“Once the brand design had been rolled out in London, Piers & Dominic helped manage its implementation seamlessly up and down the length of the country!”
Hear more about what our clients have to say here
What is branding?
Branding clearly highlights what makes your product or service different to – and more attractive than – your competitors. It not only positions your product or service in the marketplace it also helps cement it in the minds of your existing and potential customers.
A brand goes deeper than just a company logo and could be defined as a set of associations that an existing or potential customer has of a company, product, service or individual. These associations can be the result of your own efforts and are actively promoted through a range of customer “touchpoints” (for want of a better word). These “touchpoints” can be marketing, packaging, advertising, PR, corporate identity, CSR and language through to everyday staff and customer interactions – yes, it can even come down to how you answer the phone! Successful branding is judged by positive customer experiences of your business and your ability to attract and keep customers.
An accurate new brand or rebrand project should refocus your true values and influence your behaviours to help your business perform better. This makes it imperative to always be clear about what your business stands for – both internally and externally.
Every business wants to be a customer’s first choice. Building and managing a brand can play a significant part in making that happen.
In summary, branding is selecting and blending tangible and intangible attributes to differentiate the product, service or corporation in an attractive, meaningful and compelling way.
What is our branding process?
1 Brand audit
Before any branding or rebranding work can start it is imperative to take stock of what you already have and gauge its appropriateness in positively positioning and differentiating your product or service. To do this questions must be asked; questions about the relationship of the brand to the organisational vision, how it is coping with the competition, visibility and position in the market place, its fit with its strategy, internal understanding and more. A brand audit will assess the brand in relation to the business, the competition, the environment, its audiences and how it expresses itself visually.
For larger projects this may involve in-depth interviews with existing or potential customers, staff and other stakeholders, examination of the competitions’ positioning and developing a full understanding of the relevant business issues. For smaller ones the information gathering may be selective towards more budget appropriate techniques.
2 Brand strategy
The results of the brand audit will steer the brand strategy; its main part being a description of the brand in words – or its blueprint. In short it articulates what the relationship is with an organisation’s goals, the broader objectives of the other business disciplines and provides a framework that supports the brand’s relationship with its external audiences. To some this may sound a little dry but it is actually a creative process that requires the right balance between imagination and business nouse.
3 Brand design
If the other parts of the process didn’t get you excited, don’t worry, the brand design part should. It’s the sexy bit that doesn’t require much in the way of explanation. Once the audit and the strategy are agreed upon we start by pulling together options on photography, illustration, language, typography, colours that are in line with the brand strategy and, where appropriate, offer ideas around logos, or naming, or both. These are then demonstrated on a handful of key applications crucial to your communications strategy to illustrate the elements working together to communicate your brand coherently.
4 Delivery
Once the brand design part is agreed and finished its time to roll it out. This is when we start to apply the brand elements to sharp, compelling and focussed communications through targeted channels to make your brand resonate coherently and effectively with your market. In addition we deliver a brand document that articulates the findings and results from the 3 areas above. This document is an essential reference that can be used as both a benchmarking and briefing tool to ensure that future communications are on-brand and fit-for-purpose.