How to brand the intangible

What do you do when the offering you’re taking to market doesn’t really exist? At Sullivan, we work with complex businesses whose offerings are rarely straightforward products. This begs the question: how do you construct a differentiated brand around something that you can’t hold in your hand or easily describe? The answer? Focus on the most tangible assets you have: your people and your approach.

Whether it’s a payment program, a platform for financial advisors, or even a college experience, you need to ground your brand in elements that feel tangible—ideas that your audience can connect to even if they can’t see them immediately. 

Showcase your people as the product  

Consider a space like private equity. While every firm out there is putting money on the table to develop its portfolio, that only makes up a fraction of the value they provide to companies’ management teams and investors. The rest is composed of what sets them apart—the thing that can’t be found or replicated elsewhere. For some players in the industry, they elevate their team, showing how their people drive unique and rewarding experiences for their audiences. 

Take Thoma Bravo for instance—a private equity investment firm that’s been bringing capital and support to enterprise software companies for over 20 years. When we sat down with them to develop a brand that could appeal to market-leading software companies, we realized that their real offering was in the room with us. Their team of experts have unparalleled lived experience working to remove the limits on their partners’ ambitions. The energy they contribute on behalf of their portfolio companies is unrelenting and as a result, they’re able to not just provide a team of specialists, but also an unrivaled sense of assured success. 

Next, let’s examine a firm that isn’t just looking to stand out, but to also reposition themselves against the backdrop of their legacy brand—KKR. As the founders of the PE sector, KKR wanted to expand perceptions beyond PE and build a reputation as a more diversified investment manager. The reimagined brand we helped them build elevates KKR’s internal teams as a high-performance, multi-disciplinary, global force that is constantly seeking out mutual wins for their investors, their portfolio, companies, and the world—all through capabilities and investment tools across their entire organization. 

As you’re thinking about how you might bring your people to the forefront of your brand, focus on areas that address key questions: What values and attributes are you looking for when you hire people? When they’re hired, what gets them excited about their job? How do they work together? Or with clients? And how would a customer describe the people they interact with at your company?  

Focus on your unique approach 

If focusing on your people won’t be enough to help you cut through the noise, you may want to consider if the way you operate may be the differentiating aspect of your organization.  

To show how this comes to life, let’s think about two different quantitative management firms. Both companies have a singular goal in mind—delivering returns to their investors. However, it’s the way they get there that makes them feel fundamentally different from each other.  

The first firm has a highly global workforce, spread out across enough offices that the sun never sets on their practices. This broad range of perspectives lets them generate a seemingly unending stream of new ideas that they collectively build upon. The belief that quantity is quality is imperative to the way they work because in their view, returns come from the ability to predict what happens next, which is only possible when all possibilities are on the table. 

In our second example, the firm has built a reputation as leading data scientists. Their commitment to a pure scientific method creates a process that feels more like a celebration of getting to one right, methodically tested answer, every time for the best outcomes imaginable.

Both companies take these tangible truths to market and connect with investors looking for an approach that they can believe in. When you’re examining your approach, dig deeper into questions like: How do you measure success? What philosophies or practices do you shirk or embrace in your work? When you meet a challenge, what is your team’s natural response? Beyond your basic output, what are you providing to your clients? 

Elevate the experience 

This need to differentiate isn’t a new phenomenon brought on by digital transformation or a burgeoning service industry. In fact, one industry has always sold the intangible to stand out—Higher Education. That’s because what they’re taking to market is more than the framed diploma students walk away with. Beyond the fact that there are boards in place to certify that accredited degrees are comparable to one another, universities are also all making the same core promises to students, alumni, and wider communities. What sets one school apart from the rest is usually a combination of the people – the type of student that thrives in their environment – AND the process – the experience of attending and being a part of the community.

Don’t believe it? Let’s compare two schools we’ve helped find their distinction to see if they feel different from each other.

First, Duke University. The home of the Blue Devils is built on something more fundamental than beautiful campus architecture or a legacy of competition. For Duke, it’s all about teamwork and drive. The type of student they hope to attract is the kind with lofty ambition and a willingness to work. In return, the school promises to support that student with real opportunities to see their aims become impact.  Whether it’s working to advance innovations in medical science, taking substantive steps to address global issues like climate change, or enriching themselves in like-minded communities of ambitious and audacious leaders, Duke and its students share that fundamental readiness to forge ahead. There, college becomes a verb, promising prospective students that they’ll receive exactly what they give to the experience. 

Now, travel to the nation’s capital and consider an institution with a similar undergraduate class size to Duke, but with different fundamental truths: American University. American wins by elevating purpose. The students that choose to study at American are looking to make a significant change in the world around them. To help them achieve that, American fashions itself as a crucible—a place where these would-be changemakers go to have their purpose nurtured and activated. While they’re engaging in diverse, rigorous discourse and collaborating over the potential fixes to the plights we’re all facing, American takes them from idealists to the ideal candidates to lead us forward. 

Uncovering the power behind the intangible 

It’s great to hold something in your hands, to perceive it in every sense and feel confident in your first-hand assessment. But ask yourself: Are ideas like experience, relationships, methodology, philosophy, or outcomes any less real? Are they less impactful than what the audience can observe plainly? And if you could isolate those aspects of your brand and make them as plain to see as a label, what might be possible for your business?