
"What is the difference between brand and brand identity?"
So, let’s start there:
‘Design is essential but design is not brand. A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another.’ – Seth Godin
Branding is often misunderstood as simply the visual identity but in reality a brand is made up of many elements, both tangible and intangible. It creates emotional connection, a sense of experience, history, philosophy and culture for the audience – it is the most valuable asset on a company’s balance sheet as it drives business transformation, inside and out.
Brand identity is the visual representation of these larger ideas – it includes logos, typography, colors, packaging and messaging to complement and reinforce the brand strategy and brand reputation. It needs to both attract new customers, employees and investors and also create a sense of comfort and familiarity. This is why brand identity needs to be cohesive across all messaging and visual elements both internally and externally – as it looks to reinforce the emotions, heritage, philosophy and culture of the brand.
‘Brand consistency is doing the same thing every day in the same way; a cohesive brand is different – it’s flexible and futureproof.’ – Hundred
The 9 elements of brand identity design:
1. Clear brand strategy, purpose and positioning
This allows organizations to create meaning and cultural relevance to the corporate brand, or product and service brands, enabling consumers to trust and connect on an emotional level. This can be defined through a brand slogan, commitment to sustainable living, or schemes and projects that give back to local communities. Companies that do this effectively see a benefit to their financial results and other key performance indicators (KPIs).
Corporate giants such as Unilever, Lloyds Banking Group, PepsiCo and GSK – all go beyond words and show evidence of the outcomes of their decisions to address issues affecting individuals and society.
Unilever, for example, has a corporate goal to ‘make sustainable living commonplace’, which is evident in projects such as Foundry Ideas, a global crowdsourcing platform that looks to solve sustainability issues in the areas of sanitation, hygiene, and nutrition.
“One of our core beliefs is that you cannot have a healthy business in an unhealthy society,” reports Unilever’s chief marketing and communications officer Keith Weed. “Sustainability is all encompassing at Unilever and it bridges between environmental and social sustainability, to enable people to live sustainably and businesses to operate sustainably.”
2. Thorough market research
A brand’s purpose and positioning should be informed by market and customer research in order to understand the cultural context and tension of brands.
At Hundred we analyze millions of digital profiles and conversations happening across social media to find what and who your key stakeholders read, listen to, watch, follow, share, and talk about. By tracking the shifting moods and opinions of these culturally connected audiences, we learn about their attitudes, their needs and expectations. This helps us to work out how to position brand effectively, ensure messages resonate, and provide recommendations for how to better cater to your current and prospective employees, customers and investors’ needs.
3. Brand personality
Personality helps customers, employees and investors connect with your brand. If it isn’t well established or consistent, people will not trust or emotionally connect with your brand.
Brand personality is a consistent set of human traits that an effective brand uses to increase its brand equity as customers are more likely to purchase a brand if its personality is similar to their own.
There are five main types of brand personalities with common traits:
- Excitement: carefree, spirited, and youthful
- Sincerity: kindness, thoughtfulness, and an orientation toward family values
- Ruggedness: rough, tough, outdoorsy, and athletic
- Competence: successful, accomplished, and influential, which is highlighted by leadership
- Sophistication: elegant, prestigious, and sometimes even pretentious
Brand personalities are becoming ever more important in the digital age where automation and artificial intelligence is growing. While many people appreciate the convenience of being able to access information and speak to people online, studies show that personal interaction is still important, and this is where a brand personality can help.
In the world of B2B marketing particularly, brand personality can be a welcome competitive differentiator and drive significant customer engagement.
The impact of a good brand personality can also be wide-ranging – affecting not just messaging but culture and recruitment too:
- It provides the tone of voice of all communications– both internal and external
- It directs the visual and graphic identity of the organization
- It reflects company values and the internal corporate culture.
- It impacts preferred hiring profiles for talent attraction and retention
4. Memorable logo
A brand’s logo is something that’s essential to get right because it sits at the center of the whole brand strategy. It’s the visual symbol your customers, employees and investors will be exposed to most and visually connect with.
When all other elements of your brand identity are in place, the logo becomes the stamp of brand identity that people often recognize first. When consumers connect with a logo design, they’re often more inclined to invest their time or money in the company or product.
