Branding

What is branding?
Branding is about how you define your brand though values and attributes; how you tell the world about your brand; how you influence consumers to see and understand your brand, and, hopefully and in certain markets, why they come to love and cherish it. Branding is a strategically-led process which in turn is driven by business strategy.

What branding isn’t
Branding is often wrongly used as a term to describe what a designer produces for visual elements of a brand such as a logo, colour palette and imagery etc. In fact, all these things are just part of a brand’s visual identity – which is a component part of branding only.

Branding for SMEs – do they all need it?
Yes, but the degree to which they need it will very much depend on the market they operate it. Let’s take two somewhat extreme examples:
1. A company making and selling a health food product which it intends to sell in supermarket chains – yes branding needed big time, and on a one-to-ten scale we’ll give it a ten.
2. A local firm of solicitors which specialises in employment law – not so much on the branding front, and we’ll give it a five out of ten on the scale.

Starting from scratch or reviewing your existing brand
If you’re launching a new company or you’re already established but planning a new product brand, then a strategic approach to branding is essential. This process doesn’t start with design – that’s one of the last tasks – but instead a definition of the brand built around its values, expressive attributes, functional attributes, with this resulting in intended market positioning. The brand identity will be a resulting output, and not just visual identity but verbal identity as well.

For an existing brand – be it the actual company or a product brand it owns – a review of its branding can be prompted by a number of factors, with these including a change in the market which has seen a decline in sales; a threat to the very existence of the brand caused by bad publicity; or perhaps just the reassurance that the brand is in good shape and no changes are needed.

For either of the above, Roger will work with you to set a clear path through the process and ensure the right outcome.