Branding

our branding projects are intended to drive business results: increased brand awareness, improved customer sentiment, increased profit margins and sales.

The companies that achieve this despite competitive pressures to the contrary are all empowered by strong brands – recognizable identities that are trusted by the market to consistently deliver a certain value proposition.

Brand Strategy

Before we get to the fun stuff of taglines and logos, we lay the research groundwork for your brand by strategically thinking through how you should go to market. Depending on your needs, this could include a blend of the following elements:

• Brand Discovery and Audit: We conduct market research on your industry and execute a brand awareness survey against your target audiences, then pair our findings with feedback and insights from key stakeholders.
• Strategic Positioning: It’s essential to map out your brand’s strategic positioning relative to your competitors. Once we survey your audiences and the market’s grasp of what your brand does and who it’s for, we determine where you need to go – and how to get there.
• Brand Architecture: We map out how your company’s brand, sub-brands and products relate to each other, and how the portfolio is presented to the market. We also develop an assessment framework to guide your future decisions around products and offerings.
• Audience Personas: We conduct qualitative interviews of internal stakeholders, current customers, past customers, prospects and industry experts. The resulting personas provide a solid, detailed foundation for brand development.
• Messaging Frameworks: With a strong understanding of your industry and competitive landscape in place, we develop detailed messaging frameworks for your key audiences. This includes insights on major brand benefits or differentiators, focused for each of your target groups.

Brand Expression

Next, we dive into the more creative process of how to tell your brand’s story.

• Brand Charter: With strategic insights in hand, we move forward with the development of the core principles of your brand and company including the mission statement, vision statement and brand values. These pillars serve as the foundation the rest of your brand will be built upon.
• Brand Personality: What makes your brand tick? We identify the brand values that root your organization’s perspectives and priorities; the brand attributes that describe its marketable “on-the-label” qualities, and the brand persona traits that authentically showcase your company’s personality.
• Brand and Product Names: Sometimes existing brand names already hold equity that simply need to be refined or updated. Other times, a full brand reboot or new product name is required. Our process includes competitive research, creative brainstorming, quantitative scoring, market testing and preliminary research into name ownability.
• Verbal Brand Identity: This is where the brand starts to come to life. We also call this the “brand narrative” process because it includes the development of a brand tagline, an elevator pitch, high-level value propositions, and detailed voice and tone guidelines. In other words, we’re creating your brand’s story.
• Visual Brand Identity: We recommend a compelling, ownable design system that is distinct within a crowded landscape and brings your brand personality to life. The new visual language could include a new logomark, typography, color standards, graphic language specifications and application samples.
• Brand Guidelines: At the end of the Brand Expression process, we document the brand’s new positioning, personality, verbal and visual identity specifications in a comprehensive brand guideline. Use it to empower your teams with application guidelines and ensure the brand’s consistent application across collateral.