A guide to brand

4 steps to improve

your brand

Step 1Define the essence of your business

The first way to strengthen your brand is to get to the bottom of what your company actually does for your customers. It’s all too easy to have huge long descriptions about what your company does. After all it’s probably complicated what you do, or there can be lots of different sides to the business. Generally the problem with this approach is you are listing all the attributes of the business rather than what the benefit is to the customer. Ideally you need to sum up your business in less than 8 words. It should be really easy for a customer to understand the benefit of using your business – this is your brand essence. So with my business the essence is nothing to do with design, branding, creativity, web etc. it’s the end result of all that – “transforming great businesses into great brands”. Think about what the end result is of using your business is; then ensure that essence is running throughout your brand and marketing.

Transforming great businesses into

great brands

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Step 2 Define the personality of your business

Your brand is the way someone feels about your business. Start off thinking of your business as a person. Different personalities appeal to different people. What you need to decide is the personality of your business, and make sure it appeals to your target market. Once this is defined, compare it to all your current communications. Do they all communicate this personality effectively? If not you need to change them, or your brand will appear conflicted and confused. Any new communications need to convey your chosen personality effectively.

Step 3Be Consistent

One of the most important aspects of a great brand is consistency. Whatever the brand touch point is, it should be communicated consistently. From a visual perspective brand guidelines can really help. Once you have guidelines, everything visual in the brand can be checked against them. Pay particular attention to logo usage, typography, colour usage, photography/illustration and the visual language. Even without guidelines the untrained eye should be able to gauge whether everything is consistent from a general look and feel perspective. For example, compare your business card, your website, your brochure, signage and your van livery for example. Are they all using the same font? Is the logo the same on everything? Are the colours all consistent?

Other areas to check are things such as are the phones answered consistently? Do you have the same feel to all of your written materials? Does it all match your brand personality?

Step 4 Quality

Think about your business and then think about your brand communications. Does the quality of your brand communications match the quality of your business? It’s a simple question to answer. If your business has a 3 million pound turnover, does it look like your brand reflects that? If your average customer is worth X to you, how does your spend on marketing reflect that?

I have talked to many businesses over the years who had very poor, low rent brand communications, and then have turned up at their premises and have been shocked at the size and the quality of their set up. If you can imagine, beautiful business premises, Aston Martin’s outside the door, and a logo done in Microsoft Word.

If you have a great brand and quality communication materials it takes doubt out of the decision making process. You might be an amazing company, but if your brand and your communications do not tell clients that, then new customers may just dismiss you because of the company they think your brand reflects.

In general, make your brand communications look the best they can be. After all, before you start dealing with a client this is their only insight into your business. Are they going to spend 50K with a business who has done their logo in Microsoft Word – probably not. I am sure you get the idea.

In Conclusion

Following these 4 steps will help you identify any problems with your brand and give you some idea of how to improve it. Brand is one of the most important aspects to your business so you need to get it right. Allocate time to really make your brand as good as your business. If you need any help with the areas above we would be happy to work through some exercises with you to improve and define an amazing brand.

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Everything has brand, good, bad or unconsidered

Brand is a split second decisionBrand is that split second feeling we have about something. Feelings such, as love, hate, like, dislike, trustworthy, desirable, reliable, meh, not keen, gorgeous, scary are all the sort of things that are going through people’s minds, throughout the day about everything around them. It’s the way a person navigates the huge array of options they encounter in their daily lives.

Labradors and ratsEverything has brand, whether it is considered or not. If we think about brands in nature, we could look at the Labrador retriever and the rat. The Labrador is popular with dog lovers (its’ target market), as it is generally seen as good natured, reliable, cute, friendly etc. It’s had a lot of good press: Guide Dogs for the Blind, the Andrex puppy etc. Now if we take the rat, it has some real brand issues. Generally it has had some really bad press throughout history; plagues and disease to name just a few. Even with the help of Disney’s Ratatouille, most of us would be pretty uncomfortable if we saw a rat run across a restaurant floor.

Its the same for businessAll businesses have a brand, whether they have thought about it or not. The brand is the way the business is perceived by people outside of the business. It doesn’t matter how good a business is, if its’ brand is poor, people are very unlikely to give the business a try in the first place, or to continue using them. Having a great business, with a strong and well considered brand that appeals to your target market, is the ideal. Your brand should be your business on it’s best day. It should be consistent, logical, and most importantly clear. It should communicate the right feelings and message, to your target market, in a split second. If you can achieve this, your brand will be your business’s most valuable asset. Make sure your business brand is good, not unconsidered - it’s all the outside world sees of your business.

