How do you go about capturing something as fiendishly complex as your organisation’s entire identity? Photo: one x.
Your brand isn’t just a logo, colour palettes and fonts. It’s the first impression, lasting memory and silent ambassador of your business.
Adam Gill says your brand shapes how customers perceive you – whether they buy from you, recommend you, or forget you entirely.
“Branding is your whole identity – how people feel when they think of your business,” he says.
Director of marketing at brand performance firm one x, Adam helps businesses build stronger identities, sharpen their marketing and elevate social media performance.
He says great branding doesn’t happen by accident.
Whether you’re starting from scratch or giving your company a much-needed facelift, start by identifying your business nucleus. If you can’t define that, you can’t communicate it.
“Say I’m a plumber. Am I a value-for-money plumber? A premium, one of the best?” Adam says.
“Identifying that helps pinpoint your audience and that becomes the foundation of your tone and voice. If I am a premium brand, how do I talk like a premium brand, look like a premium brand? What services would I offer as a premium brand?
“From there you can get into the nitty gritty – what language would we use in everything from campaign messaging to emails? What colours and fonts will position us in our chosen market?”
one x marketing director Adam Gill says behind every great business is a brand that knows itself. Photo: one x.
Once you’ve established broad strokes, you can nail down visual elements such as colours, logos and fonts, tangible elements including your business name and slogan, and more abstract elements such as your voice, tone and personality. Then assemble them into your “style guide” – also referred to as “brand guidelines”.
Like your brand’s own bible, this comprehensive and detailed document will communicate how all your third-party suppliers must proliferate your brand and help secure one critical element – consistency.
“You have to think about all the applications of the brand, not just the brand itself,” he says.
“You can’t think about the brand in isolation. Every piece must align. How can you best create a print ad so you can shrink it or blow it up and the clarity stays the same? How will it look on a TV ad, an Instagram square, a billboard?
“If someone sees a slick ad and lands on a clunky, off-brand website, trust is lost in seconds. For the customer, consistency across all your applications points is comforting. You have to take care of your own brand before people feel confident you’ll take care of them.”
Your brand is not a “set and forget”, either. It portrays who you are in that moment of your journey. As your company grows and its identity evolves, so too must your brand.
Whenever you reach a milestone or reassess your business goals, it’s time to review whether your branding still works for you.
“Does that logo you created in Canva when you were a scrappy start-up reflect what you’re trying to achieve now? Remember, your brand is your 24/7 salesperson – it’s out there in the market, even when you’re asleep,” Adam says.
“If your target audience was people aged 30 to 40 when you started, and today that audience is 50 to 60, is your brand still appealing to them? Or is your audience the new cohort of 30s to 40s; part of a new generation that consumes information in very different ways and is attracted to different types of brands?
“Trends change. That’s why throughout time you’ll see even the biggest brands evolve – they know the business that survives is the one that adapts to the changing market.”
Case in point: one x recently created a website celebrating 100 years of an instantly recognisable legacy brand deeply embedded in its community – Master Builders ACT.
This exciting challenge required a tightrope walk best left to the pros.
“They’re celebrating 100 years so you want to pay homage to that and celebrate how far the organisation has come – but also look to the next 100 years and beyond,” Adam says.
“We used their established guidelines and drew inspiration from their current logo. Because it’s been around for 100 years, the brand equity in that is everything. We didn’t want to diverge entirely from that and create something that didn’t resonate – it had to be something people recognise, something that would connect clearly to the MBA brand but also pull it forward.
“Every business needs to continue to innovate to stay relevant because if you don’t, someone else will. Your brand is the engine of that.”
For more information visit one x.
