BRAND AID

Branding - How to Improve Your Brand Identity

Often when a business is looking to reinvent itself, it first looks at its branding. A new logo or website would appear to resolve this issue, or will it?

What is branding? The answer to this could be a logo, a website, a business plan or a product or service. This however is not the answer. Branding is your reputation, your vision, your personality and a differentiator from other companies in your market sector.

Brands get broken for many reasons. Brand positioning becomes unclear resulting in knee jerk reactions from businesses to try and fix the problem. A new logo or website will not always achieve this. A closer review of your brand is necessary to understand the underlying issues. The following are some practical approaches to fix branding problems:

1. A Broken Brand

Rather than trying to fix the current brand, you need to look at where your company started out. What did it stand for? What was the connection with your customers? What were the core values of your brand? Are the answers to these questions still present and are they still relevant? The marketplace is constantly changing. Speak to your customers and understand what benefits your product or service provides and work to make your brand achieve this expectation.

2. A Boring Brand

When a brand doesn’t create excitement with employees or customers alike, it is time to look at the emotional connection of your brand. It is not just about the awareness of your brand, it is about the emotion & customer experience associated it. Look at Costa. This brand isn’t just about providing a great cup of coffee, it’s all about the experience of taking time to drink coffee in a comfortable environment. It allows the customer to feel connected to the brand making it a more exciting proposition. By simply telling a story or making your customer feel connected, your brand will soon be acknowledged and accepted, allowing it to capture their imagination once more.

3. An Old Fashioned Brand

Ignore your brand for too long and it can lose its edge. Brands can be revived or reinvented, but they shouldn’t lose their core brand values. New ideas can be introduced, but they should all relate back to what your brand stood for in the first place. This is what your core consumer bought into, and it is what your new customers will buy into also. It is therefore important to get this core message across when launching new branding or advertising campaigns, as it will keep your existing customer base, whilst hopefully attracting a new generation of consumers to take your brand forward.

4. A Product, Not a Brand

A strong brand can soon become just a product. Keeping third parties & retailers happy could mean that your brand not only reduces in cost, it also reduces in value. The e-commerce era has taught us that brand awareness isn’t the same as brand strength. Your brand needs to be unique. It needs to be better than the competition. By creating a great consumer experience around your product and making sure your brand values are fully understood, this will elevate your product to make it stand out from your competitors. This way your brand becomes your product, not the other way around.

Therefore, a new logo or website will not always fix a business. You need to look at the core values of your brand, understand your consumer and create an all-round experience that your customer will buy into, which will ultimately help give your business the competitor advantage it needs. If you decide that you then require a new logo or website, you can clearly brief your designer to ensure they fully understand what it is that you want to portray. You know your industry, they do not, so this is vital.

Please note that the views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this article belong solely to the author, and not necessarily to any other group or individual. To ensure you are fully compliant with all current legislation, please take legal/professional advice and do not rely solely on the information provided in these articles.