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Brand essence is the heart and soul of a brand

Brand essence, or brand DNA as is sometimes is referred too, is the heart and soul of a brand. It is usually relatively short (no more than 7-8 words) and sums the brand up in an instant. It is often used as the slogan for the brand, or sometimes used as a mantra.

The essence should highlight the unique benefits and values of the brand in relationship to the target market.

The brand essence should be defined at the beginning of the brand process.

Once the brand essence is defined it makes it easy for company to see if their communications are ‘on brand’.

Some examples of famous brands and their esseence are:

Disney: Fun family entertainment

Nike: Authentic athletic performance

Starbucks: Rewarding everyday moments

You will notice with these examples they don’t actually mention the product, but they sum up the brand perfectly.

A big problem with many brands is that they concentrate on the attributes of the business rather than the benefits to customers and the values of their business.

I find the best way to define a brand’s essence is to use a brand pyramid. A brand pyramid breaks the aspects of your brand into various stages - Competition, Attributes, Benefits and Values. Once you have completed those aspects in the pyramid, you can then use the benefits and values to define your brand essence.

If you do it correctly you most probably will discover new things about your business and will make your brand stronger for it. A word of warning, make sure you don’t confuse attributes with benefits.

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Trimming the fat & finding your brand nicheRefined & compactThe first step for any great brand is to have refined and compact business idea underneath it. If the business isn’t easy to understand in an instance, and isn’t logical as a single entity, the brand may falter.

So what do we mean by this? Well I like to think of this stage as trimming the fat. Often new or existing businesses have a great core business idea but it is clouded by too many superfluous ideas and too wide a target market. To make that business into something that can really be a strong brand we need to trim the fat.

This means looking at the business and removing any excess elements that don’t fit or are distracting from the core of the business. So if the majority of your business is X, consider removing Y and Z. Would focusing on X make your business easier to understand and a stronger proposition.

Doing this while thinking about your brand niche will allow you to remove all the unnecessary elements of the business. At the end of this stage if you can’t explain your business idea in a short sentence, you need to trim some more fat.

Brand nicheWe all want to be the best in our field, and this is true for your brand and company. For your brand to be effective you need to be number 1 or 2 in your field. No-one remember’s 3 or below. Think about Cola for example, we all instantly think of Coca Cola and Pepsi. Fizzy orange, Tango and Fanta. This is achieved through brand niche.

Finding a brand niche examplesSo what do we mean by brand niche. Well you might be a local law company for example. There is going to be a lot of

competition in that area, all competing for their brand to be number 1 or 2. If we looked at say immigration law, maybe there is only a handful. This niche has the potential for you to become number 1 in that field.

Another example might be a company selling audio cables. Again lots of competition in that field. But perhaps if that was audio cables for hifi, that would be slightly less. If it was high end audio cable for audiophiles hifi separates, even less.

A word of warning though - it is important to not become too niche as there may be too small a market with no customers (see example right).

Hopefully by now you are getting the idea of how you can find your brand niche and the benefit of it for you brand.

“Your companies brand should be your most valuable asset. A strong brand will get you more business. It will make you stand out from your competition, increase customer loyalty and most importantly will improve your bottom line. The financial value of your business will be greatly increased with a strong brand in place.”

Mustache seasonA business specialising in grooming products for mustaches is perhaps too small a brand niche. Widen it a little more to include products for grooming beards and mustaches, and you have a solid initial brand niche, with plenty of room for complimentary brand extensions.

You are far more likely to be number one or two in the field than if you just did generalist male grooming products.

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Brand & brand identity

What are the main functions of a brand?Navigation – to enable your business to stand out from your competition. To aid customers in navigating the huge array of competition and pick you out.

Reassurance – to provide reassurance to clients that they are making the right choice in choosing your company by communicating the quality of your service or product. Taking trust out of the buying process is key to a successful sales process.

Engagement – to help customers to identify with your company through the use of imagery and message. Without engagement your product or service will only compete on price.

Brand identityA brand identity is the visual aspect of a brand. It is how your business is seen. The identity is made up of a series of visual items which form a system. The strength of the system is in creating a visual language that is easy for a customer to understand, making it easy for the business to communicate their message and values. When creating a brand identity it is essential to have mastery of all the individual core elements. This is to enable them to be combined into a powerful visual language for your business. The success of the brand identity will succeed or fail on the consistency and quality of the elements and how they are used.

