Wedding Business Solutions

A brand is not a logo!

• Alan Berg, CSP, Global Speaking Fellow

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What do people really say about your business when you’re not in the room? Is your brand just your logo, your colors, and the fonts on your website? Or is it the promise and story you deliver every time you work an event? In this episode, I explore why your real brand lives in the words and expectations of your customers, and why what they say about you matters much more than any graphic design could.

Listen to this new 6-minute episode for ideas on how to express your brand’s promise, why reviews truly shape your reputation, and how to make sure what people expect matches what you deliver.

If you have any questions about anything in this, or any of my podcasts, or have a suggestion for a topic or guest, please reach out directly to me at Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com or visit my website Podcast.AlanBerg.com 

Please be sure to subscribe to this podcast and leave a review (thanks, it really does make a difference). If you want to get notifications of new episodes and upcoming workshops and webinars, you can sign up at www.ConnectWithAlanBerg.com  

View the full transcript on Alan’s site: https://alanberg.com/blog/


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I'm Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you'd like to suggest other topics for "The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast" please let me know. My email is Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com. Look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.

Listen to this and all episodes on Apple Podcast, YouTube or your favorite app/site:

©2025 Wedding Business Solutions LLC & AlanBerg.com

A brand is not a logo. Listen to this episode. See where I'm going. Hey, it's Alan Berg. Welcome back to another episode of the Wedding Business Solutions podcast. I saw this great quote by Seth Godin. It said, a brand is not a logo. A brand is a promise, a story and a shorthand.

A brand tells us what to expect the next time we engage with you. And I love that. They're just such a concise way of explaining the difference there. Branding is your logo, your colors, the way your website looks, the way your vehicles look, your signage, the way you dress at events and stuff. If you're watching this on YouTube, you'll see my logo over my shoulder. That's branding. You'll see my books over my other shoulder. That's branding.

You'll see my CSP metal up there or my barrel here for us aging some more whiskeys. That's branding. Okay? That's not my brand. My brand is if somebody says, hey, tell me about Alan Berg. Whatever you say next, that's my brand. That is my brand to you. And what you express to them, you're expressing what you believe my brand to be. Which again, according to Seth here, it's a promise, a story and a shorthand tells us what to expect the next time we engage with you.

So when someone has experienced what you do and they express that to someone else, let's just think about this. You know, weddings happen on the weekends. A lot of events are happening on weekends, even corporate events and things like that. The next day, when someone asks their friend, their colleague, whatever, how was the fill in the blank, the wedding, the Kinsey, the holiday party, the grand opening, whatever, how was that? Whatever that person says, that's your brand. When they talk about the photography, when they talk about the music, when they talk about the food, when they talk about the venue or the clothing or the invitations or the favors or the transportation or the flowers or decor, whatever, right? Tell me about the officiant. Right? Tell me about the ceremony. How was that? And if they start talking about the officiant, whatever they say, that is their brand. So that's the promise to the next person, right? Like if you ask a friend for a referral, hey, I need a plumber.

And they say, oh, gosh, you have to use Chris. Chris is great. You know, they're great, they do a great job. They show up on time and they always quote me correctly, that's Chris's brand. That's what it is. Because then you expect Chris to show up on time, give you a Fair price, come in on budget, right? All those things. Because that's what you expect based upon what someone else told you. So that's their brand.

So think about it for yourself. This is why reviews are so important, because we read the recent reviews for other people's experience with you, and that's your brand again, not your logos and your colors. Those things are important. They are, because if your brand looks, branding looks outdated, people think your products and services are outdated. So you need to still look current. That's why brands do refreshes. Not necessarily complete rebranding, but refreshes to make their things look fresher and stuff like that. I'm constantly tweaking my website, trying to add new things on there, new reviews, make sure it's updated with the latest information about how many books I might have out or where I'm speaking or something like that.

So you want to make sure that when you think about your brand, you're not thinking about your logo and your colors and things like that. You want to think about how am I expressing to other people? The promise. Right, the promise. Again, brand tells us what to expect the next time we engage with you. So when someone comes to your website and it's the first time they're engaging with you, you want to make sure that what are they seeing, what are they reading, what are they watching? And how does that express the promise of what you can do based upon what other people have said? And this is why reviews are so important on your website. But short ones, single sentence ones that people can read quick and move on. Read quick and move on. Not putting these big paraphrase paragraphs and not burying them at the bottom of the page.

At the bottom of the page where nobody goes. How many times do you get to the bottom of a page? Rarely. Right. So you need to put them up higher where people are actually looking already. So brand is a promise, a story and a shorthand. Again, Seth Godin, if you don't know Seth Godin, G O D I N marketing expert. Purple Cow was the book. That was his kind of breakout book.

But I probably have four or five of his books on the shelf over here and I get his daily little email with his thoughts and stuff like that. And this is where came in. And I know I've spoken about brand versus branding before, but it's been a while. It's important discussion to come back to because you want to make sure that you're using that. If you heard me speaking about AI, how you can take your reviews and use that to update the wording on your website, and to use that to answer messages and update your brochures and things like that. This is the way to express that brand promise, using the words of people who are already experienced what you do. Because you talk about what you can do, they're talking about what you did do. So I love this phrase.

Thank you to Seth Godin for that. If you have any thoughts about it, please share them with me. And if you haven't asked me any suggestion, ask me anything suggestion I should say go to podcast.Alan Berg.com click on the button Ask me anything. Make your suggestion. Please subscribe. And if there's an opportunity to review on Apple or YouTube or whatever, please do that as well. Thanks.


I’m Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you’d like to suggest other topics for “The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast” please let me know. My email is Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com or you can  text, use the short form on this page, or call +1.732.422.6362, international 001 732 422 6362. I look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.

Listen to this and all episodes on Apple Podcast, YouTube or your favorite app/site:

©2025 Wedding Business Solutions LLC & AlanBerg.com


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Alan Berg, CSP, Global Speaking Fellow

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