Creating an Icon: Why Branding Matters

What is Branding?

Branding is defined by the Harvard Business Review as “a singular idea or concept that you own inside the mind of a prospect.” In layman’s terms, your brand communications influence how your target audience perceives or identifies with it. It is a common fallacy to assume that a brand is completely captured in a single, stylish logo. That is simply not the case, for what is a brand with all style but no substance? A brand should talk the talk, and walk the walk!

Essentially, your brand conveys the “what, why, when, who and how’s” to your core viewership through the consolidation of both written and non-written embellishments spanning all marketing channels. In essence, branding covers the following:

• Brand Collateral (Business Cards, Packaging etc)
• Logo Design (Colour, Typography etc.)
• Brand Guide (Style Guide etc.)

“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts” is a maxim that strictly applies to branding. As Brisbane’s leading brand agency, we view branding as the collective impression made with our past clients. To wit, our brand’s reputation lives on in the minds of our organisation’s stakeholders. Thus, Vesanique’s fiscal success outlines the value of a unified brand strategy. Click here to read our recent feature on Vesanique’s entire rebranding process.

Why does it Matter?

Let’s cut to the chase; what benefits does branding bring to the business roundtable?

Consistency is Key

“A brand is something that has a clear-cut identity among consumers, which a company creates by sending out a clear, consistent message over a period of years until it achieves a critical mass of marketing.”

Phil Knight, Founder of Nike

As illustrated by Phil Knight, a coherent branding strategy is a bedrock that every successful brand stands on. Because Nike has established a distinctive and coherent identity for decades, it has become a household name amongst its fervent fans.

To exemplify this further, picture this scene: your company is a lighthouse, and its spotlight is its branding. The choppy waters in the sea depict the treacherous competitive marketplace, and your target audience is the hapless ships attempting to navigate the stormy terrain. In this scenario, your brand is the shining beacon that leads your audience in your general direction.

But the consistency of your brand determines how effective your spotlight is at ferrying ships closer to you. An inconsistent brand strategy, badly considered copy or a cookie cutter logo would simply mislead, and misdirect audiences from arriving at your brand’s shores. Conversely, a well-developed brand strategy provides safe entry to all prospective clients.

More importantly, the average human has an attention span of 8 seconds; a 4-second drop vis-a-vis the year 2000! Because of this, many prospective customers tend to parse out random information about your brand in bite-sized morsels. An all-encompassing brand strategy ensures that all branding touchpoints between your customers and your company leaves little room for misinterpretation.

Cutting through the White-Noise

“Marketing is about values. It’s a complicated and noisy world, and we’re not going to get a chance to get people to remember much about us. No company is. So we have to be really clear about what we want them to know about us.”

Steve Jobs, Founder of Apple

As alluded to earlier, the business landscape is an unforgiving environment for emerging brands. Apple epitomises a brand that has managed to carve a namesake for itself amongst its tech rivals. Byron Sharp, the author of How Brands Grow, notes that a strong brand is one that psychologically falls within the customer’s consideration calculus when they attempt to solve a problem with a product/service. Thus, differentiation and distinctiveness are the cornerstones of brand success.

What makes your company tick? Is it distinguishable from the rest of the corporate herd? What do I want customers to know or remember us for? In order to rattle the cages of one’s immediate industry, one must first ruminate on these fundamental questions before drafting a company-wide brand strategy. An excellent brand-strategy cuts through the competition, crafting a lasting legacy for your burgeoning brand.

Vesanique is here to help

As a defining Brisbane brand agency, Vesanique cultivates renowned brands through traditional and digital marketing channels, tailored to your own specifications. We are aware that all companies are not cut from the same cloth! Unlike our competitors, we “brand” ourselves (pun most definitely intended) as a customer-centred agency first, a brand agency second! Vesanique embodies that sentiment by first acknowledging what you’re trying to tell your audience, or what you’re hoping to achieve in a decade.

Once we’ve grasped the lay of the land, our enterprising team of professionals draws up a cohesive, coherent and consistent branding strategy to deliver on your core objectives. Every existing form of branding collateral is covered under Vesanique’s umbrella of services, from billboards to business card designs. Case studies from previous clients can be found on our Work page.

But first, we’d like to get to know you over a cup of coffee. Reach out to us with a call or shoot us a message!