# Branding is a journey of earning more goodwill *Sep 19, 2026* ยท Rohan Kumar This is the line that keeps banging my head. I heard it nowhere; I came up with it myself, and it makes total sense to me. But why do no branding gurus say this out loud? Or am I being too self-centric? Everyone says branding is a journey, not a task. **But a journey of what?** And how is it measured? The best way I can explain it is *goodwill*, which has actual value on paper when a company is sold. (I learnt this in 12th standard.) Either I'm thinking about this the wrong way, or I'm onto something. What do you think? ## So what exactly is the journey? If branding is a journey, then there has to be somewhere you're going. You don't just say "we are on a journey" and stop there. A company starts somewhere. Nobody knows it. Then: 1. Someone hears about it. 1. Maybe they remember the name. 1. Maybe they start recognising the logo. 1. They understand what the company does. 1. They start trusting it. 1. They prefer it over another company. 1. They tell someone about it. 1. They become a customer. 1. They come back. Over time, something starts building around that company. It's not just the logo anymore. It's the reputation. The expectations. The trust. The associations people have with it. The feeling they get when they see it. The reason they choose it when there are ten other options sitting right next to it. I think all of this is what we casually call "brand." But maybe what's actually happening underneath is that **the company is earning goodwill.** ## Goodwill is not created by a logo This is where I think branding gets interesting. You can design the most beautiful identity in the world. It can have a perfect grid, beautiful typography, a brilliant colour system, and a logo that looks amazing on a billboard. But if the company constantly disappoints people, none of that matters for very long. The brand keeps losing goodwill. The opposite is also true. A company can have an ugly logo and still become incredibly valuable in people's minds, because the company keeps doing things that make people trust it: good product, good service, good experience, good communication, good decisions, and consistency. The identity is only one part of all this. > Maybe branding is not about creating goodwill. Maybe branding is about earning it. Because you can't really design goodwill into existence. You can create the conditions for it. Then the company has to earn it. ## And you can lose it too This is probably the part that makes the idea more interesting to me. If branding is a journey of earning goodwill, then every interaction either moves you forward or backwards. - A great customer experience earns a little. A bad one loses a little. - A good product earns more. A terrible product can destroy years of reputation. - A company doing what it promised earns trust. A company saying one thing and doing another spends that trust. So maybe brand building is not a campaign. **It's a continuous exchange.** The company keeps asking for people's attention, money, and trust. In return, it has to give them reasons to keep believing in it. ## So where does the designer fit in? I don't think designers should think branding is just about making a company "look like itself." Our job is not to manufacture goodwill. But we can help a company communicate the things that deserve goodwill. We can make it easier to recognise. Easier to understand. Easier to trust. We can create consistency where there was confusion. We can turn something vague into something people can actually experience. But if there's nothing behind it, eventually people will figure that out. > You cannot keep designing your way out of a bad business. And maybe that's why branding is so much bigger than design. ## Can goodwill actually be measured? This is where I get stuck. If I'm onto something, there should be some way to see whether a company is actually earning more goodwill. Maybe it shows up as: - Repeat purchases - Customer retention - People recommending the company without being asked - People choosing the company even when it costs more - People forgiving the occasional mistake because they already trust the company - Attention the company gets without constantly having to buy it - How easily a new product gets accepted because people already trust the name None of these things are goodwill by themselves. But they could be signs that goodwill is accumulating. And eventually, that accumulation has economic consequences. A company with no reputation has to work much harder to convince people. **A company with a strong reputation starts with a certain amount of trust already in the room.** That has value. ## Maybe this is what brand equity is trying to explain I might be overcomplicating something that already has a name. Maybe what I'm calling goodwill is partly what the industry calls brand equity. Maybe there are differences between the two that I don't fully understand yet. But I like the word goodwill because it makes the idea feel more human. People don't interact with "brand equity." People interact with companies. They form opinions. They remember experiences. They trust some companies more than others. They recommend some. They avoid some. And all of those little decisions add up. So maybe the job of branding is simply to help a company earn a little more goodwill today than it had yesterday. And then do it again tomorrow. And again the day after that. ## Maybe "branding is a journey" was never the complete sentence Maybe the sentence was always missing its last part. > Branding is a journey. Okay. But a journey of what? Earning more goodwill. That's the idea that keeps banging my head. I don't know yet if this is a genuinely useful way of looking at branding, or if I've just found a fancy way to describe something people have understood for decades. Maybe someone has already written an entire book about this and I'm just late to the party. But I haven't heard anyone put it this simply, and I can't stop thinking about it. So I'm putting the thought out there. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm onto something. ## Update: what a Reddit discussion taught me I shared this idea on r/branding to test it. Some replies were harsh, but the useful ones sharpened my thinking a lot. Here's what I learned. ### Goodwill and brand equity are not the same thing One commenter pointed out that accounting goodwill and brand equity aren't quite the same. Goodwill is the broader amount a buyer pays above a company's net assets during an acquisition. Brand equity is the trust, recognition, and preference that build up through repeated experiences, and that improve a company's future cash flow. Goodwill also includes things that have nothing to do with branding, like patents and employee relations. So a better way to say it might be: > Branding is a journey of earning more brand equity. Branding is the active process. Brand equity is the asset that builds up over time as a result of that process. ### Can you measure it before selling? This was the question I was most curious about. The short answer: there's usually no single exact number while a business is operating. The value depends on why you're valuing it and which assumptions you use. Valuers generally use three approaches: - **Income:** estimating the cash flow, price premium, or royalty savings that come from the brand. - **Market:** comparing with similar brand transactions, where reliable examples exist. - **Cost:** estimating what it would take to recreate the brand, though this often misses the trust and preference built up over time. For a sale, merger, or formal accounting, you'd need an independent valuation. Day to day, a defensible range with clearly stated assumptions is more useful than pretending to have an exact figure. ### More signals worth tracking Beyond the signals I listed earlier, the discussion added a few more worth watching: - **Branded search:** how many people search for you by name - **Direct traffic:** people coming straight to you, not through ads - **Consideration:** whether people think of you when they're ready to buy - **Acquisition efficiency:** how cheaply you win new customers - **Slack:** how much patience customers show when you mess up The idea that stuck with me most: the journey is about turning a consistent promise into customer behaviour you can actually observe. ### Why gurus might not say it Someone suggested a simple reason: "goodwill" sounds like a finance term, and finance terms don't sell courses. I laughed, but there may be some truth in it. ### Where the idea has limits Not everyone agreed, and the pushback was useful too. One point was that the everyday meaning of goodwill is doing something out of kindness, and people don't buy from brands out of kindness, unless it's charity or they want to support a startup. Goodwill also doesn't explain the psychology behind consumer behaviour, or how brands create value. So it may fit some branding work, but it isn't a universal foundation. Another point was that a brand exists whether or not a company actively manages it. People form impressions either way. But even the commenter who questioned "goodwill" agreed that the "journey" part matters. A brand isn't static. It listens and adapts to changing customer needs and culture to stay relevant. A sales campaign has an impact only while it runs, but the brand exists before and after it. ### Where I've landed I started with "branding is a journey of earning more goodwill." After this discussion, I'd refine it: **branding is the journey, brand equity is what you earn along the way,** and everyday signals like trust, preference, and loyalty show whether you're earning more of it. I was a little wrong, and a little onto something. That's exactly why I put the thought out there. > Want to talk about your brand? [Book a call](https://cal.com/rohankumarpro)