DiscoverIn the Discovery stage of a branding project you research the market and competition. Research highlights the potential opportunities which would have been otherwise missed if you had started the project blind.

DefineWith the aid of the research in the discovery stage you can then define the brand. This is very important stage as it gets all parties on the same page so to speak. The brand is defined in terms of brand personality, brand essence, brand niche, and brand promise, brand name etc. This where the magic happens and is perhaps the most creative stage.

DevelopOnce the brand has been defined it provides a blue print for what is required from the brand identity. At this stage the brand touchpoints are created for print and digital.

DeliverOnce the brand has been delivered and launched you then require a brand guardian who will make sure the brand stays consistent throughout its life. The brand should be continually evolved and developed.

DISCOVER

DEFINE

DEVELOP

DELIVER

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Brand touchpoints represent an opportunity to increase awareness of your business, & build customer loyaltyWhat is a touch point you may be asking? Well a touch point represents an opportunity to increase awareness of your business, and build customer loyalty. In other words, all the different ways your business can communicate with potential or existing customers.

Some of these touch points you may already have in place for your business, or some may not be relevant, but for the majority of businesses there will be some which are a potential gold mine of opportunities that have been missed.

I have broken them into print based touch points and digital, just to make them a little easier to navigate. However you need to look at print and digital as a whole in terms of your brand identity, as it is essential for them to be consistent for your brand to work successfully.

Touch points are changing all the time, so its essential to keep up to date with the latest opportunities.

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Just like an octopus your business will have lots of touchpoints. Keep them consistent and on brand.

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The power of brandWhen buying a product or service many things effect our decision to buy. Perhaps the most important decision to make is, “do you trust the company”. A strong, relevant and consistent brand takes trust out of the sales process. This allows a company to build on this trust and to focus there efforts on selling their service or product, rather than battling to earn a potential clients trust at the initial stages of the sales process.

Trust and reassuranceOne of the most important aspects of a businesses’ brand communication is to give reassurance to potential customers. When buying services or products, a major consideration for potential customers is whether they trust a company. Are they credible? Will they deliver? Are they professional? Are they established?

Strong and consistent company branding takes these trust related considerations out of the decision making process. If a customer is sold on trust before entering the sales process, they are far more likely to purchase a product or service. This is the power of great branding.

Strong brands have the following traits in common to create reassurance for customers.

Taking trust out of the decision making process

Brand essenceIt is essential for companies to have a clearly defined brand essence and company vision. This defines them as a company. Businesses without this, communicate mixed and confused messages that will diminish trust with a potential customer.

Brand personalityAs with people, companies have personalities. Defining a brand personality is essential to appeal to the companies target market. The brand personality should be communicated consistently across all brand communications. Poorly defined brand personalities can lead to mixed messages being communicated to customers, which could put doubt in their mind.

Consistency & qualityStrong brands are consistent across all brand touch points. What ever the visual medium or written word the branding should be the same. So whether it’s a web site, a vehicle livery, premises or a business card, the design and message is consistent. This consistency promotes reassurance with a potential customer.

Brand communications should always be professionally designed and written. The quality of the brand communications has a perceived relationship with the quality of the business. Poorly designed and badly written brand communication will have a negative impact on a customer’s trust of a business.

There are other attributes that make a great brand, but those listed above have a direct relationship with a potential customers trust of a business.

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What is the primary purpose of your web site? Is it to create new leads, is it to build reassurance, is it to build brand awareness, sell a product or something else? How will people reach the website?

Most businesses have websites but often the reason for having one is never defined. The purpose of your web site will have a massive effect on the design and content of the site. Having a defined purpose for your site from the beginning, will give your something measurable to gauge how well your web site is doing and if it is fit for purpose.

While it is always good to look forward in business at new techniques and methods, it can also be beneficial to look back at techniques that worked well in the past.

Before web sites were around, businesses relied on printed

What’s the primary purpose of your website - back to brand basics

brochures. These were often beautifully designed, with lovely materials, but more importantly were well written and were inline with the businesses’ brand and vision. Where printed brochures excelled was that it was easy to stay on brand and on message.

