What is Branding?
Posted on May 29, 2008
Filed Under Branding, Services | Leave a Comment
Branding is everything and everything is Branding.
“Brand essence is the sum total of your customer’s experience across all contact points with your product or service.”
This means that their experience with your product or service, your marketing message, how your employees talk about the offering, even the manner in which your receptionist handles an incoming customer call, all contributes to your brand image. Inconsistent experiences across contact points will damage your intended brand image as it relates to your customer’s perception.
The intent is to create a brand image perceived by the customer to be something they want to include in their lives; something for which they have an emotional affinity. The aim is to own a bit of real estate in your customers’ mind.
A brand is an identifying/logo mark. Building a brand is what we do after that identifying mark is established. Brand building is the sum total of a companies effort to control a customer’s perception of a product or service across all contact points.
Ultimately customers own the brand image while the companies own the mark.
Please leave a comment.
Typography
Posted on May 28, 2008
Filed Under Graphic Design | Leave a Comment
Typography is a core building block of an effective identity program. Companies like Apple, Citi and Mercedes-Benz are easily recognizable in great part due to the distinctive and consistent treatment of their typographical styles. A unified and coherent company image is not possible without typography that has a unique personality and legibility.
There are thousands of fonts available with new fonts created each day. Choosing the correct font for your logo makes the identity that much more effective. The typeface needs to be flexible and easy to use, and it must provide a wide range of expression. Clarity and legibility are the drivers.
Type holds more power than you may be aware of. It not only communicates a word’s information, but it conveys a subliminal message.
Please let me know what you think.
Establish Your Brand
Posted on April 28, 2008
Filed Under Branding | 1 Comment
The goal in establishing your brand is to communicate to your target market what your brand stands for when people see it, use it, think of it, refer to it, or interact with it. Branding is made up of many things, all working together. Branding is not just your logo, your identity, tag-line or mascot. Although these contribute to your brand, there is much more to it. Branding is that small piece of real estate you own in the public’s mind. Branding is the promise, the big idea, and the expectations that reside in each customer’s mind about a product, service or company. People fall in love with brands, they trust them, develop strong loyalties to them, buy them, and ultimately believe in them.
The Benefits
Brands that have been established and that are being maintained in the marketplace have many benefits:
- PR introduces your brand to the marketplace
- Advertising and visual points of contact maintain your brand
- Related to PR are word of mouth, referrals, and recommendations
- Customers are loyal, not just one time purchasers
- A strong brand helps to sell value
- Top-of-mind awareness contributes to marketshare
- Brand preference makes the purchasing decision a “no-brainer” to your customer
- Strong brands take price out of the purchasing decision
- An emotional attachment is price insensitive
When are Brand experts needed?
Posted on April 17, 2008
Filed Under Branding, Services | 2 Comments
New Company, New Product
- I’m starting a new business. I need a business card and a website.
- We’ve developed a new product and it needs a name and a logo yesterday.
- We need to raise thousands of dollars. The campaign needs to have its own identity.
- We’re going public in the fall. Wee need to launch a world-wide class brand.
- We need to raise venture capital, even though we do not have our first customer.
Name Change
- Our name no longer fits who we are and the businesses we are in.
- We need to change our name because of a trademark conflict and then we need to
- revise and update all of our materials.
- Our name misleads customers.
- Our name has negative connotations in the new markets we are serving.
Revitalize a Brand
- We want to reposition and renew our corporate brand.
- We need to communicate more clearly about who we are.
- We’re going global – we need help to enter new world markets.
- No one knows who we are.
- We want to appeal to a new and more affluent target market.
Revitalize a Brand Identity
- We are a great company with cutting-edge products, but we look behind the times.
- Will our identity work on the web?
- Our corporate identity does not position us shoulder to shoulder with our competition.
- We have 75 divisions and inconsistent nomenclature. We are all over the place.
- I’m embarrassed when I give out my business card. We are a big business and the card sends the wrong signal.
- We need a fresh modern approach.
- We love our symbol but the problem is you cannot read our logotype.
Create an Integrated System
- We do not present a consistent face to our customers.
- We lack visual consistency and we need a new brand architecture to deal with acquisitions.
- Our packaging is not distinctive. Our competitors look better than we do, and their sales reflect that.
- All of our product literature looks like it comes from different companies.
- We need to look current and communicate that we are one global company.
- Every division does its own marketing. This is inefficient, frustrating and not cost-effective. Everyone is continuously reinventing the wheel.
When Companies Merge
- We want to send a clear message to our stakeholders that this is a merger of equals.
- We want to communicate that 1 + 1 = 4
- We want to build on the brand equity of the merging companies.
- We need to send a strong signal to the world that we are the new industry leader.
- We need a new name.
- How do we evaluate our acquisition’s brand and fold it into our brand architecture.
- Two industry leaders are merging. How do we manage our new identity?
Services
Posted on April 2, 2008
Filed Under Services | Leave a Comment
It doesn’ have to be puzzling.
We will help you to…
- Drive sales and customer loyalty.
- Create recall, increase awareness and the sales impact of your promotions.
- Make better marketing decisions using your brand as your guide.
- Better understand the status of your brand.
- Create a consistent experience through all your customers’ touch-points.
