February 17 2009
Brand Identity in Review
It is time to return to our topic – brand identity. We’ll look at creating, building and maintaining. Let’s get started…
Humans are visual. A simple “symbol” can trigger recall and emotion – so why not harness the power of a symbol – brand- for yourself?
Your brand identity should be about making an emotional connection with your target market.
A good brand identity will build your company. A poor BI will undermine all your efforts no matter how great they may be.
Brand identities are created in the mind of your target market.
Each marketing touch point (biz card, email, web site etc) is an op to build and strengthen your brand identity.
Your brand identity is the very core of your marketing campaign. It can make or break it. Go enjoy lunch…
Welcome back from lunch…The best brand identity is flexible, memorable, unique and creates recall in your markets mind.
Repeat exposure to a successful brand identity have allowed many company’s (Apple, Nike, McDonalds) to drop the logo type from their sig.
Our brains remember shapes first. Example: think or all of our directional road signs? All symbols.
Symbols create a faster impact and more importantly a lasting imprint on the mind of our market.
Our eye sees the shape first then the color and then the text. Content last because it takes more time for our mind to process the text.
Your brand identity is a critical strategy for accelerating your business success.
There is no right or wrong in picking a company to help you create your brand identity.
Some brand specialists offer everything from A to Z others, like aBi, offers components by menu, better for a small biz or entrepreneurs budget.
Your BI is the pinnacle of your marketing, when clients see it, they feel comfort and loyalty – the starting point of every sale.
Design does matter when it comes to your BI. Invest in yourself now, save time and don’t waste touch points with your market.
Reason to invest now: your BI creates immediate recognition and potions you for success.
Reason to invest now: it makes the sell easier by making your services and products visible and tangible.
Reason to invest now: it makes it easier to build brand equity in your target makes mind, thru recognition and loyalty.
An effective brand will be: bold and memorable.
An effective brand will be: Immediately recognizable.
An effective brand will be: clear and consistent with the image of your company.
An effective brand will: work well across media and scale.
An effective brand will: work in black and white as well as in color.
An effective brand will: anticipate the future needs and bring it to life.
An effective brand will: communicates in a split second and can work smaller than a dime. BBC, CNN, FOX, MTV, PBS, BMW, KIA…
Symbols engage our imagination and emotion: think Nike, NBC, CBS, ABC, Mercedes, Cingular (now AT&T).
Your BI is your messenger of trust and credibility.
BI’s must be sustainable, the Michelin Man was created in 1895 and has been update numerous times but we still see “the Michelin Man”.
Motorola was created in 1960, McDonalds in 1962, Nike 1971, Apple ’77, Mercedes ’11, Coke 1887, Olympics 1865, John Deere 1876…
Building a successful BI requires a consistent and coordinated presentation across all communications.
An effective BI needs to work in various sizes from an imprint on a Bic pen to a billboard.
An effective BI needs to work in black & white and from full color to two-color and one-color.
Your BI will become indistinguishable from the company in the clients mind. Make sure it is strong, because a good design is good biz.
Capture every op to position your company in your market’s mind.
Communicate your BI over and over again. BI consistency breaks thru oversaturated markets to reach your markets mind share.
Identify client touch points and make sure your brand identity is there!
A sales campaign focuses on a product, a marketing campaign penetrates the real estate in the clients mind and owns it!
A tagline is a slogan that creates interest. Think of the tags that impact you. Just Do It, 501 Blues, This Bud’s for you, The Uncola…
There are a number of different types of taglines: imperative (last Tweet) descriptive, superlative, provocative and specific
A tagline must be short, unique, easy to say and remember, and evoke an emotional response.
Who stated this: Step up, Simplify, Express yourself, Invent, Think different, Happy hunting…what’s yours? How does it compare to these?
There are several different types of logos: wordmarks, letterforms, pictorial, and abstract.
Wordmark is a freestanding word or words with a distinctive font. Ex: Mobil, Dell, IBM, Braun.
Letterform is a single unique letter with personality. Ex: Owens Illinois and Westinghouse.
Pictorial mark uses a symbol or icon as an image. Ex: PBS, NBC, ABC, Greyhound, USPS, and Merrill Lynch.
Abstract mark provides ambiguity and works well with company’s that offer services. Symbols might include polygons, arrowheads, rectangles, circles, and today’s every popular swoosh.
There is a process to creating a BI. It starts with research to clarify the vision, goals and values of the company.
It continues with defining and understanding the brand strategy. Which moves you into the design phase for the visual strategy.
The next step is to finalize the BI and start applying it to the company architecture. Final step is to launch the BI plan, internally first (if you have employees) and then externally.
aBi works quickly but the length of a BI project is impacted by: the size of the organization, research required, clients decision-making process, no. of decision markers.
From experience decisions made by larger groups tend to be conservative and less creative then decisions made by small groups.
Ask yourself the following Qs: what is our company mission? What are our 3 most important goals?
Ask yourself the following Qs: who is your target market? Write a brief description of your products and/or services.
Ask yourself the following Qs: how do you want to be perceived by your target market?
Ask yourself the following Qs: what is our competitive advantage? Why do our clients buy our products/service over our competitors? What do we do better?
Ask yourself the following Qs: who is our competition? Who sticks out most? Why?
Ask yourself the following Qs: how will we market our products/services to our market?
Ask yourself the following Qs: where will we be in 3 years? 5? 10?
Ask yourself the following Qs: how do we measure our successes? Our failures?
Ask yourself the following Qs: if your company could do or be anything what would that be?
Ask yourself the following Qs: if you could only communicate 1 single message about your company, what would that be?
Ask yourself the following Qs: what should I ask myself that aBi hasn’t already asked?
This is a great stopping place for now. Go back and review the questions and really put your thinking cap on to answer them – dig deep.
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