The Secret Second Brand You Have (And Probably Don’t Think About)

I go to the same coffee shop every day. I happen to like their coffee, but their flavored lattes are more of a secondary benefit than they are the primary motivation to get in my car and drive to a coffee shop even though there’s one that’s just as good only a few floors below me. Though this particular coffee shop tailors most of its messaging to the quality of its coffee, I’d venture to say that only a small percentage of its customers go there just because they love the coffee.

This coffee shop has a secret brand–in fact, it has lots of them. It’s one of my favorites because it has magically become an epicenter for beautiful, intelligent, and creative women. In my world, that’s its brand. It’s a terrific place to meet amazing women that just happens to serve great coffee too. For others, it’s an entrepreneurial hotspot. Some even consider it a place to run into celebrities. All of the above are true and, for the people that are drawn to it because of these attributes, the coffee isn’t really what it’s all about.

All brands have these sorts of secondary attributes, whether their creators realize it or not.

On occasion, it’s even possible to engineer them from scratch. Have you ever interrogated the concept of ladies night? Bars will happily wave cover charges and discount drinks if it creates the impression that the bar attracts the most beautiful women in the city. Of course, this is a silly way to engineer your second brand, but it’s an example you see quite frequently and it often seems to work in the short-term.

Smart brands do their best to harness the power of design to impact the ways in which their secondary brands are created. But, at the end of the day, secondary brand attributes are often born out of serendipity. It’s quite unlikely that my coffee shop’s owners sat down and renovated the place to attract really cool customers. Sure, their input had an impact on it, but it was the customers themselves that turned it into what it is today.

How can you empower your customers to create the brand you’d like to be?

• By Patrick Widen

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About The Author

Patrick Widen

Patrick began his career in design at the age of twelve, later starting his design firm, Foozoo Design, while still a senior in high school. In the rebellious years of his youth, he virtually ignored his high school curriculum in favor of pursuing his own academic career in marketing, psychology, and design. 400 books, three companies, and a cocktail of interesting experiences later he opened the doors of Blend to help companies dive into design and create products, services, and experiences that make people smile. When he's not working, Patrick is also student at Vanderbilt where he is exploring the connections between neuroscience, design, marketing, and economics. It is his hope that through these connections he will soon begin to find the answers to the questions that he believes will change the world for the better and make each and every inch of it a better place for the people that live there.