Your brand is not your logo, it’s not your mission statement; it’s not even your name. Your brand is your audience’s perception of who your company is and what you do. As such, creating a strong brand identity can have a significant impact on securing sales and increasing customer loyalty.

Here are the steps we take here at r//evolution when we’re working with a client on brand development, to ensure that their branding is clear, consistent and powerful.

1. Identify Key Buyer Personas

Understanding who the target audience is for any business is critical in creating a brand that will truly resonate with that audience. If your business has undergone change, for example, you may find its target audience has evolved since the brand was created, so clarifying exactly who your desired audiences are is an important first step. Ideally involving representatives from different parts of your business, we will guide you through the development of your Buyer Personas.

2. Conducting a key messaging workshop

Having clearly identified your target audiences, the next stage is to clarify the brand’s key messaging. This is a suite of messages that will resonate with the identified Buyer Personas, and which can be used as a consistent point of reference, regardless of which channels are used in the communications mix. Usually this involves our branding team meeting with representatives of your team, to dig deep into your culture, values and positioning.

We will then collate the information we have gathered into a suite of Key Messages. We will discuss these messages with you to ensure they provide a true reflection of your desired branding. Your suite of Key Messages will be used as a solid starting point to inform subsequent branding activity. This will ensure a consistent approach at every customer touch point with your brand. 

3. Using insights to inform creative

We will use your Key Messages as a brief for the creative branding process. Our talented team of branding experts will create a suite of brand themes for your consideration.

4. Refining your themes

Once initial themes have been agreed with you, these can, if appropriate, be tested on focus groups and further developed. We will explore how your brand identity will be deployed in different applications (including on your website, business cards and printed materials).

If your business is part of a group or comprises other business entities, these will be taken into account and a suitable brand family structure created.

5. Finalising your verbal and visual branding

Our branding team will then finalise the visual elements of your brand. In addition to this, our copywriters will help to develop your brand’s individual tone-of-voice. To create a cohesive brand identity, we will work with you to develop a suite of guidelines for images and copy to inform subsequent activity.

6. Developing a brand toolkit

We will create a simple point of reference for your in-house team and third parties to ensure that you achieve a consistent, planned and powerful representation of your brand. This toolkit will include logos, fonts, colour palettes, and copywriting guidelines. Your brand toolkit will also include examples of on-brand images to inform future activity. By developing this toolkit, you will be in a strong position to ensure a cohesive and powerful branding going forward.

Regardless of your product, sector and company size, branding is a powerful factor in business success. If your company lacks a cohesive brand, or if your brand is simply no longer reflective of your business, then now is the time to start your brand transformation.

Get in touch with our talented team of branding experts who can guide you through the branding process, building a strong company identity that will empower your business and create a strong platform for growth.