Branding services are usually considered to be a large investment applied to the look and feel of your business, but for us, they’re so much more than that and branding services can help to shape the strategy of your business.
What is a brand?
A brand is the image that customers, potential customers and internal team members have of your business. It’s relatively intangible as a concept, but it’s used to help people identify your company or product.
When you think of a brand, you might imagine the big ones like Coca Cola, Adidas, Dairy Milk or Nike and then you might imagine that branding services aren’t required for your small, medium or large business. Instead, you might settle on developing a company logo and be done with it, concluding that branding is for the big players!
Our view is that this can be a big mistake. Outlining your company brand (or in some cases, personal brand) gives you some control over the image you’d like to portray in the marketplace before your target audience does it for you. Branding services should be strategic and intentional to build your business from the ground up if you’ve not started yet or to redefine your business if you’re looking to take it down a new path. Branding should be emulated through everything your business does from your customer service style, team uniforms, team culture, through to the little things like your business cards and email signature.
These are the elements that we think package up branding services neatly:
- Business name – not everyone will have identified this yet if they’re just starting out. Generating something impactful with meaning can take time.
- Identity – this is determined by defining your core purpose, your business mission and values whilst settling on a tone of voice or personality that should then be carried through everything you do.
- Visual identity – it’s not really until you have identified the above that you can move forward with the visual elements. Translating your purpose is delicate and can often be emotive for key stakeholders within your business.
- Implementation – rolling out a new brand isn’t always as simple as getting the logo updated on the staff shirts. If you have been trading for some time, then it can take effort to communicate the reasons for a rebrand to your loyal customers.
- Maintenance – a quick check in is sometimes all that is needed when it comes to branding. Are all of your marketing outputs, messages, experiences and visuals on-brand? Or do they need attention?
We’ve seen some excellent analogies relating to branding in our time as marketers, but nothing stands out to us more than taking a step back and treating your brand as though it were a person. Creating an identity and personality can be a tough process for those closest to it, so treating it like a person can help breathe new life into your approach towards creating a brand.
Consider the following elements when you give your brand a personality and you’ll be surprised at what might come from it.
- How would your brand introduce themselves when they met a new person?
- If they were a real person, what might they look like? Do they have a good fashion sense?
- How might your brand talk about their features (products or services)?
- Do they have a sense of humour or do they take life quite seriously?
- If you were a friend of your brand, how would you describe them as a person?
If you’re looking to chat through branding services with a unique approach or with someone who understands just how transformational the process can be for businesses of any size, then we’d love to chat. Find out more about our clients or give us a call today.
