What is Branding?

What is branding? What does ‘having a rebrand’ mean? Why is so hard to define?

These are often quite tricky questions to answer. The term “brand” came from cattle ranchers over 50 years ago and in the late 80’s companies like Coca-cola starting to brand their packaged goods in a way that differentiated them from the bland competition.

As time went on and marketeers got savvy, they realised that there was more to ‘a brand’ than just a company name and a pretty box! Branding has evolved and with time it has become more subjective. Branding has become more about a person’s feelings (or perception) for a product, service or business.

Let’s explain what branding is not.

Branding is not limited to a logo or a colour scheme. It is not simply to make people aware of your business or service. These are critical elements of the brand building process but these only scratch the surface.

It’s also important to acknowledge the difference between branding and marketing.

Marketing is the activity designed to promote your business; it will compliment branding but it doesn’t replace it.

Here is our take on what branding is.

1. Brands mean different things to different people, it can play a different role depending on who it interacts with and when. Some people will connect meaningfully with an aspect of a brand while others won’t. Quite often a person’s relationship with a brand can develop, increasing trust, loyalty and engagement. Smart and successful brands work hard to reach different audiences who matter to their business to cement the relationship with the brand.
2. It helps to think of branding as an ever-evolving experience rather than a structured set of rules. It can grow, develop, respond and shift with the times. A brand can be the sum of interactions with infinite possibilities and every touch point makes a difference.
3. Brands are about feelings. When you ask people why they love certain brands, they might provide a list of logical reasons but in the end it often comes down to a feeling. How does that brand really make them feel? Successful brands hold great emotional meaning for people and that’s what can make a brand loved and respected.
4. Discussing the impact of a brand is easier than defining what a brand is. When we talk about defining a brand we often talk about what makes a brand impactful for a business. It might be better ROI or an aligned leadership. Impact from a brand refresh or a new positioning, a great campaign or just more brand engagement is where you really see a brand doing it’s job well. E.g. The impact of an engaged workplace can create increased innovation, productivity, creativity and loyalty amongst employees and new recruits.

Establishing an understanding about how you and your business defines your brand and what it means can help guide your brand and business forward. But remember it doesn’t matter if you think your brand has the potential to be the next Apple or Nike—what really matters is what your target audience thinks of your brand.

“Ultimately, your brand is what the marketplace says it is”

Brian Woyt, founder of the branding agency Wolf & Missile.

10 steps to help build a brand:

1. Establish the purpose

2. Identify the target audience

3. Create a unique voice for your brand

4. Tell your brand story

5. Design the brand’s visual elements

6. Establish a differentiation

7. Build out your brand

8. Promote, promote, promote

9. Get advocates for your brand

10. Evolve as you grow

The pitfalls of using automated logo design

As we find ourselves explaining on a fairly regular basis, a logo may only form one element of a brand but it’s the centrepiece that gives it visual identity and sets the first impression to your target audience. It is used throughout your entire marketing campaigns and will be pivotal in deciding whether someone decides to use your products or services. In its lifetime, think about how many times it is seen and then you’ll fully understand why its power should never be under estimated.

Every business requires a bespoke approach

Every business is different. Everything is unique to you; history, values, target client, process… that’s why with every one of our projects, we approach them with a comprehensively structured process that gets right under the skin of the business to determine how all of these things would be visually represented accurately. Branding is personal and sensitive. It should be treated with respect. So it would be fair to say, from our point of view, a logo should at least be bespoke and well researched.

Quick fixes for the ill-educated

Sadly, and it breaks my heart to say it, it’s all too easy nowadays to download logo templates or find automated logo builders online that certainly get the job done quickly and cheaply. But as far as we’re concerned, these quick fixes are for the ill-educated.

One such site we discovered is called Logaster. It offers a series of no-frills price plans that range between £20 for a single web use logo file up to £90 for the full works including stationery and a brand book. There’s no doubting it’s incredibly easy to use. You basically follow these steps for your logo design process:

1) Type in your business name.

