Company branding (or rebranding) is a thorough and responsible affair that is nonetheless beloved by us. Brand creation is an action of reality art. Brands live in the real world, communicate with people, making humans fall in love with them, or vice versa, cause flurries of indignation. Every brand has its own fortune: some flourish and become icons of whole generations, some die in oblivion.
It is important for us to create strong and powerful brands. We adore watching our creations live, grow and change. For years we have been contentedly observing successes of our creatures — Nemiroff LEX, Comfy, Siltek, LoraShen and many others.
In our agency brand development is a meticulous process. We assemble brand identity brick to brick, starting with mission definition to brand book creation. So what are the bricks that a brand is built up from?
Mission
Brand development starts with defining its mission. A mission is brand’s purpose and sense of existence, its dream about the perfect world and the approach to its implementation. Usually, brand mission can be articulated in a few phrases – they should be simple and pretty pragmatic but inspiring. For instance, this is IKEA’s mission: “At IKEA our vision is to create a better everyday life for the many people. Our business idea supports this vision by offering a wide range of well-designed, functional home furnishing products at prices so low that as many people as possible will be able to afford them.”
Essence
Any successful brand is based on the essence of the business – its spirit and heart, the feelings that people experience interacting with the brand. For example, the essence of Volvo brand is safety, Harley Davidson’s is freedom. Defining the essence is a crucial and difficult stage of branding (or rebranding). Answering the following question can facilitate it: “What kind of a person could the brand be?”
Brand character
The way a brand speaks and acts, what does it react to – these factors constitute the brand character. Personification can help to describe it – it means application of human qualities to a business. For example, it can be “young and trendy” or “serious and formal”.
Positioning
Positioning is an important brick in the process of creating a brand. Thoughtful positioning is about emotional (essence, brand character) and rational (price, quality, unique features) characteristics of a brand and about its position on the market: product category, target audience. Accurately defined positioning significantly affects a brand’s success.
Naming
Name development is an art of uphill battle. A good name has to meet a huge number of criteria at the same time: to depict both emotional and rational advantages of a brand, to suit the target audience, to be original but understandable, to be memorable but not too complicated, to sound good in different languages, to be easy to pronounce, and even… look good on writing. A name defines much of the future journey of a brand.
Visual identity
Graphic design of a brand is not only about it logo and company style. It is a visual representation of all company values, its promise to customers, its essence and character. It should help a customer recognize the brand, no matter where, and evoke the emotions that the brand itself should be associated with.
Brand development ends with the creation of brand book, which contains all the above elements: from the mission to guidelines on company style usage, presenting them in a detailed and convenient way.