‘When we look at something, we don’t read first. Before anything else we see shape, we see colour, and if that’s enough to hold our attention, then we’ll read.’
– David Airey
There are a few things to think about when it comes to logo design:
- Laying the groundwork with research and understanding of brand strategy, purpose and positioning is fundamental
- The logo design must be relevant to the ideas, values and activities it represents
- Simplicity aids recognition. Think of Apple’s iconic logo change from 1976 to 1977
- Flexibility is important – the logo has to work at different sizes and in a range of applications, from a website icon in a browser bar to signage on a building
- Don’t be too literal. A logo doesn’t have to show what a company does – think Shell, Penguin or Nike
- A logo doesn’t always need to be a symbol. Often a bespoke wordmark can work well, especially when the company name is unique – look at examples from some of the top brands in the world like Disney, Google and Coca-Cola
- Strive for difference. One way to check this is to place your logo concept within a sea of competitor logos to see if it stands out
- Try the logo out in relevant touchpoint designs for both customers and employees – check how it will appear in the context of a website, an internal office poster, a business card, a social media or app icon for example
- How will the logo design come to life in motion for digital applications? This may require collaboration with animation or motion graphics specialists to explore its potential.
- Strive for difference. One way to check this is to place your logo concept within a sea of competitor logos to see if it stands out
6. Color palette
Colors are other assets that can bring recognizability to your brand. Some colors are now forever associated with certain brands, like Coca Cola red or a Facebook blue.
Color psychology is often intuitive – blue often expresses stability and trust; red and yellow reflect passion and youthful energy. Brands often have a primary color palette of 1 – 4 colors, and a secondary palette that can be used alongside in certain formats.
When choosing your color palette it’s useful to:
- Identify your brand personality so that you can align with relevant colors
- Consider your competitors color palettes so you don’t look the same
- Create and test a color palette across all brand touchpoints
7. Fonts and typography
To create a cohesive design, your chosen fonts need to work with your logo and colors effectively and there are six basic font categories that help designers choose and pair fonts:
- Serif
- Sans-serif
- Slab serif
- Script
- Handwritten
- Decorative
Fonts are powerful. Similar to how colors have emotional associations, fonts also have unique characteristics. For example, most people know you wouldn’t use Comic Sans as a font for a strategic consulting firm.
Serifs are fonts usually used in printed books. Subconsciously, this creates an association with knowledge, professionalism, and storytelling. Decorative fonts are generally considered more informal and quirky, they are great to accentuate the individuality of a brand. Sans serifs font are more modern and readable and so are often used on websites and long pieces of information.
Typography refers to the way the fonts are displayed such as their hierarchy (only used for headings or subtitles), sizes or boldness. If designed correctly typography can further help your visuals to convey the right message.
8. Shapes and Patterns
Since we live in the digital age, it is vital to create a brand identity with an extended visual language that works for multimedia, with supporting graphics, icons, and photographs.
Like colors and fonts, shapes and patterns have psychological associations. Round shapes suggest unity, harmony and ecosytems; triangles and straight lines are often used to denote strength and formality.
McDonald’s “golden arches” is a shape now so associated with the brand, they utilize this effectively in their brand campaigns will little need for messaging or even sight of their full logo.
9. A consistent style for graphics
Infographics, illustrations, photography, shapes, patterns, colors, fonts are all element you use in your brand identity and need to work cohesively to reflect the brand strategy, purpose and positioning. To do this they need to be structured and specifically designed according to the brand’s tone of voice, message, products, services, values, and target audience.
A cohesive brand helps create a sense of familiarity and the impression of a serious and professional brand that cares about how it is seen.
At Hundred we combine business strategy, behavioral psychology and communication strategy to help clients define their brand values and positioning and maintain, monitor and evolve brands within ever-changing market conditions.
Our core brand offerings include:
- Market research, cultural context and competition analysis
- Brand strategy and positioning
- Creating brand identities
- Developing an actionable go to market plan for brand promotion
- Employer branding to create effective employee engagement and an aligned culture.
If this is something you’d like to understand more about, we recommend reading Douglas Holt’s “How Brands Become Icons”
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