4 Branding Tips To Believe In
Coca-Cola’s iconic red and white writing, Disney’s Castle, and Adidas’s three stripes probably come to mind when you think about strong branding. But what do all of these brands have in common? They say that the success of a good brand is linked to recognition and emotions and brand recognition is essential for growing and achieving more within your business.
When it comes to Coca-Cola, for example, their brand is built on moments of happiness – their marketing model has won over the world. They have ensured that their client’s emotions are tied to their product in every season. From their iconic ‘holidays are coming’ campaign that they run each Christmas to enjoying a Coca-Cola on the beach in Summer the permanent themes are happiness and togetherness. Coca-Cola unites people and families. It’s not just a drink; it’s a family member who completes every gathering.
You might be wondering how you can make your brand stand out in your own marketplace. In this blog, we explore 4 simple branding tips that can help you and your business stand out from the crowd.
1. Encourage people to connect with your brand
According to numerous studies, emotions affect 90% of the purchases you make. It’s a no-brainer then to say that connecting your brand to emotions is a prerequisite for a successful brand. Whilst we can’t control people’s emotions, we can control the emotions we want to awaken in people when they see our brand.
Having a powerful brand is undoubtedly useful from the standpoint of customer relations. The emotions people feel when they interact with your brand are strong. One way to cultivate and nurture positive emotions is with branded merchandise. A gift that is unique and special and that represents your brand can help strengthen your brand as people feel positive emotions when they see it.
2. Create clear brand standards
Brand recognition is key to inducing the emotions you want from your brand. Brand consistency is therefore one of the most important things you need to get right. You need to establish clear guidelines for all of the following aspects while developing your brand identity (as well as any others that are relevant to your field). Here are some things to think about.
- Your Logo
- Brand colors
- Taglines
- Fonts and typography
- The “voice” used in your branded materials
- Imagery
- Mascots and spokespeople
This list is of course just a few considerations.
For us at Streamline – when embarking on a project with a new client – understanding your brand standards and guidelines is key. We pride ourselves on becoming an extension of your business so fully immersing ourselves in your brand is a full part of the process. We request that you share guidelines with us as soon as you are able so we can ensure the designs and items selected are right for your business.
3. Simple is Beautiful
If you look at the evolution of Coca-Cola’s script logo since it was first used in 1887 after more than 127 years, the original appearance remains mostly intact, notwithstanding some minor font variations.
You might want to take a cue from this titan of the beverage sector. It can be tempting to include more factors than necessary when starting the branding process. But your logo doesn’t need to involve six different colors, and it doesn’t need to have six individual graphic elements to represent the different arms of your company. Clean, simple elements are more likely to be recognized and remembered by consumers.
This is often something we experience when talking with new clients – they are unaware that their logo is detailed in such a way that will require additional printing for example which does result in additional costs, less is more and a subtle logo marque rather than a sales message gives a more premium feel to your merchandise and clothing and will likely be used by the recipient for longer.
Our recommendation is to advise your Streamline contact at the start how you envisage your logo looking on the end product and we can do our utmost to ensure we can deliver it in that way.
4. Stick to your Brand Rules
Creating and implementing brand guidelines for your business is only half the battle. You also need to watch where and how other people are utilising your brand. You’ve taken the time to carefully establish brand rules and started applying them to all of your business’s marketing materials and web domain, the next challenge is to ensure that everyone sticks to these rules.
We appreciate your business may have many departments and sides to it. However, we recognise that occasionally some may go rogue asking for a design or variation on your company colour that is not on brand. We know how important the brand is – so ask you to consider having the right permissions sought on your side before progressing with any orders.
Although getting branding right can be difficult, it is undoubtedly a marketing discipline unto itself. Good intentions and avoiding blunders will go a long way in assisting your business in developing crucial relationships with your target clients and suppliers.
Wrap Up
With all of this in mind, trusting third parties with your brand can be a challenge. It’s something that we pride ourselves on doing well at Streamline and we’re protective of our own brand so we really do ‘get it’. From branded merchandise to clothing and print we’ve can help with every branded product you might need. To talk about how we can help you keep your branding consistent contact our team of experts today.