What's Owning Your Space

What does it really mean to own your space as a brand — especially in crowded, competitive product categories?

In this solo episode, Clare Sheffield unpacks the idea of owning your space through authenticity, clarity and strategic brand thinking — not volume or noise. She explores why customers experience your brand long before they ever buy, how copycat branding quietly erodes value, and why a logo alone is never the answer.

Clare shares real-world examples of brands that have carved out distinctive, ownable positions, alongside common pitfalls she sees time and again with growing consumer brands. She also offers two practical exercises to help you assess whether your brand is genuinely standing for something clear — or blending into the background.

If you’re an ambitious founder building a purpose-led product brand and want stronger alignment, packaging that sells, and a brand that works harder as you scale, this episode will help you see your brand through a more strategic lens.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to this episode of Own Your Space with myself, Clare Sheffield. Really delighted to have you here today, and I would like to talk a little bit more about what it means to own your space. What do I really mean by owning your space in the world of, of branding? I'm going to talk a little bit today about what I mean by owning your own space. I'm going to talk about a few examples of brands that own their space really well. I am going to talk about a few common pitfalls that we see all the time with brands that don't own their space and also, um, a couple of ideas of ways that you can begin to think about your own brand and whether you are owning your space.

So first of all, I'm always talking to my children about being authentic. I'm saying to them, don't worry about what everyone else is doing. You don't need to look like everybody else. You don't need to do the same as everybody else, the same activities. Be yourself, be honest and authentic, and you will attract the right company, the right friends, and people will like you for who you are and value you for, for what's special and different about you.

It's exactly the same with brands need to be honest and authentic. Owning your own space isn't about being really, really loud. Owning your space is being really authentic and showing the world what's special about your brand. You will have. Heard the, the very famous quote, what do you want people to say about you when you are not in the room?

And that is exactly what branding is all about. What do you want people to say about your brand? What do you want them to say to their friends and family colleagues when they're explaining your brand? What do you want them to say? And that's what owning your space is. If someone is talking about your brand and they're saying what you want them to say about it, then you're definitely owning your space and doing it really, really well. So we need to show our customers what's different and unique about our brands. Why is someone gonna choose your brand over another brand? What's special and different? Because the thing is that people will experience your brand before they will try it. Whether it's a service based business or a product based business. If it's a product based business, someone will be seeing your product either on a shelf or on a website, and they will most likely be looking at this next to other brands.

With a service based business, it could be that somebody's looking at a website or at a physical shop front or a brochure, but there's generally always going to be an interaction with your brand before somebody makes a decision whether to become one of your customers. So you've got a very special opportunity to express what is different and special about you. We've got to give customers the reason to believe. Why are they gonna have, you know, why are they gonna buy your product over somebody else's? So that's a bit of a snapshot about what it means to own your space. Some examples of brands that do this, you know really well.

Oatly, they have this quite unconventional, bold tone of voice. Contemporary bold packaging, and they've really owned their space in the dairy market. Another example is lush. They took this very naked no packaging approach to a lot of their products, and that makes for a very different customer experience and customer perception of the brand. Um, it's very interactive. There's lots of connotations of sustainability and all of those things, so they've really kind of owned that, that space within their market.

A service based business example is Monzo Bank. You know, their ethos. Ethos is very. Customer focused, transparent. It's much more that's expressed very, very well through their identity, which is very fresh and contemporary.

Very different to the existing type of imagery and corporate identity that you would expect within that banking sector. So there's a few examples that I think most of you will know or definitely would've heard of all of them if you don't know them. Some common pitfalls that we see quite a lot in the design industry and at Strong and Together is, is the copycat design where sometimes people think that if there's a, a brand that's success, that's successful and we kind of break down the formula that they've created and we do the same thing, we are going to be successful too.

But actually that's, that's not the case because you're not expressing what's unique and different about you. For example, many years ago now, Innocent drinks really shook up the sector. You know, in a time where there was always images of fruit on the packaging for, for smoothies and juices, quite a straight tone of voice.

They really shook up that category by having a very sort of fresh, contemporary approach on the visual, but also the tone of voice. And then after that came a kind of a whole wave of, of copycat brands and they are not as successful as innocent because innocent were very strategic at the beginning of owning that space.

And they evolved and changed over time. And so they've managed to maintain that space. Another good example is, um, the Chilly's, aluminium bottles. So, you know, when they first launched they were, it was, it was quite different. A water bottle that was aluminium in that space. And then there was a whole raft of kind of copycat brands, but actually Chilly's have done very well to, to maintain owning their space because they've evolved over time and they create a lot of really great collaborations and really beautiful designs.

So they've managed to maintain that space. But a lot of the, the copycat brands of those. Have kind of fallen by the wayside because they didn't build their brand on, um, interesting, different, unique angle. They were looking at what was going on in the market and jumping on the bandwagon, if you like. The other common pitfall that we, we often see in brands that want to own their own space, but full short, is when brands kind of, or people think that a logo is a brand and a logo is just one element of a whole identity. Yes, the logo is really important, but it, it's the tip of the iceberg and it's actually everything that's underneath the surface of the water with an iceberg. It's, that's what actually also creates the brand. It's the, the colour palette. The typography, the tone of voice, the style of imagery, the style of photography, is there illustration?

How does that all come together? All of those elements and how they work together. That's what creates a strong brand, and that's when you own your own space. The logo on its own is just one element. It can be frustrating when you hear people say, oh, it's just a logo. It's just that you just put that on things.

It's, it's so much more. Owning your space is not about having a really smart logo. A really smart logo is part of owning your space, but it's really that kind of strategic thinking at the beginning, that brand positioning, what's different, what's unique, what's interesting to my customers, and then expressing that.

And then really building that customer experience through your whole brand. That's how you actually begin to own your space. You know, summarise, we've talked a little bit about what it means to own your space. We've talked about a few examples, and we've also talked about a few pitfalls. A few exercises that can be really helpful in helping you think about your own brand and whether you are owning your own space.

One exercise is to have a think about what you want your brand to be famous for, and this is something that we talk about with many of our clients. What do you want your brand to be famous for? What would you like the legacy of your brand to be? And that's going to really help you understand what space that you want to own.

So that's one really good exercise. And then another exercise is to ask other people what they understand of your brand. So that could be friends and family. That could be customers. See if you can gather some information and see. What people say about your brand, and then you can see, well, is that what you want people to say about your brand?

Or is there a bit of a disconnect that those two exercises are really helpful as a just an initial top line dip into, are you owning your space? Could you be doing more? Could your brand be working harder for you? I hope that those are helpful.

Thank you so much for joining me here today on Own Your Space.

It was really lovely to talk to you in a bit more detail. I'm really excited for the episodes coming up because our next episode we've got a business founder who's going to be talking to us about owning their space and the journey they've been on. In order to, um, own the space that they have, and I'm very much looking forward to sharing that with you.

Please do subscribe to Own Your Space, share this with any business founders that you think would find it interesting and helpful, and join me on the next episode of Own Your Space. Thank you so much.