Guest post by Dream & Do
Your logo is not your Brand, so what is a brand? Lots of people come to Dream & Do in the beginning stages, with a great business idea and a plan, and they often think the only graphic thing they need is a logo so that they can be on their way to a brand. Yes, you need a logo, but you also need a brand. They are not one and the same!
So, what is a brand?
According to Harvard Business Review, brand is your strategy, calls to action, customer experience, your communication, the way you speak, your people, facilities, visuals, and logo.
In his award-winning book ‘Brand: It ain’t the logo’, Ted Matthews says: “A Brand is the sum total impression and memory of every remarkable, every so-so and every negative experience with any and all touch-points of an organization.”
We help to educate our clients on the difference – branding is more work and strategy and planning and thinking, but once you’ve nailed it, all the applications are easy.
At Dream & Do, our process is to spend a lot of time in the beginning on the concept, purpose, direction, empathy mapping and values, so that all stakeholders, our team, your team and your customers, will really understand what you’re about and why you exist. Most of all, we can find your point of difference and help you leverage that to thrive and sell your idea. Then we can get into the nitty gritty of design that expresses those things in a simple, engaging and aesthetically pleasing way.
Your brand is a personality – it’s the soul of your business – the soul that connects to the customers. Your brand can come through in all your touch-points, Bespoke Packaging have talked about that in there post about making an impact here. It’s the emotional connection that people make with your product or service that really solidifies and evokes your brand.
Often people think that your brand is what you tell your customers – but it’s actually what your customers think of you. By simply telling people what you are, they’re not going to believe you. You have to show them through consistent branding and communication.
Building a brand is a lot of work; it’s not just a colour palette or on-trend and ‘looking pretty’. It’s about creating a deep emotional connection, which speaks to the heart of the customer.
We do empathy mapping for your customer, rather than profiling demographics. It’s important to really think about the target market as a person and their reaction in the world, how they think and feel, what they’re saying and doing, their pains with using your product or industry, and their gains of the industry. This is where you shape your communication to target exactly what your customer is thinking or feeling, and hence create great content to sell those ideas.
All those things combined make a strong brand. If you ask 100 of your customers what they think of you and they spit back the values you set out to achieve, then you’ve got yourself a successful brand!
This was originally published as part of Dream & Do’s Z-A for Start-ups blog series at www.dreamanddo.com.au. Dream & Do is a Sydney-based creative agency specializing in branding, graphic design and creative content for start-ups, business visionaries and dreamers everywhere.