Brand Design & Branding Strategy
So what is a branding and why is it important? Surely it’s just a logo, right?
Branding is about communicating with your target audience in a distinctive manner to make your business stand out from the crowd. Creating an attractive logo can help, but effective branding relies on much more and can include your choice of name, colour, tone of voice, shape and even sound. These devices, used subtly, can instantly remind people of a company, product or service. Take for instance:
- A popular low cost airline chose safety orange to be the key focus of all advertising and airplane livery - Easyjet
- The words, “Just do it” end most of this sportswear giants tv advertising campaigns - Nike
- Vacuuming is more commonly referred to as “Hoovering” - Hoover
- TV adverts for PC’s are often interrupted to play a short dum, dum, dum ,dum to indicate the type of hardware that
can be found inside - Intel
Providing your consumers with an easy way to connect to your brand is an important step on the road to gaining invaluable customer loyalty for your products or services against already established providers.
Brand Consultants
Our team have well over 50 years combined brand development experience, delivering brand strategies to companies in the Manchester and Lancashire regions in addition to across the UK and internationally. Over the years we have researched and worked in many differing sectors, acting as brand consultants for Healthcare, Construction, Retail, Finance, Chemical, and Travel & Tourism markets
Generalising as we have, has not only allowed us to work with a diverse range of clients but given us the confidence to enter, service and create successful identity branding for customers within markets normally reserved for niche consultants.
How to produce a Brand strategy?
To launch your new product, breath life into an exisiting service or rebrand a whole company we follow some key stages.
- The first task is for us to understand you. We visit your site, meet key team members, get to know what you’re all about, find out about your history, your objectives, what you think you're good at and not so good at. If you're launching a product, we play with it, test it, find out how it works and sometimes, only very occasionally, we break it. Oops!
- Then we look at your competitors, what do they do well, what makes them stand out, why are they better than other providers or products?
- Your target audience is identified and assessed.
- We create a SWOT analysis to recognise your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities & Threats. This provides us with the required information to accurately position your brand within the market place.
- Next we discuss your launch budget and the monies available to promote your business after launch.
- Finally, before any creative starts we produce a brand launch strategy. It details which delivery channels (website build, brand creative, media insertion costs, stationery printing, ppc advertising etc), your budget should be assigned to produce maximum impact with your target audience. The strategy also includes a list of milestones which should be followed by both parties to achieve delivery deadline.
Brand Identity Design & Delivery
The creative process starts with our design team assembling to brainstorm ideas, names and potential creative directions. From there, a series of initial brand identity concepts are created and digitally positioned on brand deliverables to give you an indication of how they would look in the market place.
Concepts are presented and the merits and/or faults of each identity are openly discussed, chosen designs are then further developed and refined over numerous stages.
Once an identity has been approved, our task is to deliver your branding elements across all media channels according to the predefined brand strategy. Elements could include:
- Brand Guidelines: often a printed manual or booklet; guidelines form a simple, easy to follow internal reference to ensure consistency on all marketing communications across brands, divisions or territories.
- Business Cards: probably the smallest element and often the most neglected. We believe first impressions count and so do the clients that return to us time and time again to produce business cards that create a lasting impression and pave the way to securing lucrative contracts.
- Stationery: an effective brand strategy ensures consistency across all business stationery, from letterheads and compliment slips to purchase order documents and invoices.
- Signage & Livery: bold signage creates a good impression on visitors to your premises and strong vehicle livery generating free mobile advertising should always be considered.
- Packaging & Point of Sale: well designed, cost effective packaging and point of sale graphics are essential in turning the casual shopper into a purse opener.
- Advertising: correct placement is vital in preventing media insertion costs for magazine, newspaper, online, TV & radio escalating. We make sure to recommend channels and areas that are sure to be seen by your target audience. We may also suggest outdoor activity such as bus side graphics, bus shelter adverts, billboard, underground and potentially guerilla marketing.
- PR: generally used in conjunction with press or magazine advertising, well written editorials, published in key trade and consumer magazines can create valuable industry buzz and customer interest.
- Photography: showcasing your strengths is crucial, our location and studio photography services will capture your products, service or business in their best light, providing quality digital images to be used throughout your brand launch and beyond.
- Printed Literature: most brand launches are generally accompanied by some kind of supporting literature, whether that be an impressive company brochure, product user guides or striking direct mail pieces.
- Web Design & Development: any brand strategy isn’t complete without a well-built online presence. Our web development team can deliver a range of solutions, from digital brochures and product microsites to content managed corporate websites and bespoke ecommerce platforms that integrate directly with business critical warehousing and accounts packages.
Brand Building
After your brand is launched, the hard work really begins. To grow your business you need to communicate with new prospects whilst retaining your current customer base. We can help by delivering direct mail marketing campaigns and e-marketing to your customer databases as well as providing seo and social media marketing to drive traffic to your website.
We don’t see ourselves as a quick service to get you up and running, we remain on hand as trusted suppliers, helping you to meet and surpass your objectives.
Why not call to discuss your branding or rebranding requirements on +44 (0)8447 550 350,
email some1@helloevery1.com, or complete the short form at the top of the page.