Branding can be a complex—and expensive—undertaking. The decision to update or modify your brand is nothing to take lightly. But if your brand doesn’t accurately reflect your company’s value or purpose, rebranding might be the smart move.
Make Your Mark
Your brand is more than your logo. It’s the representation of your company’s raison d’etre.
What do you do?
Why do you do it?
Who do you do it for?
Why do your customers need you?
The answers to those questions are all part of your brand. Your company name, tagline, and logo all work together to spark recognition and help you develop a following. Your brand encapsulates your promise to customers.
We recently worked with a company whose solutions and purpose were both timely and vital. Yet the company’s logo, tagline, and messaging didn’t promote these qualities. Though catchy, they failed to clearly communicate what the company actually did. After a rebranding effort, the company now has a logo that visually represents its core purpose, a tagline that helps customers understand the service it offers, and messaging that clearly communicates end-customer benefits and value.
If you’re starting from scratch and in the logo design phase, it’s important to carefully consider these factors:
Colors. This decision will have long-lasting and long-ranging effects on your marketing. Your color scheme will no doubt be applied across your website, printed and digital collateral, letterhead, and more. What emotions and associations do the colors provoke? Are they bold enough—or too bold—to apply across a range of channels and applications? Do they have any connection with other existing brands?
Detail. Intricate designs might look cool, but will they reproduce well across channels, or will detail be lost? Are they too complicated? Some of the world’s most recognizable logos are exceedingly simple: the Nike swish. The Target target. The Apple apple.
Individuality. Obviously, you want your logo to be unique. But the best logos also encapsulate the company’s purpose—and the feelings that purpose seeks to invoke. Think of Amazon’s “A to Z” arrow, which doubles as the smile of a satisfied customer.
Connection. Whether you provide multiple products or encompass multiple brands, a sense of cohesion across all your properties is a must. There are several ways to achieve that connection, but the primary methods involve developing a standard color, shape, font, or icon style.
If you already have a logo and can’t justify the expense or effort of a redesign, consider adding a tagline or revising your existing tagline.
Example: Refactored client partner InfinityQS, which develops quality intelligence solutions that help manufacturers use process quality data in new and exciting ways, wanted to invite quality managers to think differently about the quality data they use every day. During its rebranding effort, the company changed its tagline from “Take Control” to “Quality Re-Imagined,” a theme that is about moving from simply reacting to data to proactively using data to affect organizational change. The shift in thinking is a core differentiator that sets InfinityQS apart from the competition.
More to the Story
Beyond your logo and tagline, you also need to create a brand messaging foundation.
What tone and voice do you want to use on your website and in all marketing content and communications? Develop guidelines and make sure everyone who works on your site, content, and social media understands and follows them.
What are your company’s purpose and values? Condense them into corporate messaging to use as a boilerplate across channels.
What is the unique core value of each of your products? Create product messaging that boils it down and connects it to your ideal customer’s greatest business pain.
Together, these documents create a framework that should inform everything your marketing department (or agency partner) produces.
Be a Stand Out
If this all sounds like a lot of work—well, it is. But understand that the effort is a long-term investment in your company’s ability to visually and emotionally connect with prospective customers.
If you simply don’t have the time or skillset to tackle branding or messaging, an agency partner can help by providing fresh ideas, expanded capabilities, and a working team dedicated to your project.