Branding

Overview

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Branding is the deliberate shaping of what a company stands for in a buyer's head: the name, the promise, the category it claims, and the consistency with which those are repeated. It is distinct from advertising, which buys attention, and from sales, which converts it. Dries Henau runs The Brand Guys and wrote Fight The Average, Ilse De Smedt founded Com&Co, Michael Humblet runs Chaomatic, Marnick Vandebroek trains storytelling at Stand Up Company, and Erendiz Ates works the LinkedIn channel specifically. The same vocabulary appears well outside the agency world: Mattijs Hermans defines Hawaiian by the category it belongs to rather than by the dish on the counter, and Arthur Heeren measures his football brand against the three global incumbents instead of against local rivals.

Stated facts & numbers

• Wiki classification: Practice concept
• Entities tied to the concept: 22 (15 people, 0 companies)
• Videos discussing it: 73
• Main corpus channel: Ben's Mentors, interviews from 2024 to 2026
• Trademark scope for a Belgian brand: Benelux-wide via BOIP, no national Belgian register
• Named brand strategist on the wiki: Dries Henau, The Brand Guys, author of Fight The Average
• Agency founder on the wiki: Ilse De Smedt, Com&Co
• Sales and positioning trainer: Michael Humblet, Chaomatic
• Storytelling trainer: Marnick Vandebroek, Stand Up Company
• Channel-specific practitioner: Erendiz Ates, LinkedIn training at AZS Solutions
• Category-positioning example: Hawaiian, framed as healthy fastfood by Mattijs Hermans
• Stated brand ambition: Arthur Heeren, top four global sports brand and number one in football