2) Click the ‘Create’ button.

That’s it. At this point, I don’t really know what to say. There is no process whatsoever to understand who you are, what you do, the demographic of your ideal client, your business beliefs and company values. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. So we thought we’d have a bit of fun and put it to the test by experimenting with the world’s current top 4 biggest brands to see what Logaster could come up with. Now, I will point out that you are given plenty of options, albeit disturbingly random so we decided to keep it simple and pull out a handful of our favourites to demonstrate just how much thought goes into this automated process. Meanwhile, to give you some context, we’ve placed the genuine logo for the corresponding brand on the same page – it shouldn’t be too challenging to figure out which one that is!

1) Amazon

First up we have Amazon. In reality, the logo was created to represent the message that it sells everything from A to Z and also reflects the smile that customer would experience by shopping through Amazon. No shortage of thought or development has gone into it, I’m sure you’ll agree and to date, it is still one of our favourites. If we compare this to the other five imposters, it begins to hit home just how alarmingly neglectful this process is. They are void of any personality and any hint of creativity is grossly misaligned to what the brand actually is. There is some variety in type style but nothing that comes anywhere near competing with the real version. It feels more like a case of “we don’t know what this business is so we’ll try to cover all bases”.

2) Apple

Now we move onto Apple. It symbolises knowledge and the symbol os one of the oldest and most potent in Western Mythology. The name and corresponding icon are synonymous and it has become one of the most powerful brands in the world. You try and find one person who doesn’t recognise that apple symbol. In stark contrast, the auto-generated examples we have pulled out are either nondescript, confusing or just downright nasty. Firstly, why do we have what appears to be a contemporary icon of a rose paired with the apple wording and secondly what in God’s name is going on with the letter spacing on the top right example. We can only assume this is a developmental bug. There are again some questionable typefaces, notably bottom left which wouldn’t look out of place on a halloween poster.

3) Google

The word Google is an adaptation of the word Googol which quite frankly is an unfathomable number. The logo has been coloured in such a way to incorporate the primary colours of blue, red and yellow. However you’ll notice the inclusion of green which is to show that Google don’t always follow the rules. In comparison, the alternatives we’ve had produced have no such meaning. Interestingly, some of the fonts aren’t too dis-similar to the one used for the real logo but the iconography is far from appropriate. On one hand we have some cases where, the line work is far to fine to be legible for print and at the opposite end of the scale we have others that have a severe lack of detail all together. I am somewhat perplexed as to why the letter M is being used in the top left example which features geometry suspiciously familiar to the rose on the Apple logo above.

4) Microsoft

The Microsoft logo stands for innovation and technology that brought the computer to the everyday person by way of its Windows operating system. It’s the perpetual symbol of quality. Unfortunately it’s a familiar story with the automated examples we’ve highlighted. The bizarre exaggeration of constricted letter spacing makes another appearance and in the bottom left example, the typeface is almost unreadable. The iconography just seems to be an afterthought in all cases. They don’t really lend anything to the designs and mean little more than just being the thirteenth letter of the alphabet.

Through further experimentation, one of the most shocking discoveries was that it actually gives you the same result, no matter what name you search for. This just further reinforces the suggestion that the process is completely random and has no consideration for the fine details that make a brand what it is. I’ve no idea what algorithms have been used in the development of this site or how many possible combinations there are but one thing that is clear is this method will fail to provide you with a design solution that will successfully attract and engage with your target market.

A brand should provide an emotive experience and your logo is centric to making that happen. Think about the demographic of who it is being directed at. Look into what you clients want to feel when they see it. Consider how it relates to the services you offer. Do all of these things and you’ll then be able to justify the extra investment because you’ll end up with an identity that has a long shelf life through delivering on its promises. The cost of design isn’t about how cheaply you can get it done, it’s about the return on investment. There’s no doubt that in these cases, Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft would have paid up to get the visual identities they now have. A huge amount of time would have been invested into each but when you consider the value they now each hold, was it money well spent? In the bogus examples we’ve generated, can you honestly say that you’d expect the same result?