When web sites were first introduced in the early days of the internet, design was limited and many of us started obsessing about Google ranking, which lead to poorly written search engine optimised text which was not on brand. Unfortunately this is still a practice that goes on today. How many times have you clicked on a link at the top of the results on Google and thought “I don’t trust this company”, or the page is so loaded with content it has been information overload. There probably is nothing wrong with the company, but because their content reads poorly because of SEO, and perhaps

the brand is compromised, we have little trust in the company. The company succeeded in getting to the top of Google, but ultimately lost us when we visited their web site, potentially compromising their brand long term.

I think an important exercise when commissioning a web site is thinking about how you will drive traffic to your site. Some businesses will ultimately need click throughs on search engines such as Google.

In this situation the potential client will be visiting the web site for reassurance and to find out more about the company.However many businesses, especially those who provide professional services, will often use their web site more like the old fashioned printed brochure. What I mean by this, is they may have a sales person who is working a database of clients, or maybe networking. They may have created an advertising campaign (maybe Google adwords) or are running a promotion. In this situation the potential client will be visiting the web site for reassurance and to find out more about the company. The reason they are going to the web site is because of the meeting with the sales person or contact with an advertising campaign. In this situation it is essential that the businesses’ vision is communicated to create that reassurance. We still want to use all the latest technologies such as, responsive web design, social networking and regular blog

posts, which the old printed brochure couldn’t do, but ultimately we want to wow the client, and hopefully convince them to use our company. The worse case scenario would be a potential client being put off your company because of your web site.

It is an added bonus that if the site is designed using web standards it will naturally start ranking on the search engines. The more articles and useful information you write, the bigger your search engine net will be. But whatever pages you have on the site, your business brand and vision must be communicated consistently. Don’t compromise your brand and vision to be found on a search engine such as Google unless that is your strategy for the web site (use a good SEO copywriter).

So to conclude, make sure your site looks and reads as good as a premium printed brochure of yesteryear. Think about how you will drive visitors to your site and create the site accordingly for those kind of visitors. Yes, use all the latest technology, after all we want to engage visitors and keep them coming back. However, don’t use it at the expense of your brand.

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I wanted to share a few of the recent testimonials I have had for my brand work.

This really nice testimonial is from my client Simon Gray for the work I did on Career Codex and Pembridge Gray.

http://careercodex.com/

“Martin is an expert on brand and what it means to your business. With the launch of two new businesses it was essential to get the brand concept correct from the start to gain traction as quickly as possible. He took the time to talk me through brand strategy and the brand development process and with his guidance I quickly realised that brand is much more than a logo. Martin came up with the goods and also built two beautiful websites around the brand concepts he developed. I would highly recommend him, and have already done so, to anyone looking to develop or refresh their existing brand - he is a true professional.”

Simon Gray - Career Codex

Kind words from our customers

I got this really nice testimonial from Stuart Ross for the work I have done on the High Growth brand. You can check out the new website I have done here.

http://globalhighgrowth.com/

“As someone who both understands brand and how to implement it successfully in an organisation, I have come across no one better than Martin. His process is unique and demonstrates a deep understanding of business, brand strategy and architecture. I have used him to create my brand and also act as its brand guardian, as I grow. I have also recommended Martin to several of my clients, every time they come back with a raving endorsement. I have no hesitation in recommending Martin.”

Stuart Ross - High Growth.

Finally, here is some kind words from Geoff Glover, who I have worked with for both the NHS and the HEA (Higher Education Academy).

“I have used Martin for brand and design for many years. I first worked with him in NHS and subsequently as the head of HEA in health care. His method is clear and concise and easy to implement. Working with him has significantly added to the success of the organisation I have worked at by using a structured design process and communications. He is a really nice guy and is passionate about brand and design.” Geoff Glover - Head of Health Sciences - HEA

If you would like to discuss project please give me a call on 01332 890333. Thanks Martin

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CreativeIntelligentConsideredWe will be there for your brand, from conception, to birth, through growing pains & into maturity.

Wherever your brand is in its life cycle, Department of Brand will cherish it. Call us today to discuss your brand.

Brand creation & developmentBrand strategyBrand naming & rationalisation Brand identityBrand guardianship

w: departmentofbrand.come: martin@departmentofbrand.comt: 01332 890333

Transforming great businesses into

great brands

Book content & design by Martin Hyde Department of Brand

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Brand creation & developmentBrand strategyBrand naming & rationalisation Brand identityBrand guardianship

w: departmentofbrand.come: martin@departmentofbrand.comt: 01332 890333