Brand Positioning
Starting your brand with a logo, fonts or colours, you’ll be establishing what’s on the outside. But have you defined what’s on the inside yet?
Brands are like people, and with people ‘it’s what’s on the inside that counts’. Without understanding the inside how can you make clear decisions on how to dress the outside.
The problem is without a brand, your company, product or service hardly exists.
Building a brand starts with some brutal honesty, because without it you won’t have authenticity. It’s those brands who are authentic and understand why they exist that thrive in the hearts of their customers.
The problem is it’s a hard thing for a business to define their ‘why’ and distill it with clarity into their own unique proposition.
But until you truly know who you are, what you stand for, and have a clear sense of purpose, beyond the money – you’ll be found out, and left wanting.
By bringing clarity of purpose to your business everyone within the brand will be aligned as one. You’ll have built a solid foundation to underpin all future business decisions.
Once you’ve captured your ‘why’ it’s time dress the outside, be it a logo marque, tone of voice or maybe it’s an attractive shade of aubergine. The best bit, because you’ve worked on the inside, everything on the outside is far simpler.
Scroll down to understand a bit more about our process to brand positioning and some of the steps we typically go through.
1.
Discover
All successful brands are built on a solid foundation of values and beliefs. Understanding who you are and why you’re different is vital to the success of your business. You’ll need to challenge yourself on why you exist, your passions and purpose way beyond the money. It’s only then that people can truly resonate with your brand and understand how you stand for them.
The ‘Lab’ is where we collaboratively work together to draw out the ‘What’, ‘How’ and, most importantly, your brand ‘Why’.
Why do you matter?
How do you change things for the better?
What do you stand for?
Understanding the range of stakeholders.
Understanding the competitive context
2.
Define
Now you understand who you are and what makes you desirable, you’ll need to position your business with a clear brand promise. Looking to the future you’ll be able to define the businesses foundations and build the spine of your brand for ever long. As your brand visually develops throughout time, the decisions made in these first two stages will form the bedrock that you’ll always come back to.
Customers will speak freely to us enabling an excellent source of insight – particularly into brand differences and identity.
How do you fill your customers needs in a way others don’t.
An expression of the brand in a line.
Develop a compelling story that can be consistently presented.
Defining the brand personality ensures you deliver a consistent ‘sound’.
3.
Develop
With a clear message about why you’re unique and what makes you get out of bed, you’ll have the foundation to build a desirable creative story. Visual identity/Wordmark/symbol, Typography, Colours, Signature lock-up, Secondary graphics and even the logo can all be explored if necessary in a range of directions for the brand. In fully developing the brand the final decisions can then be captured in a brand book along with sample applications of the visual identity.
The logo or mark people associate with the brand.
Headline & body copy for use in print and digital.
Light & dark contrasts in CMYK, RGB & HEX.
Photographic, illustrative or typographic.
Collection of all the outputs of the process.
4.
Deliver
You’ve got a great brand, you understand why your desirable, you’ve defined that in a unique way and expressed it creatively in a visual direction, now it’s time to get it out to the world.
We solve marketing challenges with creative ideas, digitally or in print. This way ideas aren’t forced in any particular direction, so we solve challenges in a way that is commercially best for you and the business. We’ll find solutions to your problems, not find problems for our solutions.
