Why is branding important? An in-depth look into Branding
Well folks, welcome back. In this post, I want to discuss and really educate what branding is, how it affects us, and what makes good branding.
Now for this Post, I almost made a giant super post with multiple points. But I think for the sake of continuation and advice given to me by my good friend, I'll try to make this a bit more bite-sized than normal.
What is branding
Branding is the identity of your product/Service/Project. It's how and what your audience perceives you as.
Logo Vs Branding
Now a logo is pretty important. But it is not a brand. Rather, it's part of the brand. To help you understand a bit more, I'd like to share some images of an already well-established company. Apple.
I want you to take a close look at this image. What do you see? An iphone? A macbook, peripherals? The apple logo?
What if I told you that everything in this picture is part of Apple's brand? Everything. From the design of their laptops, tablets phones mouses, keyboards, website, customer support, logo and even stores. It is all part of their brand. When you pick up your iphone and turn it on, you're experiencing Apple's brand.
A logo cannot be these things, as a logo is just a graphic. But a logo is very important and essential to a brand. Think of it as part of a tool kit to help convey your image to your audience.
Visualization of Branding
User Experience / Branding Strategy
As illustrated above, this is the brain behind the whole brand. Without a branding strategy, your branding overall isn't going to be executed very well. Branding strategy details and plans out what should be part of the brand, what the brand should feel like and just overall everything that has to do with the brand.
Also, User Experience. What do you want your audience to FEEL when they're using your products and services. What do you want them to feel when they're reading your content? User experience IS what they're experiencing.
Interfacing with Audience
This is how you communicate or interface with your customers. How your branding strategy plots this can determine everything from how you handle customer support, what your employees wear, or how you want your social media to be handled. It is the voice of your brand, and it is very important to how your audience perceives you.
Graphics
Now, Graphics are very important to what you want your brand to feel like. This includes your logo. Which is fairly important because a logo is very comparable to attire. It's one of the first things people notice about your brand. And if executed correctly, it's what they will remember. This also extended out to any graphics you intend to affiliate your brand with. If the suit is dark, then all pieces of the suit need to be dark. Everything about your brand has to feel like they're part of the same thing.
User Interface
This may not apply to everyone's project. And I will admit that this article is a bit more skewed to entrepreneurs and corporations. I will continue further anyway.
User interface is what the skin of your content looks like. When people are browsing your applications, your website, menus, even blogs. What does it look like? What about your products? What do they look like? User interface is a very important aspect and should not be taken lightly.
Marketing and Advertisement
Marketing and advertisement are very important. These are elements that are always going to be seen by the masses. This is the presentation of yourself to your audience. It's how you capture attention and interest, and without it, no one will know you exist. But careful, this is something that has to be thought of with care.
Executing Good branding
Ultimately, the best brands in the world do one thing very well, and that's providing a uniform and unique experience throughout all of it's platforms, products, and services. And they do it consistently through time. Here are some guidelines to help you build your brand.
- Always plot out a Branding strategy
- Focus on what makes you unique and emphasize on that
- Zone in on your audience, think of who your Audience is, and what would get their attention the most
- Graphics are the tools that your brand use, you will always need them
- Define your unique User experience guidelines, think of what you want people to FEEL when they view your content or product.
That's everything I got for now, but tell me what you think? What are some of your favorite brands?
Got a brand? Show us!
#####Thanks for reading, I hope you have a good one!
Nice
Excellent article. You, @malicered, clearly know your stuff.
I wonder if you've discussed this in prior blogs (this is the first blog of yours I've read), but I have noticed the conspicuous absence of the value of Story. That is to say that User Experience, Branding Strategy, Marketing and Advertisement, etc. all revolve around and define the Brand, yes. Yet what the Brand actually does is convey a story to the audience.
According to Joseph Campbell, it is our stories, both individual and social, that define our lives. It's what we tell people when we seek to connect to one another, and it's what we tell ourselves when we are trying to figure out what to do in any given situation. It's the ethos a community or a nation is built around. Our values, beliefs, aspirations; all that jazz.
I think any Brand's job is to convey the story of a particular group (a company or entrepreneur, let's say) through various modes of communication (visual, textual, audible, textile), with the intent of creating value in their audience's lives by providing meaningful or practical content, be it a service or a product. Once the audience believes the Brand is valuable (and in order for it to be so it must resonate in some capacity with the personal story of each individual of their audience), only then will people be willing to pay or trade the company behind the Brand for what they have to offer.
I would love to read your perspective on that.
Wow, thank you @greateasternsun, pretty humbled by your post.
I don't have any formal education in branding or marketing, just a bunch of experience.
I think that the word Story can be interchanged with Goal, or plan. This may be a term in actual brand theory that you're referring to, but to me, the story, goal or plan, is situational to what the brand is trying to achieve. It is the X that is set by what is trying to be achieved by the entity.
Are you a company that just developed a programing language that is really easy to use and beginner friendly? Then X is what will reach your target audience. In this case, you're probably wanting your interfaces to be minimal, your design modern, your user experience should have a goal conveying the feelings of simple, responsive and intuitive.
In my experience, X should always come down to what is going to pull the interest of the most logical audience with the entity and it's brand.
Now if you wanted to incorporate more into a brand, not just what is going to work the best with the target audience. Then history of the entity can come into play, and be used to leverage a deeper meaning. This is something that Microsoft did with their brand, and it's definitely a good way to do things, especially if you're transitioning to modern practices.
This is, of course my perspective. I hope that is what you wanted to see!
That's pretty cool to know thanks for the tips by the way :)
No problem at all! Thank you for your support, I hope this will be useful to you in the future!
I'm working on a new brand now, can't say what it is till it's out though. These were all good key points, thanks!
Branding is indeed very important. I'm a guy who has worked with multiple agency who look after branding. I know how much difference it makes to the business.
I believe branding is everything. You have to present yourself as a brand in life and business. Whether you own a business or are trying to further your career. You always want to be known for being the expert in something.