When you see a red and blue circle with a waving white strip through it, is there a particular brand identity that comes to mind? Of course! It’s Pepsi! In the 1940’s, Pepsi wanted to show their patriotism during World War II, so they added blue to their logo. Since then the brand has undergone redesigns, but a red, white, and blue circle has always remained. In their current branding, the word Pepsi is no longer included in the circle. However, because Pepsi has created such a strong brand identity, the actual word “Pepsi” is not needed for their brand to remain recognizable.
Creating a strong brand identity is so important to the success of a company. It may be easy to create content for your brand in our online world. However, it is not always easy to create content that supports your company’s specific brand identity. In fact, many of your company’s employees could publish something online right now about your company. However, will their interpretation of your brand be the exact image that you want to portray to your audience? If your brand is not consistent with its image, tone, or personality, it will be hard to develop brand loyalty with your audience.
So what do you need to do to build a strong brand identity for your company? Focus on these four tactics to solidify your brand:
Create Brand Guidelines
Most large or mid-size corporations have a brand guide that they use to ensure their brand usage is consistent. However, every company, regardless of size, should really have a brand guide. Having a brand guide will allow all messaging and branding produced by your company to be consistent and align with your company’s vision. This doesn’t just help your marketing department. It also gives guidance to all employees on how to handle your brand’s voice and logo. The brand guide should include: your editorial voice, allowed fonts and colors, and how to produce your logo, icons, and taglines correctly in print, on merchandise, or online.
Produce Brand Consistent Content
Not only do you want to produce logos and fonts consistent with your brand, but the content that you share needs to be consistent as well with your company’s voice and mission. All of the topics you write about or videos you produce should do more to help your audience understand who you are as a company. For example, if your company serves a particular niche, writing blog content about developments in that industry can help you connect more with your clientele. This allows you to share your unique insight and experience on that particular issue with them.
Maintain Consistent Tone
Along with producing consistent content, it is important to maintain a consistent tone across all of your company’s communications. Regardless of the channel of communication, the tone of your message should be the same. This should be reflected on your website, emails, printed publications, social media profiles and posts, and on other online channels. The tone could be more casual on social media but should still sound like it’s coming from the same brand. You can let your personality reflect your context, but it still needs to reflect who you are as a company.
Align with the Proper Platforms
While thinking about your company’s communication channels, you will also want to consider which platforms will help you connect best with your clients and align with your brand’s identity. When considering where to focus most of your advertising, think about where your clients spend most of their time online. Focus on those platforms. For example, Instagram has grown in popularity over the past few years. However, if most of your clients are still using email or Facebook only, it would not make sense to focus most of your marketing on Instagram alone when the majority of your clientele is not on that platform.
At VANTRUM, we believe that a company is only as strong as it’s branding. Our focus is on helping our clients build their brand identity by creating a brand guide for them, helping them produce content and a tone that is consistent with their brand, and helping them align with the platforms that will most benefit their company. If you feel like your company needs help solidifying its brand identity, we would love to connect with you and help grow your brand even further.
