Crafting Your Brand's Identity

After 20 years of starting, growing, and existing multiple businesses, I can tell that the most critical factor contributing to my success was building brands that connected with our vision/mission, company culture, and broader target market.

Sure, having a good product/service was important, and we needed the right team onboard, but fundamentally, I don’t think that would have helped us in any way if we hadn’t been able to communicate with Impact.

You see, you can have the best product in the world and hire the most talented people, but if your message and story don’t connect with the people buying your product or service, you’ll never end up realising the vision you once set out to attain.

To achieve this outcome, you need to consider both the ‘Visual’ and ‘Messaging’ aspects of creating an impactful brand. How your brand looks, and the emotions it invokes are key to highlighting who you are, what you stand for, and how the company presents itself.

Equally important is your messaging across the brand, which is more about what you say. Think about it, what's the point of having a cool looking logo or a slick website if no one knows what it means and or it doesn’t connect with your audience.

The words you use in combination with the look and feel of your brand are the key drivers to designing a magnetic brand that is unique and unmatched in the marketplace. So, how do you go about doing that?

Well, first, it's about getting crystal clear on your vision, mission and company story. This is the centrepiece and heartbeat of everything you do and say; therefore, you need to ensure it’s something you believe in and, most importantly, are passionate about.

As part of this process, you need to think about how you want to communicate, so the ‘Tone of Voice’ for the brand. This needs to be congruent not only with your vision and mission but the culture within the company.

Once you’ve done this and written it down, look at how the industry has evolved over the years, where you think it’s heading, and the impact you ultimately want to make. When doing this, do a SWOT analysis of how you measure up across the industry and other players.

This is often an overlooked step within the messaging process but a vital one to consider because no matter what industry you’re in, chances are that it is overcrowded and noisy.

The key to standing out and getting cut through is to be seen as the company leading the charge and bringing about much-needed change, not just another player in the sector.

Now, you simply can’t do that if you don’t know the industry inside and out, which is why it's so important to understand the history and know the direction it’s headed in so you can position yourself as the answer.

Next, you want to look internally at the culture you have or want to develop within the organisation. What are the values and beliefs that guide the team to show up every day?

This is a critical step as the people in your team are an extension of the company’s overall brand. Therefore, your messaging and the look and feel of your brand must align with the company culture to maintain authenticity and consistency.

And then, finally, it’s about getting clear on who you’re going to sell to, pain points, motivating drivers for why they buy your product/service, and the generalisation and misconceptions they have.

Starting with the pain points…ask yourself: What challenges do customers face, and how does your product or service solve that for them? Once you’ve written this down, go three levels deep.

For example, one of the entrepreneurs I'm currently working with ( Daniel Boi ) runs a branding agency called The Bureau Melbourne .

One of the main reasons companies reach out to him is that they face issues in standing out and getting cut through with their marketing and brand. While this is an issue, it’s only the surface-level reason. The key is getting to the root cause by asking What happens when they can’t stand out?

Well, they remain stagnant or face issues with low volumes of sales. Okay, and what happens when they don’t sell enough? Well, they don’t achieve their growth plans.

As you can see, the surface-level reason is about ‘standing out’, but the root cause is them not achieving their ‘growth plans’. Within your messaging, you need to talk to both in order to connect with your target market at all levels (surface and deep).?

Make a list of all the pain points and motivating drivers, and then go through this process across each one to properly flush them out. From there, work on your positioning around the generalisation and misconceptions formed within your industry.?

Every industry has them; you need to know what these are and then position your brand and messaging away from them if you want to dominate your space.

Very few companies I’ve come across get this part of the process right. For example, when you think of a car salesman, there’s a good chance you think of someone untrustworthy who may end up ripping you off. What about lawyers?

Well, your perception might be that they charge too much. The same can be said within the video production space.

One of the biggest generalisations within that sector is that production companies fall in love with their craft and don’t focus enough on how video can be used to sell more and market better.

Knowing this, it was one of the first things James Shadrach and I worked on together, going as far as reengineering the suite of service he offers within Purpose Productions to be geared towards helping businesses use video as an enabler for growth and not a cost centre.

Once you’ve worked through all the steps above and collated the insights, chat with your team internally or a branding agency (if you don’t have the expertise) to develop your positioning, unique selling proposition, tone of voice, branding guidelines, and visual identity.

From there, it’s a matter of updating all of your material and comms to reflect the new brand and messaging, with the view of revisiting this exercise every few years to reflect on any possible changes if and when necessary.