- Develop meaningful connections with your customers.
- Help employees understand their role as it relates to your brand.
- Create, clarity and reduce complexity of your in-store communications
Call on us, when you want…
- To Increase sales
- Create more effective customer promotions.
- Support the launch of new products, a business, or your brand.
- Efficiency in how you create and manage custom versions of communications within your markets.
- Easier roll-out of the many promotion sets implemented through the year.
- To manage a product (or products) through brand recognition.
- Marketing systems that keep pace with the growth of your company.
- Better understanding through your organization of what marketing is and what your marketing team does.
- Help employees to better understand and live your company values/mission statement.
“Bert is a truly outstanding graphic designer! His visionary artistry has impressed us time and again. He is very good at hearing what you are asking for, not just listening to what you are saying. I recommend him highly to anyone looking to brand/rebrand themselves!” JB - FridgeFriends
Please contact us at any of the following:
DesignDirector@plusbranding.com
BrandDirector@plusbranding.com
You’ve Got 3 Seconds!
Posted on April 1, 2008
Filed Under Graphic Design | Leave a Comment
A consumer will give you about three seconds, maybe 4 if you’re lucky, to get to your message across. To make it obvious that your brand is different, that your brand is better, and why they should take time to care. That’s it. You’ve got three seconds.
In a market where products try to be everything to everybody, where everything gets pushed to the lowest common denominator, you’ve got to set yourself apart, find a point of difference that can be turned into a point of genuine differentiation. Then, you’ve got to put your branding efforts toward communicating exactly how interacting with your brand will be a different experience, and why it will actually be a better choice. You’ve got to make sure your brand is seen as a clearly distinctive choice.
The fact is, the number one job of branding today is to get people to stop and look and recognize — in an instant — that they’re seeing something they’ve never seen before and that it meets a justifiable and relevant need, whether it be related to corp. logo, service, to value, to functionality or fun. It also has to generate recall.
Evaluate your competition. Identify where the key emotional and rational associations linked to this logo/brand is in the consumer’s mind. Who do they appeal to and why. What sets them apart? Who are the customers and why? How does the competition’s competition differ? What is their point of differentiation? It does take real focus to evaluate all of this.
Travel off down that road not yet traveled. To determine which market needs are not being met and how you can meet them.
We all know that brands help consumers make choices. In a world of branding, it’s critical that you make unquestionably clear the different and relevantly better choice you have to offer. This can begin with a strong Corp. Identity that functions on different levels. That logo may be what opens the door for you. Three split seconds goes by in an instant.
Case Study 3
Posted on April 1, 2008
Filed Under Case Studies | Leave a Comment
Challenge:
To create a contemporary Logo/Brand for Home & Park Motorhomes.
Solution:
We created a ‘freeway’ highway ramp graphic by creatively combining an ‘h’ and ‘p’ letter form. This combination of letters makes for a unique and memorable ligature.
Simple yet aggressive this logo imparts experience and credibility while also relating to the driving experience.
Details:
New logo, corporate standards, stationary, brochures, ads, catalogues, direct mail graphics.
Please let me know what you think.
Case Study 2
Posted on April 1, 2008
Filed Under Case Studies | 1 Comment
Challenge:
To redesign the Offictrax brand into a corporate friendly brand with more clout and stability.
Solution:
We developed a friendlier more approachable logo while retaining a some of the previous traits. We wanted to re-develop the company into a user friendly, focused software company. With the new ‘X’ logo we identify more with an aggressive, customer oriented corp look. The three colour identity system gives it a distinct yet cohesive look.
Details:
New tag line, logo, stationary, website, flash animation, sales collateral, booth graphics, brochures and direct mail pieces.
Please let me know what you think.
Case Study 1
Posted on April 1, 2008
Filed Under Case Studies | Leave a Comment
Thank you for taking an interest in my graphic design portfolio where you will find a selection of recent case studies. I will be updating this page so please come back often.
Challenge:
To reposition “Altruistic Marketing International” into a corporate friendly brand that speaks to you.
Solution:
We developed a friendlier more approachable logo while retaining a corp look. We wanted to re-develop the company into a user friendly marketing company. With a new ‘wishes’ logo we identify more with a prosperous, growth oriented industry setting. The single colour identity system stands out among the clutter and achieves a simplistic yet intriging look. The silhouette of the girl within the ‘A’ creates the negative space and helps solidy the company’s tagline.
Details:
New company name, logo, corporate standards, stationary, website, animation, brochures and direct mail-graphics.
Please let me know what you think.
Logos / Brands Are Messengers
Posted on March 31, 2008
Filed Under Branding, Logo Design | 2 Comments
We live at a time when we are constantly bombarded by brands.
They reveal themselves in every aspect of our personal and professional spaces.
Brands always compete with each other within their own business category, and at some level compete with all other brands for our attention, our loyalty, and our spending money. As a logo designer I need to create a brandmark, a unique symbol that is differentiated, has the power to communicate within a split second, and in many cases be reproduced smaller than a blueberry.
Logos/brands are messengers of trust. Consumers depend on trademarks to be constant, and are reassured by what they represent in an always changing world.
The leaping deer in John Deere’s logo and has been the core identity element since 1878.
keep looking »