Recent years has seen brands become more than just their names, logos and mascots, as the importance of branding has seen a huge growth! Brands today have a voice, authority and power that they can wield in the market to create an impact on their target audience.
Many companies have started concentrating on the value of a brand instead of just the trademark which basically means that more time and effort can be devoted to creating impactful content and a brand message.
We’re living in an age where everything that a company does is regarded as its brand. A brand encapsulates an entire community where there is real-time engagement happening with a story, useful content, charitable deeds, not to mention it is inspirational as well.
A company’s founders, its employees, offices, pets and everything remotely associated with it will be considered as a “brand” by the audience.
A brand that’s holistic in its approach, requires quite a bit of work and unwavering commitment from the whole team to create an impression. So when you start giving your brand character, it only makes sense that everything and everyone related to the company is on the same page with the exact same mission.
This will involve ascertaining the kind of perception you want people to have of your company.
As a founder, here are some engaging and fun exercises with quite a bit of insight that you and your team can conduct to give your brand more definition. So let the creative juices flow and let’s take a look at what these exercises are and what they entail!
Giving clear definition to your brand
You must already know what you want your business to be like and that’s great to start with. In this exercise, we’ll take you a step ahead. Rather than just enlisting words that define what your company is, create a list of words that help communicate what your company and brand “isn’t”.
For instance, you want to come across as a band that’s fun but not petty, smart yet not complex, simple but engaging. Once you complete your list, ensure that you deliver it to the team that’s responsible for churning out content and putting the message across. Know this – the more your brand’s voice conveys what they aren’t, the more clarity and cohesiveness your brand will harbour.
The Personality Makeover!
This is one of the most favourite exercises for founders as it permits your team to delve into the abstract realm and get creative and rather innovative with their ideas and decisions.
Think about your company and then humanise it. Think of it as an entity with layers and various traits, assign it a gender if that helps. Is it more technical or does it have an artistic side? If your company were a movie, which celebrity would pull it off well?
Once you have enough character for the profile of your company, you can now start thinking about its relationship with its consumers. Are you acting as their friend, confidante, advisor or something else?
Your brand has more to it than just being a supplier of a particular service or product. As a brand, you are an important constituent of your consumer’s life, so ensure that you create content that supports your characteristics in the marketplace.
This way people will relate to it better.
The Story
Finally, take some time to shed some light on your story and what it entails. Consumers are prone to connect with a brand better that has an engaging story to tell because it makes the brand more human. It gives a brand more character than just being a product or a service.
Break it down for them, speak their language and have the protagonist, an antagonist, a desire that drives you to do what you do and spices it up with some conflict.
When you approach it this way, you have more to go on with, which gives your brand more credibility. As the founder, take some time out to ponder over your brand and its character.
Once you figure this out, you can convey the same to your team and you’ll begin to see how it make your brand and its story, more engaging and united!
You can take help of traditional promotional methods like cheap printed pens to be more visible and top of mind for your consumers!