Branding is a universally employed technique for increasing visibility and differentiating a product or company from its competitors. The brand is intended to represent a business’ ethos, intentions and purpose through a set of compelling visual, written and vocal tools. Branding is the voice and image that embodies your business to the rest of the world, reflecting your values, products and services through both visual imagery and language assets. It should be consistently deployed in every area of your daily marketing strategy.
Branding is all about Communication
The brand is basically a tag for the consumer: in essence, it is an instantaneous trigger which allows them to identify the product’s origins. The true value of the brand stems from the enormous amount of information it conveys. The brand is the central link between the product/company and the buyer. Irrespective of its simplicity, it communicates the core ethos and ideology of the product; by looking at the logo, the buyer is able to draw multiple conclusions as to the quality of the product and the reputation of the producer.
The Brand is the Company’s Public Persona
Brands are not just visual identifiers allowing consumers to recognize producers; they embody the personality of the product/company which they represent. Brands can be childish or serious, traditional or original, elegant or fun. They need to represent the target audience as much as the product itself. A successful brand can be described using the same adjectives as those to describe the target audience.
The Brand.com case study
As an expert in the field, Brand.com provides a prime example of the power of effective branding. Formerly known as Reputation Changer, the company purchased the Brand.com domain name in an attempt to rebrand themselves. Aside from the new name better communicating their purpose, the rebrand yielded major material successes, and resulted in invaluable media coverage on sites such as Techcrunch. The domain name is clearly evocative of the service they provide, allowing the company to position themselves as an authority, and also lent them greater control over their search rankings. Considering the modern reliance on search engines, the importance of this cannot be overstated.
Branding On a Budget
The success of Brand.com’s rebranding strategy may seem impossible to replicate when the domain’s six-figure purchase sum is considered, but branding is not restricted to large companies. Local businesses can also see exponential successes if they correctly brand their services. Traditional methods of branding are particularly effective in order to increase the visibility and customer traffic of smaller companies.
A case in point is Poppies Fish and Chips, a business intended to encapsulate the essence of a 1940s style restaurant and take-away. The owner’s intention was to offer customers an original eating experience, setting them apart from their competitors.
In order to attract both tourists and locals, they employed the branding services of SIGNARAMA. Whilst the business was undergoing interior renovations, SIGNARAMA covered the shop windows with panels advertising the new restaurant, designed as 1940s era newspapers. This created an art effect evocative of the retro era, providing an ideal foretaste of the future design. The result was an eye-catching building which grabbed the attention of both locals and tourists, and which is now proving an exceedingly popular venue.
Branding is a fundamental medium for companies to connect with their audience. With so many methods falling under this umbrella term, it does not require a six-figure sum to yield results. The ultimate marketing goal is to have your target market think of you, and your company, when they are ready to buy, and it is easy to understand how branding can improve product visibility and appeal to the target audience. Successfully branding can produce an incredible return on investment. For any enterprise seeking to ensure growth, success, and an increase in profits, failing to brand your product is not an option.