How can your brand identity stand out from the crowd?

Unilever’s new CEO recently remarked that they would stop trying to shoehorn purpose into brands that don’t need it. There’s a cautionary tale in that statement: If a multibillion dollar corporation is reading the room about brands with purpose, all brands should pay attention. If your brand has an altruistic purpose, great! Lean into it. But for most brands, the purpose is that your customer has a challenge your brand solves best. It isn’t anything more complicated than that.

When I start creating a brand identity, I usually begin with Simon Sinek's golden circle. Starting with "why" helps me learn more about the brand: The story behind the brand. How it got started. What makes it different from other brands. For me, it's not just a statement, it's the starting point to explore the brand's values, messaging, visual style, tone of voice, and how they impact the entire brand, why they matter. I also include a "WHO" part, means understanding who your brand serves. It should connect with your target audience on emotional level, explaining why customers choose your brand over others and inspiring loyalty and trust. This approach helps maintain consistency and authenticity in how you present your brand to the world.

Honing in on your ideal customer profiles is crucial because once you do, you can see your brand from their perspective. Too many times decisions are made based on a brand-centric approach, where the brand is at the center and we see things from the brand perspective. By capturing customer profiles and seeing your brand from their perspective, value is a lot easier to see. It’s also easier to make decisions about anything brand related because you’re asking, “would this customer find this valuable?” Instead of “I think it should be ____.” The benefits are many!

Knowing your target audience is the most important step to start a business not only creating a brand. As many businesses fails because they didn’t know really about their target audience, they assumed they knew about their audiences, they skipped the research part and the interviews. When you know well your target audience, their challenges, needs, wants, and lifestyle, all of this helps you to know their expectations and why they are your brand ideal audience, As you will know how your brand will solve their problems,and impact their lives to better ones. All of this helps to create a brand identity that resonates with the brand ideal audience to help them take the decision to choose your brand among others.

Quick tip: make two lists. List one: Words and phrases that define our brand, aka, words and phrases we love. List two: words and phrases we never use. This quick reference helps copywriters get a sense of the brand voice in an efficient way.

There’s a reason creating the visual identity is this deep into the process: everything else needs to be known before an effective brand identity can be created.

The previous point about defining your ideal customers has a near immediate practical step and it’s this one: testing your brand elements while they’re in development. You do not want to ask people who are not your customer, such as your spouse, kids, family, friends, etc. That’s poor judgement. Test actual customers. Use a tool like SurveyMonkey, PickFu, or a group of longtime customers. Ask smart questions and be respectful of their time.