.
When you position yourself correctly, you reposition the competition
Your brand is crucial to the success of your business. Your logo and visual identity are just one facet of brand – a visual shorthand.
Your brand is much more far reaching. It lives in the imagination. It is how people feel and think about you.
Every decision and touchpoint should reinforce your brand
Brands succeed not by being different, but by being distinctive. They need to have their own style, tone of voice and personality. Their own way of saying what they do, reflecting their attitude towards the category.
To build a successful brand, people must have clear ideas and feelings about who you are and what you stand for. These thoughts and feelings must be consistent across your visual identity, marketing, strategy, reputation, relationships, positioning, culture, behaviour and so on. To achieve that, everyone in your organisation must understand who you are, why you do what you do, where you are going and what you stand for.
This understanding must then run through everything you do – recruitment, supplier relationships, purchasing, marketing, property…every decision and touch point should reinforce your brand. We’re highly experience in getting everybody onboard and by involving key stakeholders in this process, we aim to create brand advocates within your organisation who will help to make this a reality.
WHAT, HOW & WHY
Most organisations know what they do, and some can tell you how they do it, however, the most successful organisations understand WHY they do it. It’s not about profit; that’s a result. The WHY is your purpose, cause or belief. Without the WHY, there’s no reason for anyone to believe in your brand
OUR BRAND SPINE - A STRATEGIC BRAND FRAMEWORK
Like most agencies we have our own strategic brand framework, we call ours ‘The Brand Spine’. Perfectly aligning with our i5 approach, 'The Brand Spine' should run through the core of your business.
Find out more below about each section and how it can help develop your own brand.
VISION & VALUES
Where are you going and how will you behave on the journey?
OVERARCHING VALUE PROPOSITION
Value Proposition is a concept that wraps up the benefits into a single proposition that guides a whole set of messages which can be tailored to customer (and end user) segments. It must differentiate, resonate and substantiate. This helps to then define your Brand Positioning Territory. Defining that single thought or idea you want to own and then focus on owning it. It must be true to you, relevant to your audience and make it difficult for your competitors to compete.
BRAND PERSONALITY
If your brand was a person how would it be described and remembered?
BRAND PROMISE
Why should your customers believe in you and your brand?
BRAND NARRATIVE
A short narrative that describes your brand experience and what achieving the vision looks like in practice.
Developing your brand identity
With a clear brand strategy in place you will have clear terms of reference which allow you to move from subjective likes and dislikes to being able to objectively critique creative work. The strategy acts as our brief, enabling us to develop creative concepts and messaging that amplify your brand positioning.
As part of a brand identity project we typically develop your logo, colour palette, font selection and some agreed sample collateral, so that we can see how the brand works in context. We then use our experience of using brand guidelines to create brand toolkits which are both, practical and easy-to-use.
