Every company needs to establish its position amidst its market competition. Business owners understand the need to provide a valuable product or services to their customers. You also need to communicate this message in your company branding… Your look, tone, and feel should combine together to formulate your brand essence. This development begins with a strategic plan followed by focused creative execution. Let’s break down the process of setting a strategic branding process.
Putting the plan in motion
Many people who are unfamiliar with the action steps required in building out a brand platform ask, ‘Is a strategy plan really necessary to give my company a fresh approach?’ In a word, yes. Just as the story line in content development is essential to embody the uniqueness and differentiating qualities a business needs to highlight when describing their offering, the visual identity of the company needs to foot back to those attributes as well. In order to deliver an integrated, professional and clever look, tone, and feel for a business brand, design and content development need to work from the same creative base. This is what we call the Branding Blueprint, in which we define the elements of this blueprint, to achieve maximum success.
Establishing the blueprint and setting the foundation
There are four pillars of consideration when starting the strategic directive process: audience, offering, differentiating factors/competitive landscape, and value proposition. Defining each of these segments as they relate to your business is crucial as they underpin all subsequent creative work. You should consider an outside resource that can extract this information from your internal team. Such assistance can help to fully articulate the elements of your company values and solidify the execution of the messaging offered by your communication platform.
Another part of the strategic exploration centers on defining the firm’s core values. An outside resource who can ask pertinent questions to your management team; challenge areas that seem too vague or generalized to add distinction to your business; and generally, help solidify what a business feels is central to their ideology and brand personality. Having their perspective will help reveal an authentic brand essence.
Marrying the elements into one powerful whole
The strategy exercise reinforces why branding is more than just a clever logo. Why make something look great if it doesn’t tell a story that resonates with the individuals you want to influence? The most common error companies who ignore the importance of branding make is failing to understand the need for considering their value from the outside in. Many, many businesses tend to talk a lot about what they know and can do, but very little time is spent on understanding what their audience wants and crafting the message with those needs at the core of all communication. To paraphrase the great Peter Drucker: no one buys what you sell, they buy what is of value to them.
To get the next level of growth, businesses must carry their message to a wider group of prospective clients. Competition for their interest is much tougher. A well-told story that combines what customers want with how a company can solve those issues is a message that will leave an impact on the recipient. Wrap the story in great design, and you get the look, tone, and feel in a fully integrated brand that connects.
Building a strong brand identity should be a high priority for every company. The GreyBox team has over 60 years of combined branding expertise. We work with clients who are serious about taking their branding to the next level. We know how to create a brand that works and will ensure your company branding is unique and compelling and geared to attract your ideal customer/client over and over again. Contact us to setup a call to review your needs.
The following clients have gone through the process with us to create their unified, unique branding platform.
