Brand Development

What is a brand?

A brand is an identity of a product or service which is used to convey a message to the right audience.
A brand highlights what your product or service has in comparison with the competitors. A brand is not just about an image, a color, a tagline or the content; its a combination of all of these and more to incorporate the values and the culture into marketing the product or service along with all of its features.

Where is branding used?

Branding is used in various fields including IT, Marketing, Sales, Advertising etc. It is often used to target multiple fields combined together. Branding is of various types. Product Branding is the most commonly seen for example Apple, Johnson & Johnson etc. Then comes personal branding typically done for politicians, celebrities etc. Corporate Branding is another type of branding which gives a multi-faceted view of all of the activities that an organization does. This takes into account multiple things related to an organization including but not limited to the people, the projects, the technologies, the services, the CSR initiatives, the work-life balance etc. A typical example could be Airbnb. Next comes Geographical Branding which as the name suggests is focused on a particular geographical location. A good example of this can be 'Incredible India'! Retail branding is another type and one can give many examples of this type like Adidas, Vera Moda, Nestle etc. Lastly, co-branding comes into picture in which two or more products partner together to benefit together.

Methods of Branding:

There are multiple methods of branding such as branding by pictures, videos, advertisements and branding by UI/UX etc. The choice of one or more method depends on the requirements of particular product or service.

Branding Process:

Branding is a creative process. It should involve as many people from as many backgrounds as possible. It should involve a lot of brainstorming. More the number of ideas discussed better the outlook you have while developing a branding strategy. We need to answer below questions in as much details as possible to create a successful branding strategy:

1. What is it that you want to brand?
2. Who is it that you want to brand for; i.e.; target audience?
3. What is your brand's mission statement?
4. How is your brand performing before the branding strategy is in place?
5. Why do you need to brand now? Or what is it that you seek to achieve as of result of this branding process?
6. How are your competitors going about branding?
7. What are the main offerings your brand has for the people?

At this stage, we should be at a stage to finalize these deliverables out of branding process:

a. Your brand's Logo

b. Your brand's tagline

Continue above exercise with further questions:

8. What will your brand sound like? Friendly, Professional, Caring, Informative, Audacious, etc.
9. What story do you want to tell your audience through this branding process?
10. Who will be a lead character in this story and how will be his/her character & personality?

This is the end of the process after which you need to analyze the answers to all above questions. If required you can choose to rework on your brand logo and brand tagline. Additionally you will be able to decide:

c. The color(s) of your brand. We can use 'Pentone Color Chart' to make sure that the color(s) are unique on every platform. This is an important deliverable because every color represents certain feelings/emotions and you need your brand's color to correctly represent your brand.

d. The typography and fonts to be used for your brand. This is important because a font can be an important visual representation of the mood that your brand creates on people's heart and mind. We can choose to use various existing fonts which are tried and tested. We can create our own customized proprietary fonts and follow the same typography throughout various branding channels.

e. The content of your brand's story. This may have texts, images, audios, videos etc.

f. The way in which the content will be organized in the story

g. Strategy to integrate your brand in people's everyday lives

What is brand style guide?

When all of the steps mentioned above are followed iteratively to get a refined branding strategy, we end up having a formal, detailed, tangible outcome at our disposal. This is called a style guide. Think of this as a bible which describes the look and feel of your brand and ensures that the brand's identity is consistent on each and every channel that is used or will be used in future in the brand's journey.

A typical brand style guide should contain all of the deliverables described in the branding process described above. At the same time, it should also enlist the various inspirations used while creating the branding strategy. A style guide should be helpful to understand the rationale behind choosing a particular color, font or an image. We should also include a future plan considering the future engagements and enhancements in the branding strategy with respect to technological and brand's advancements. Lastly, we must review our brand style guide periodically. We should update it whenever required to keep it as good as it would be at the very beginning.

This concludes my article giving a high level understanding about Brand Development.

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