Your brand deserves respect. Never underestimate the power it holds.

Is your brand more
Ford or Ferrari?

Everything has a price. Imagine you’re on the look out for a new car. You can have a Ford or you can have a Ferrari. The Ferrari is considerably more expensive than a Ford but its build quality, performance and user experience is superior to the Ford. Its design is also timeless and will be worshipped for years to come. The Ford offers practicality and is much more affordable but it’s unlikely to wow you. In reality, out of the two, if we had to buy one with our own money, the majority of us would choose the Ford. But in terms of preference, who isn’t going to want the Ferrari?

Ok, so not everyone is a petrol head but the point is, we’re not going to turn our noses up at quality; meticulous design and built with the customer’s experience as the centric consideration. If you buy a budget car, you know the finished article is going to be sizeably more basic.

Something which has performance and tactile components to gauge instantly is relatively straightforward to value. But when it comes to raw graphic design for business branding and marketing purposes, it is much more challenging to pin down a definitive price. 

Experienced designers undermined by novice pretenders

In today’s world, particularly with rapidly evolving digital communication, there is undeniably no shortage of creatives making themselves available to businesses looking for design solutions. Perform a quick search on Facebook and you will be inundated with offers. Unfortunately, as the creative industry is largely un-regulated, every man and his dog can pose themselves as a designer whilst those of us who have worked tirelessly for decades, find that the skills we have honed and experience we have developed over decades are undermined by novices. But as professionals, we learn to accept that we can’t be all things to all people. A £40 budget for a logo design does not necessarily mean a business owner wants to cut corners, particularly if they are a startup. If that’s all they have available, you simply can’t argue with that. But more often than not, coin is king and cost is the utmost priority. Quality, impact and longevity becomes a mere afterthought.

One of our favourite Venn diagrams illustrates the compromise needed when a product or service is provided to you. 

You want it fast and cheap? It’s not going to be great

You want it fast and great? It’s not going to be cheap

You want it cheap and great? It’s not going to be fast

It’s as simple as that. However, measuring what ‘great’ is, is not so straightforward. Design is subjective. One man’s trash can often be another man’s treasure. So how do you justify charging a premium for design? In the creative industry, you’ll pretty much be able to get hold of anything for any price. We’ve even found people on Facebook offering their services for free. But for a £40 branding exercise, what are you going to get? Well, what you’re not going to get is market research, competitor analysis, asset exploration and multiple bespoke concepts.  At this stage, we would expect a number of people to respond with “I just want a logo”. At which point, we would explain the importance behind all of these added considerations. As a design agency ourselves, we take immense pride in delivering value for money but our primary goal is to provide creative solutions that will perform and operate as a catalyst in generating new custom for your business.

Give you branding a checkup as you would for a car MOT

If we hark back to the car analogy, you’re also going to need a periodic MOT. The same applies to your business brand and the material you use to communicate it. Markets change and develop. Allowing your brand to stand still for too long and you risk being left behind by your competition. Emerging trends can also influence us differently and how your customers perceive your brand now, may not be the same a year later. As you would conduct an oil change in your car to keep it running smoothly, you would do the same with your brand to ensure its ongoing functionality. However, this is about development, not transformation. Make too many sudden changes to your brand and you risk disconnecting yourself from your existing clientele.

Ultimately, when marketing your business, it is crucial to consider not what appeals to you, but what appeals to your target customer. You may love the colour pink but if you are a funeral director, your business will end up going the same way as your clients. You may be a big fan of the Comic Sans font but if you’re trying to make you mark as a financial advisor, it’s not going to set a great first impression. How you determine your market’s needs can only be done with research and detailed exploration. Fail to do so and you are shooting in the dark.