Creating a brand with impact

By Rachael Cox, Co-Founding Director, The Apple Yard

First published on The Apple Yard on Thursday 9 September 2020: https://theappleyard.com/blog/brandimpact

Brand Magic

As a branding agency in Derby we get approached because people need help with something specific, maybe a new website, a short marketing video or some design work.

We can quickly tell the clients who know who their business is aimed at, can give clear direction about what they are after and know clearly who they are making their content and materials for. But actually people don’t always know what they want or even need and that’s when we start asking questions to better understand so that we can create something truly magical together.

“A powerful brand will resonate at an emotional and subconscious level, communicate your business values and often naturally convey what you stand for; it will appeal directly to the right kinds of clients you want which will make running your business easier.”

EMOTIONAL ALCHEMY

A powerful brand will resonate at an emotional and subconscious level, communicate your business values and often naturally convey what you stand for; it will appeal directly to the right kinds of clients you want which will make running your business easier. 

One of the big dilemmas often facing our clients is the need to be noticed, whether through a search engine or to wow their audience with captivating visuals. Today it can be so challenging to really stand out in ever competing and crowded markets and to resonate with those you’re trying to connect with. Good branding will help you do this easily.

The best branding will authentically represent your brand and what you stand for, whilst also emotionally connecting people to what you do. We spent a season living in Morocco, where the symbol of love is not the heart but the liver; "you have conquered my liver" constitutes as a declaration of love. Personally, I find this statement to be true. When I really want or like something it’s my guts and emotions that stop me and cause me to make decisions my rational self never knew or considered.

The practical part of our brain only makes decisions when our emotions agree - that’s why it can be so hard to do the right thing if we don’t feel the emotional benefit of it. Successful brands know how to speak to our emotions and hook us, making them utterly irresistible - they make us feel good about ourselves and feed into the parts of our brain that thrives on risk and reward. Most of us buy with our emotions - our hearts and not our heads…

EACH DECISION COUNTS

Connecting on an emotional level with your customer through your business means you need to get to the core of what you do and communicate that through every design decision you make for your brand. Appealing to everyone means you’ll end up appealing to no-one. It’s vital that you create something compelling to engage with your audience, and tap into the way your customers think and behave.

If you need to get clear about building a successful brand, sometimes intuition and luck can help you to do that, but putting in the hard work and getting clear means it takes the guesswork out and you can make informed decisions that are right for the future direction of your business. 

Without being clear about your vision and ideal client, it will be really challenging to write successful copy for a website or understand what style of visual brand language will connect with your kind of customer. Good branding uncovers all these things so that your business will resonate with your dream audience.

ShSTEPS TO CREATING BRAND MAGIC

We’re putting together a series of blog posts that flesh out some of the steps we take our clients on which will hopefully help you too so that you can create a brand with soul and make the right kind of impact:

We’ll cover the following areas

1. Brand Focus
2. Identifying your strengths and uniqueness
3. Profile your customers
4. Craft your vision
5. Find your character
6. Focus your brand tone and voice, verbal branding
7. Design your brand logo and sub-marks, colour and font pairings
8. Curate your visual branding through photography, illustrations and patterns
9. Create your brand touch points - print and online
10. Cultivate your social media / content creation / storytelling
11. Engineer your user experience / physical spaces
12. Engage your audience, relationships and brand ambassadors

We hope this series will help you understand more about what goes into good branding and also help inform you why a brand is so much more than a logo.

Brand imagery from a recent brand project: The Apple Yard x Lucy Coulthard

If you’re from an interior design business or a local business that values creative, impactful branding to boost your business, do get in touch.

Rachael Cox - together with her husband Simon - is the Co-Found Director of The Apple Yard, a Derby-based website design, brand identity and film-making boutique. Rachael helps increase your visual appeal, by strengthening your brand, winning your audience and customers. Call Simon on 07427 100381 or e-mail [email protected] if you'd like to chat about how we can help you achieve your objectives.