WE CREATE A WINNING BRAND FOR YOUR GROWTH

Daria Kushnir
6 min readJun 15, 2021

Brand is a creative expression of a business idea that shapes a company’s reputation. The more customer-oriented and well planned it is, the more profitable it turns out. To make a brand great it should have: key benefits, to be memorable, to be different, to give a positive feeling, etc. There are some pre-conditions for a new brand:

  1. A new company or service is launched.
  2. A big company is split into smaller units and each of them needs a different brand. Change of business owners demands changing company’s logo and design.
  3. Changes on the world market along with new competitors, differentiation is needed. (rebranding)
  4. Existing brand is out-of-date and inefficient for sales and it has to be replaced. (rebranding)

Brand development includes a great variety of tasks performed step-by-step. We offer you to see the process of brand development in a nutshell.

The main point is brand positioning. Brand idea comes first. We’ll regard it as an imaginary link between brand and its consumers. When it comes to brand ideas, external and internal brand stories should be equally important. Because this is the only way for the consumer to experience your product.

Brand development process consists of actions to be taken to measure, evaluate and adjust. Firstly, market research and competitors’ analysis should be performed to understand the market and identify opportunities. Secondly, define your brand goal by setting your brand vision and purpose to give clear direction or the strategy and actions. Thirdly, segment, target, and position by means of aligning audience need with your brand benefits. It is essential to prioritize opportunities and define brand’s relevance and uniqueness. Fourth, to build your brand strategy define the DNA of how your brand works and being delivered. Fifth, is brand activation. Brand plan and activity calendar are required to drive your brand through and make customers happy. Make sure that your brand idea works effectively.

Here are the steps of brand development:

  1. Brand market research (qualitative, quantitative, secondary, report compilation).
  2. Idea generation (brainstorming, sample, discovery analysis).
  3. Brand positioning (target market research, competitive analysis, hidden message, strategic mapping, recommendations).
  4. Creative development (geographic analysis, demographic analysis, value-added analysis, etc)

Thus, the brand development process should consist of the phases: brand analysis, planning, brand building and brand strategy.

Let’s have a look at one of the key characteristics of the company — its style.

Style is what really matters in B2B.

To develop a new brand bright pictures and images are to be used. Particular attention has to be paid to the fonts, colors, framing as far as they support the message we want to convey to the customers and denote corporate values at the same time.

To make a B2B brand successful it should consider possible creativity, innovations, and growth since the brand will evolve along with the business. Brand stylistics has to describe the condensed expression of the brand core values for the brand to be immediately associated and permanently recognized. Brand building always involves deep understanding of functional and emotional values and their ability to combine them in a unique way to create a preferred augmented product — i.e. your brand. Consistency is the key factor for success.

When it comes to branding, businesses always strive for high profitability. What kind of branding and design will meet this goal? We will examine together the differences: Strong (expensive) brand VS Weak (cheap) one.

Society segmentation defines variety in customers’ preferences. Consumer purchasing power is different, so tastes differ. Cheap design fits people who don’t care much about clients’ needs, the quality of the product, and impression it makes. Usually, such a business has no tangible brand and business owner has not much desire to grow. Sometimes there is no need to build a brand if the reasons why clients buy a product/ service are because it is cheap, easy, and always affordable. Handyman sphere with no business aims and aspirations is another example where a cheap logo will be applicable and fine. Cheap logo doesn’t mean building a relationship with a designer.

We, professionals, regard a new brand as an investment of paramount importance in your business. The main difference is that you invest not just in logos since brand is totally a different matter. Investment into brand and brand identity lead to a whole visual identity system. Professional design agency understands the ins and outs of a client’s business. We are sure that effective logo design is simple, versatile, appropriate, memorable, and timeless. It is to be provided in multiple file format in online version, offline in print etc. The difference in quality, service and perception is huge. The kind of relationship you build defines your success. Professional design agencies work to increase perceived value of your business.

Rebranding can make a brand cheap or expensive. It’s all about careful planning and correct calculations. Here is the way to measure brand and, consequently, business effectiveness.

Measuring brand success or failure: ROI ratio

Effective branding is in direct relation to investments. The matter is to make profit after rebranding, not vice versa. The reason for using ROI is in assessment of the financial impact of a brand. A traditional formula: ROI = (Amount Gained — Amount Spent) / Amount Spent *100%. But this ratio neither includes information how customers are involved in the campaign, nor accounts short-term and long-term impact.

To track the ROI from rebranding it should be regarded as holistic, consisting of the 4 aspects:

  1. Customer value, or how it impacts on the customer.
  2. Business process value (to make business run more effectively).
  3. Financial value (to calculate NPV of the brand earnings).
  4. Customers’ value.

It’s vital for the product to stay recognizable after rebranding. Market research will shed the light on what customers expect from brand design.

Worldwide known coffee-making giant STARBUCKS made a rebranding in 2011. The reason was to explore other markets and offer ice-cream, alcohol. Company’s rebranding was total success and went on top of the coffee market.

There are many cases when bad rebranding was too far from the recognizable product which caused enormous losses for businesses because customers failed to recognize it among the competitors. Thus, it is not advisable to change too many brand elements. In case if rebranding is a total fail, companies can go back to their old brand. Just like international clothing retailer GAP’s did in 2010. It was a necessary measure since the emotional bond with customers was lost and there was no positive history. So, it was a matter of losing the brand identity.

A well-known wellness company Weight Watchers wanted to rebrand after 55 years on the world market. The idea was to change the key message into “Wellness that works” in 2018. It turned out to be confusing for the new customers who weren’t sure about the services the company offered. But WW decided to keep the changes.

To avoid any misunderstandings, it’s good to keep the company’s name easy-to-understand and explain the company’s area of expertise.

To conclude

Brand is built up of trust and relationships. Brand consistency is crucial as it builds trust and long-term business prospects. Branding is the art and science of identifying and fulfilling human emotional needs by capturing their attention, imagination and emotion.

There is no need to change a logo by adding extra elements if it works perfectly

Since Your customers have an emotional bond with the logo, changes can cause confusion in brand identification in people’s minds. A solution is to make a survey to know how your loyal customers feel about changes. Investigation is a must.

Note! Rebranding can be a massive risk without a professional support

Need to have a new brand?

Ask experts for help and we’ll turn your brand into income-generating machine.

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Daria Kushnir

Business growth visionary, people-oriented leader. Keen on Marketing and Personal Brand creation.