Brand

Brand Strategy

You’ve already got a brand. Ok, so it’s not Coke or iPhone (unless it is, in which case, well done you) but it’s well respected in the industry and performing perfectly well thank you very much. But then, something happens… Some upstart muscles in on your territory. You find the brand that used to fit you like a glove now restricts you like a tiny leotard or fits about as well as a cheap Xmas jumper. Brand strategy is about digging into the DNA of your business(es) to understand what really matters, what fits where, and what to prioritise.

Brand Positioning

Disney+ is a streaming service just like Netflix and Amazon Prime. But Disney don't tell you that. Instead they offer you "the greatest stories in one place." Disney know that people don't buy. They choose. You don't get time to walk people through the finer points of your logic. Instead, you need a simple, compelling position that's even shorter than an elevator pitch. Get yours right and people will sit up and notice it.

Brand Identity

Yes, brand identity means taking a look at your logo, but it’s so much more than that. It’s the type and tone of the words your business uses when it talks to people. It’s the colours that really work (imagine if the McDonalds golden arches weren’t golden). It’s the ‘ding’ or whoosh’ that tells everyone who hears it that it’s you (think the ‘da-dum oooohhhhh’ when you load up Netflix). It’s words, pictures and sounds. Wrangling all that gets a lot easier when it all fits around one big idea.

Messaging & Tone of Voice

Hello. Hi. Hey! Wazzuuup? It’s funny isn’t it? Just by changing the one word you choose to greet people, you can completely change their perception of you. Imagine the difference the rest of what you say can make. Your brand’s words and pictures should be a great partnership: Lennon and McCartney. Ant and Dec. Tess & Claudia. Individually they can be good. Together they can be Strictly, tangoing up fab-u-lous reactions. That’s the value of getting the messaging and the tone of voice right.

Naming

The Big Mac started life as The Aristocrat. Vaseline started out as Wonder Jelly. Which is kind of terrifying. A great brand or product name needs to be simple to say, spell and remember. Which is just one reason why IBM probably didn’t sell too many computers back when they were the Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation. If you need to explain it, repeat it or get a flipchart out and draw diagrams about it, your name probably doesn’t work. So let’s create names that need no explanation…