What is business branding?

Well, it’s… you!

Think of it this way: You have to meet a friend in a crowded market. You can jump, you can wave, you can yell, eventually you’ll be seen or heard. I’m pretty sure you did something like that at some point in your life.

Now picture the same situation, but this time, you are wearing bright neon color clothes. Do your chances of getting spotted faster grow? A lot I would say.

Or, if you want to go one step further, and you have the clear sky by your side, take an opened yellow umbrella with you. How about now? You’ll not only get spotted by your friend, you’ll catch the eye of the entire market. Some will smile, some will talk and some will judge, but even if so, they did see you.

Now think on the effort part on your side. In a real life situation, which one you’d rather be? I have to say I’m more found of yellow umbrellas now, than I was at the beginning of this post.

Same principle applies for businesses, just that half of the market is already wearing some kind of neon clothing, some of them have pink umbrellas and the person you’re meeting is not a friend but a stranger who’s never seen you before. Sounds like fun doesn’t it?

What are the elements of branding?

Let’s continue with our analogy to figure that out.

When we start to describe a person, with what do we start? Most probably with the face/head. We say first “blond with blue eyes” and then we start describing the rest. We normally refer to someone firstly as “the blond girl” rather than “the girl with jeans”.

Well, the face is the LOGO.

It is the most important feature that we remember and with which we associate everything else. When we dress, we do it accordingly don’t we? We take the dark colored clothes because they go well with a lighter skin, or we take a blue dress because it brings out the eyes.

Based on the LOGO, we create a design line with the other elements of the visual identity: business cards, stickers, packaging, labels, vouchers, menus, brochures, fidelity cards, thank you notes, invitations, marketing and advertising materials, uniforms, office interior design, website, socialmedia pages etc.

But that’s not all…

Think about you! You as a person are defined only by how you look and what you wear? By your exterior? No! You are defined by your interior as well: thoughts, feelings, attitude towards others, good qualities, even not so good ones… is it not?

Same in business. You have the internal culture, the organization of the company. Here are included elements like: internal procedures and strategies, relationship with the authorities/employees/suppliers/clients, loyalty systems, company policy, education programs, support for the community, partnerships, charitable activities, etc.

In order to clearly model your business image, you need to work on both sides of it, because both contribute to the company trust in relation with employees, partners and clients therefore adding value, quality, recommendations and facilitating development.

And now that you understand a bit about branding, you can decide what you need for your business/project. Thinking of the analogy, maybe you need a facelift, or maybe just a little bit of make-up… maybe new clothes, or just a change of attitude.

If you know what you need already, please fill in this design brief.

If not, we have a really long list of questions for you, that, when answered, will help with some decisions. So contact us here, first advice is always for free.