Effective Branding is Mastery of Context

The following is an installment from the weekly teaching of Leadership Laboratory, an international cohort of 100 leaders who share a desire to build better leadership capacity and design better teams. Curious? Find more information at HERE now! ———

Marketers are slow clapping all around the world for Graza Olive Oil. Their unique plastic bottle packaging and uniquely fun branding are so easy to cheer for as they disrupt an old, sterile market. The cartoon art work and courageously bright color ways has become a format mimicked my coffee shops, CPG brands, and the like ever since. It’s a thing now.

Since it’s inception in 2020, two things are true about Graza:

1. It’s been a financial success at $60 million in projected revenue for 2026, and
2. It’s a unique and well received brand.

But, is it great branding?

If effective branding were simply about learning from the best, then everyone would have success with a unique package and a cartoon forward rebrand, right? Follow the script and get rich!

Wrong.

We’re talking about olive oil in Leadership Lab because (like most products and services), olive oil exists in a number of different contexts. The Graza Olive Oil that is at my house is something I picked up from Whole Foods for a nominal $21. While much less practical, you can also spend $14,500 on a 500ml bottle of, you guessed it, olive oil. Further, you and I both know that neither of these bottles are not the ones stocked on wire shelves behind the scenes on thousands of American Olive Gardens. That’s a different price point and a different looking brand all together.

Yet, all of these expressions of branding are perfectly successful.

So, then, what is it that makes a brand effective?

How would one “do great branding?”

I’d argue that it’s the branding that communicates value to the right customer in the right context that is most effective. We don’t have to look far to find supporting evidence for this.

Water is even less differentiated than olive oil, yet it has some of the most varied successful brands in the world. When you think about effective branding of water as it relates to context, you’ve got to wonder what room is a bottle of Voss water meant for and what room is Liquid Death meant for and that will tell you everything about context as it relates to effective branding. After all, Voss and Liquid Death are polar opposites from a brand perspective, yet they both are perfectly successful.

If you want to master your branding, try to imagine the “room” your products/services exist in. Own that experience and your brand will resonate.

TAKE ACTION:

AUDIT. Take inventory on the “room” that your brand sits in. This is your context. Are you fitting the room well?  PRACTICE. For a moment, ignore the branding in your space, so you don’t copy industry norms. Explore 3-5 elements of brand that could bring you closer to the room you’re in.