Whether you provide a service or produce a product, you communicate industry prominence through your brand identity. Business brand identity refers to the products, services, people, company, logo, tagline, name, and typeface that contribute to consumer appeal. If you’re looking to revamp an established brand or seeking to gain market share as a new entity, building a credible brand identity is imperative to business success.
1.) Build your structure. You wouldn’t build a house without an architectural plan, so why would you build your brand without one? Determining a foundation is imperative, as this is the mission statement to guide your brand. Brand architecture strategy is divided into two categories, your business can either be a “branded house” or a “house of brands”. There are benefits to each strategy, but before moving forward you must identify which architecture will create the most value for your product and service offerings.
2.) Furnish your brand. Once you have established your brand’s blueprint, you can move towards outfitting your brand with messaging that supports your underlying strategy. For established brands, this includes recognizing gaps, failures, and success in past messaging and market segment attitudes. For new brands, this involves recognizing your ideal image of success and perception in the minds of prospective consumers.
To actualize brand success, you must first establish clear objectives for you brand. From these objectives, you can identify brand attributes that support the image you are trying to portray and use these determinant features to develop rational and emotional value propositions. These propositions should speak to the functional use of the brand, as well as the feelings evoked by using the brand.
By implementing these steps, you can develop key positioning statements for your brand that will help you differentiate from competitors. Key positioning statements should identify your product and target market, establish a clear brand promise, and accentuate unique brand benefits linked to design, price, quality, or customer service.
3.) Add finishing touches. Where first impressions of a brand are known to be the most valuable, your company must convey the right first-impression to stand out in today’s marketing clutter. Before you move on to implementing your brand messaging, it is important to consider the details of your design.
All brand names, trademarks, logos, tag lines, and slogans should capture brand attributes and imagery elements that reflect differentiation. Not only should these elements align to brand messaging, they should also be transferable across time, so that they can be easily manipulated and adapted to suit the ever-changing environment.
Designing brand identity should include attention to detail and consideration to color psychology, typography, and symbolism, as all play an important role in how a brand is perceived. Specific color options, fonts, and character formatting evoke a wide array of feelings ranging from industry prominence and longevity, to elegance and security. Thus, each collateral element introduced to supplement the brand should be well-thought out and intentionally created, to avoid a brand disconnect.
4.) Move into the market. After you have gone through creative processes required to support brand strategy, you can begin to integrate your new or revitalized brand into the market. This involves capitalizing on operations that will help to boost the visibility or your brand, your product, and your message. Common tactics include social media strategies, marketing campaigns, and public relations management, designed to track the results of your brand success.
Need some help getting your new brand off the ground? Let us do the work.
— by Destinee Cyr, 2017-2018 Broadreach Public Relations Apprentice
