The Two V’s of Successful Branding

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Branding [noun]: the activity of connecting a product with a particular name, symbol, etc. or with particular features or ideas, in order to make people recognize and want to buy it — Cambridge Dictionary

Successful branding requires that you not only create awareness but a favorable perception of the product, service or personality in question. And this is where branding gets a little tricky — how do you create a favorable perception of your brand? That is the unanswered question for many brands and brand managers. In this piece, I attempt to provide an answer to this question using what I term the two Vs of branding — voice and visuals.

Voice

Every brand has a voice. Daily, your brand is communicating to customers and potential customers. Your brand is either making promises, fulfilling promises or breaking them. On your website, your brand is speaking. At the reception, your brand is speaking. On the phone, your brand is speaking. And without having to mention it, your brand is doing a lot of speaking on social media.

One quality of this voice is Tone — the general character or attitude of a place, piece of writing etc. If you’re positioning your brand as a hip and fun brand, the tone of voice that your brand emits at various touch points should resonate with this brand attribute. If your brand plays in the professional field, for instance, you wouldn’t want to put use words like hey or a phrase like let’s turn up — those will be more appropriate for a lifestyle brand. I’m sure you get my drift.

Another important thing about voice is consistency — the voice should be similar across touch points. The various touch points for your brand range from radio jingles to the manners of the security personnel to the friendliness of the receptionist to how helpful the sales rep is — the list is endless.

Many brands miss it at this point. For example, a bank with a reputation for poor delivery and shabby customer service, in hopes to rebrand itself, adopts an innovative social media campaign which grabs the attention of potential customers. The problem with this approach is that unless the rebranding process extends to the service delivery and customer service, the people who were wowed with the social media experience will ultimately be disappointed in the banking hall. That is what you call a disconnect. And disconnects don’t work well for brand images. This is why brands must ensure consistency across touch points.

Visuals

The first thing that strikes you about a brand most of the time has to do with visuals — logo, text, packaging, pictures etc. Visuals are important and I strongly believe that no serious brand can do without them in this fast-paced world. Consider the vast number of adverts that consumers are being bombarded with on a daily basis; it will be virtually impossible for any brand to stand out without some form of good visuals. Beyond adverts, visuals (or what many refer to as design or graphics design) is a major player in how potential customers perceive the brand.

Visuals can take on many forms — from the layout of the website; the choice of font and colour of the text to the quality of printed brochures to the videos played on YouTube. Customers are constantly forming impressions about the brand, albeit unconsciously and a good part of what decides the impressions they form comes from what they see. This is why attention to little details really matter.

If you have decided to position your brand as a premium brand, then every visual that represents your brand from the reception forms to the packaging of your product (or service) to the email newsletter your customers receive must reflect that positioning. And the common denominator to all these is the visual — How does your brand look across touch points? How does the security personnel dress? How do the cleaners dress? What is the quality of your video or print Ads? How is the office interior designed? How is the product packaged? These and more are the kind of questions you want to ask regularly when you’re trying to build a brand that evokes positive perceptions in the minds of your target audience.

Summing it up, if you’re concerned about building a lasting iconic brand, one that commands respect, then you have to pay attention to the two V’s and ensure that they are in keeping with your desired positioning across board. I’ve outlined five steps to ensuring this. I hope you find it helpful.

• What is my desired positioning?
• What tone of voice will help my brand achieve this positioning?
• What visuals/imagery will help my brand achieve this positioning?
• What are the touchpoints for my brand?
• How can I apply the identified voice and visuals across all touchpoints of my brand.

The End..