Brand identities are the DNA behind our brands, and one of the key tools businesses use to connect with the heads, and hearts, of an audience. Strong brand identities require strategic thinking, market research and a deep, honest understanding of who we want our brands to be. In this article, we’ll explore what it takes to create a standout brand identity and what every brand needs to consider before establishing theirs.
Getting to know you
“With every interaction, people are forming an opinion about your brand.” – Harvard Business Review
Creating a Brand identity is not just about designing a logo and a colour scheme. Of course, it includes those elements, but when your goal is to connect with a member of your audience – an emotionally driven human being – there’s a lot more to it than that. Our brand’s identity is its voice, its behaviour, its beliefs and the experience it offers its customers – all in one.
This means that to create a brand identity we need to be clear on:
- What our brand looks like
- What it sounds like
- The problem our product or service is solving for people
- What its values are and what it stands for in the greater scheme of things
Understanding these things will help us create, and curate, that experience for the public. It’ll also help us show up consistently and ensure that we’re making a meaningful connection with them – something that will stay with them forever. Our aim is to connect with people. Not to get them to buy our product once and hope they do it again – but really connect with them. So, we have to focus on the emotional side of a brand.
Empathy
“People don’t fall in love with businesses, they fall in love with personalities.” – Yo Santosa
Today brands are not just consistently communicating with their audience. Listening and responding to them accordingly has become the status quo. And that’s where empathy comes in. Our brand identity cannot be created without acknowledging our audience.
Understanding our audience’s thoughts, feelings, personality, and circumstances allows us to connect with them authentically. When we establish our brand’s identity as the solution to our audience’s problem in a greater way than just our product or service, we’re able to add real value to their lives. And when we’re able to add value, we start creating meaningful connections with them.
Value and Meaning
“A logo is just a container for meaning.” – Chris Do
It’s easy to miss, but brand identities are really just that – identities. Like people, a brand’s identity is the sum of the way it looks, how it sounds, and how it behaves and interacts with people because of its values and character traits. The people who are meaningful to us, are meaningful because they add value of some kind (emotional, physical, etc). The people who don’t add value to our lives, don’t hold our interest. The same goes for brands.
Think about it. There are literally hundreds of car brands out there. Sure there are the bells and whistles, but generally speaking – cars get us from A to B. However, people choose to drive a BWM because they connect with the brand’s focus on performance. Or a Mercedes because they connect with its sense of class. Or a Mini because they have a challenger spirit.
Just like the people close to us, brands that add value to our lives, by offering us something to be part of, are the ones we stick with. When creating a brand identity, we must be aware of the value it will have to our audience.
Intention, not attention
“Every dollar you spend is a vote for the kind of world you want to live in.” – Anne Lapé
When establishing a brand identity, it must be created with authentic intent. Too many brands create their identities based on what they want to be, rather than what they truly are. The result? The cracks eventually start showing because their true selves show through, and their audience disappears.
When creating yours, make sure it’s authentic and reflective of who your brand truly is. In most cases, a brand identity already exists and just needs to be identified and well-packaged.
One of the best ways to test the authenticity of your brand identity is to ask –
Is it an honest version of our business, or does it feel like we’re putting on a performance to make people like us?
Agility
“What people say about your brand is as important as what you say about it.” – Unknown
Finally, a smaller, but important factor to consider when creating, or recreating, your brand identity is your audience itself. Some of the most successful brands in the world launched thinking they would connect with their audience in one way and ended up being accepted as something completely different.
Carhartt is a great example. What started as a workwear brand, quickly pivoted to become a leader in the streetwear market.
Brands need to be agile enough to connect with an audience in a way their audience wants to connect. Note that this doesn’t mean changing your brand identity, but adapting it so that you can acknowledge, and build into, any unexpected connection with your audience. By doing so, your brand will be offering even more value, because you’ll be fulfilling more of a need than you had initially thought existed.
Connections
Today, a brand identity is the difference between a brand standing out or being swallowed by a sea of sameness. Understanding and consistently communicating our brand’s identity to a market means we’re speaking to both their heads and their hearts.
At Pixeld, one of the first things we establish with our clients is exactly what their brand identity is. It informs every piece of communication and allows us to build their brands consistently and authentically. Get in touch with us today to create a brand identity for your business.
