Spend a moment observing how IP experts introduce themselves: online, at conferences, or in client meetings.

Most presentations are anchored in what the profession recognises as legitimate: practice areas, jurisdictions, industries, roles, institutional affiliations. Sometimes this takes the form of technical precision, sometimes a track record, sometimes deliberate restraint, a brief title and the quiet expectation that competence will speak for itself.

There are variations. In-house experts often reference business context and stakeholders more explicitly. Senior partners may signal authority through presence rather than words. Cultural norms play their role. Still, one pattern is strikingly consistent: IP experts tend to present themselves almost exclusively through proof of competence.

When the term “branding” enters the conversation, scepticism is common. And much of that scepticism is justified.

Branding language, as it circulates in many business contexts, often rewards performance over precision. It favours simplification, punchlines, and confident claims. From an IP perspective, this can feel careless (even risky) in a profession where credibility is hard won and easily damaged.

This is why many IP experts focus on what they know and what they can deliver. They describe expertise, outcomes, and results. The human dimension of collaboration, how decisions are shaped, how uncertainty is handled, how responsibility is carried, tends to remain implicit. For a long time, that was enough.

The environment, however, is changing.

AI systems now accelerate large parts of knowledge work. They retrieve information, structure options, generate drafts, compare arguments, increasingly fast and well.

What they cannot do is act as a real partner.

Partnership begins where technical correctness is no longer sufficient. When the “right” answer is politically difficult. When certainty is expected but unavailable. When a recommendation is needed, not an analysis. When a client asks a question that signals hesitation rather than ignorance.

In these moments, value is created through judgment, framing, and responsibility. Many IP experts excel here. They simply rarely make this dimension of their work visible.

Professional trust dynamics

As a brand and communication strategist, I’ve worked with leaders and advisory teams in different industries where expertise is also non-negotiable: strategy, finance, transformation, regulated environments. Again and again, the choice between two highly competent experts comes down to something clients struggle to describe, but clearly recognise: how safe it feels to think with this person, how clearly the decision space is framed, how responsibly uncertainty is handled, how consistently follow-through happens. And this is not about charm.

For this reason “branding” deserves a more precise definition in the IP context.

If branding is treated as self-promotion, it will always feel misaligned. If it is treated as clarity about how you create value as an expert partner, it becomes a different conversation: less about being visible and more about being legible.

Legibility is not only digital.

It shows up on LinkedIn and on websites, yes. It also shows up in the analogue world: how you structure a first call, how you ask questions, how you manage expectations, how you summarise what matters, how you make recommendations without overclaiming.

Clients interpret these signals continuously, even when no one labels them.

This is also why many experts benefit from professional support once they decide to take this seriously. Translating deep expertise into clear positioning without flattening nuance is difficult to do alone. You are too close to your own value. You also carry professional instincts that discourage explicitness, even when explicitness would help clients understand the difference you make.

The aim is not to adopt marketing language. The aim is to make the right things about your expertise and your way of working easier to recognise — without compromising rigor.

In the next column, I will take one of the biggest tension points that shows up in practice: the difference between influence and overreach, and why so many experts hesitate to add strategic perspective even when it would be highly valuable.

Until then, a question to reflect on:

If a client were to choose between you and an equally competent expert tomorrow, what would help them recognise how it is to work with you — beyond what you know and what you have delivered?

That question, left unanswered, is often where differentiation quietly disappears.

About the columnist

Giulia Donato
Branding & Communication Advisor | Executive Coach | Lecturer
people & brand strategies
www.donatostrategies.com