Every business has its own brand personality, and it’s imperative that you find yours. This personality will determine much of how your marketing material, social media outreach, and even team morale is dictated. Sometimes, it can go very wrong, and be very inappropriate. For instance, a fun, wacky, light-hearted and positive brand with amusing marketing and bright, funkadeliccolor schemes would hardly work well for a funeral directors. We all have an idea of how certain brands should behave, and while this gives some innovative brands the chance to branch out and try something new, it is worth finding out just why those impressions exist in the first place.
So, how do you start?
With the following advice, defining the personality of your brand needn’t be an extremely confusing approach. After all, this is both equal parts rational enquiry and creative enterprise, and anything that merges those two can be relatively hard to balance in the appropriate way.
So, let’s explore this subject together…
Understand Your Audience
First, understand the audience you hope to market to. It’s easy to flex your creative might and try for something unique and advantageous, but unless you can orbit those decisions around those who will actually interface with your brand, you’re going to be shooting blanks in the dark. Conducting a little research is important, and it’s also important to take a nuanced viewpoint. Just because you’re marketing to retired women, it doesn’t mean that flowery imagery, birds and many other natural themes will be the best for your brand. Just because you’re selling your product to children, it doesn’t mean you need to go for extremely bright colors with cartoon characters.
Of course, there is some wisdom in both of these options, but it’s hardly the only path you should consider. What age is your audience? What are their interests likely to be, and what income bracket are you targeting? The more you can come up with four or five ‘model consumers’ that represent your target audiences, the more informed you will be when branding your design properly.
Keep Things Cohesive
Confusion can often be found when firms fail to keep their branding cohesive. For instance, the branding you may have to show at a trade event may be completely different to the fonts and color schemes used on your website, even if the logo is the same. Simplicity and impact are both essential parts of your branding, because you can’t expect your audience to remember every little superfluous design change you have enacted over the years.
Choose a color scheme, with one or two different colors, three at the absolutely maximum. Choose a font that works for you, and a motto you stick to. Try to brand your goods and merchandise in this manner, and ensure this common theme is found on your website. This even goes for how the signatures of your formatted emails are presented. You can apply this to the letterhead branding of all company documents. Keeping things cohesive is important, as like any worthwhile sports team, you need to fly the flag of your presence with confidence and familiarity.
Try and Be Unique
Why not try to be unique within your industry? Remember, this is not only found in crafting a wacky logo or dressing your staff in oh-so-crazy uniforms. For instance, a branded speaker gift can be a great (and useful means) of investing in high-quality merch, allowing someone to truly appreciate your brand more than the simple t-shirts or other boring merchandising efforts they usually see. There’s nothing wrong with being unique or going for something that not many other companies would do. In fact, it can help you stand out, provided it’s appropriate as per our first example.
High-Quality Branding
Whatever branding you opt for, make sure it’s high quality. For instance, most of us have cringed seeing low-resolution social media banners or shop displays, where printing quality and careful orientation of graphics didn’t seem to be of the utmost concern. If you’re proud of it, then you’re likely working along the right lines. If you’re not, then things may need to change. How well are your social media graphics formatted when sponsoring your posts? What format do you hope your influencer marketing will take, and who will you sponsor? These questions, like many other considerations, will all reinforce the steadfast branding personality of your outfit.
With this advice, we hope you can create a strong, worthwhile and magnetic branding personality.
