors and it’s because they have a strong brand identity.

As you can see, identity is part of branding. But it’s not the same. When you define the mission, values, story and objectives, symbols and attributes, you are creating the foundation of branding. The brand identity is the visible face of all these — the way you represent the branding core.

Example: Airbnb
Branding
Airbnb, a service for renting apartments around the world, sells an active lifestyle. They say you must take everything from life. And this is about traveling, meeting new people and studying the culture of other countries.

Identity
The service reflected its values ​​in a logo. It combines people, places, love and company. The result is associated only with Airbnb and no one else.

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