How to build a brand

Before we discuss how to build a brand, what exactly is a brand?

A brand is a person’s gut feeling about a product, service or company. You can’t control the process, but you can influence it.

(Marty Neumeier, The Brand Gap)

Essentially a brand isn’t what you say about yourself it’s what your customers and clients say about you. This is why a brand evolves and grows over time. It is always shifting and changing and it isn’t fixed. There are many touch points your customers have with your brand – from your offices, décor, graphics, staff, website, messaging, logo, product, graphics, packaging and customer experience, all of these things give customers an experience of your brand.

When we get involved with a new client it is our job is to understand who they are but also crucially to find out how they appear to the outside world. We look at all of their points of contact and see where we can influence the people's opinion of the brand if necessary or build on the good brand reputation our client has already achieved.

A lot of people think their logo is their brand. There is a lot more to branding than a logo, but your logo is often the first impression someone has about your company, which is why it is so important. This also means a logo should be handled with care. A logo on its own doesn't have to embody your entire brand but it should represent the essence of it.

It's great to work on a completely new brand for a new company or a new product, and our design studio can have alot of creative fun looking at the various options that will meet the brief. It can be a challenge to rebrand an existing, more established company. Owners might be emotionally attached to their brand, but sometimes how they perceive themselves doesn’t always match how customers perceive the company. When doing research we will often ask staff and customers to describe the company as a car brand. If they see themselves as a BMW and customers see them more as a Ford Focus, there's a bit of brand misalignment going on!

At FIG we're constantly looking at our client's brand reputation and strengthening their brand at every opportunity. Sometimes we're asked to rebrand a company, but that doesn't always mean changing the logo. Sometimes the logo mark doesn't change but it's the supporting elements around the mark that evolves to portray a more consistent, updated experience on all those customer touch points. It's often these small shifts that can help change the perception of a company's brand story.

Our work with Temperature Electronics Ltd (TEL) is a good example. TEL is an Electronic Airflow Control and Monitor Manufacturer and their brand was held in high regard. They had a healthy market share globally due to the quality of their products and the high level of customer service. Over the years, however they saw increasing marketplace competition and were keen to accelerate their growth. After initially looking at their brand as a whole we knew their outdated website did not reflect this innovative company. We also realised that a more targeted PR approach to promote the benefits of its products to key trade markets would build their brand reputation.

We have enjoyed a long relationship with TEL now and secured editorial coverage across all target media sectors with a total reach of over 3m over the last five years and have generated direct sales leads. It would be fair to say the director of TEL was unsure of the impact that Marketing and PR would have on his brand but we have now been able to show its importance.

One of our clients who is very aware of changing customer opinion is Northwood Hygiene. We have worked with them for a number of years now, supporting their growing portfolio of branded products, which often means helping to reposition and relaunch products into the market place.

Northwood have to move fast to stay on top of changing trends, even in the world of toilet and kitchen roll you have to be one step ahead. Our studio has worked with Northwood on their branded B2B products such as washroom consumables and then packaging requirements for Whisper and Essentials. More recently we have supported Northwood Freedom with packaging requirements for their consumer brands Rhino and Hush. We have helped them to get products from screen mock-ups to on the shelf packaging in a very short time scale but we have also been involved with new product launches and long term forecasts where old products are phased out and new products repositioned to fit in their portfolio.

Sometimes we work with a client on one project but as our relationship evolves, we get to understand them as a company and as a brand, and we are able to offer advice and guidance in other areas of their business.

Another good example is HealthyStep, specialist designers and manufacturers of insoles, orthotics and footbeds for the foot health care market. While they work with predominantly foot health professionals throughout the NHS and private practice, they did have some consumer products they wanted to brand and bring to market. These were really successful and as our relationship grew they asked us to undertake a full rebrand and digital overhaul. FIG undertook a customer insight project which informed the studio's thinking on the subsequent rebrand. The studio enjoyed working on this project, bringing together the entire company brand to work as a whole. It’s especially rewarding to see the positive customer reaction to the new brand and website.

If you’re interested in talking about your brand, simply call us on 01457 857111 or email at [email protected].