Why Working On Your Brand Identity Is Business Crucial
In the last years, we learned a lot about brand identities and how they influence your business activities. Read about our experiences and how Frontify can help you on this journey.
We know it from psychology, and maybe through Toni Collete's phrasing, specifically. As she so gracefully said: "The better you know yourself, the better your relationship with the rest of the world is." And this is also true for brands. Why's that? Well, brands are made by people — for people — which means that you can find that very same positive impact when you're well aware of your company's identity and brand. When you know yourself.
If you've already checked out the Brand Sessions (an educational video series by Frontify's Head of Brand, Willem Haen), you already know what a brand is, where the name "brand" comes from, and how you can develop your own brand with the help of Brand Management. While managing a brand is one thing, being aware of it is something else. Successful maintenance of the brand — allowing the brand and its emotionally driven identity to grow — is a big part of Brand Management.
So, What is Brand Identity?
It's not easy to pinpoint, for sure. But let's try it. In the end, it's not much different from the identity you have and live by, as a person. You have your own sets of values, preferences, and belief systems. As do companies and brands.
They're the collective value base that a person — or a group of people — believes in. And just like your own values, they develop over time. They change. One day, you learn something new, or you adapt to the change in your social environment — evaluating your aims, wishes, needs, and beliefs — just like a company brand does.
This is a process that you, as a company, need to repeat on a regular basis. It's what keeps your brand relevant with the changes in your market, your industry, with an increase in hires, or a need from the public. That's your brand identity, and it's always in motion.
Still, brand identity is often thought of as being made up of visual elements: the fonts it uses, the colors it displays, the logo it slaps on every empty surface, its products, and so forth. In a way, these are the clothes you wear and the accessories that go along with them. It's the public expression of your internal values — the way you choose to highlight your personality.
Obviously, the understanding of the full scope of brand identity falls a bit short when all you're looking at is the external representation of it. What would you think of a person that, while being dressed up for a ball at the castle, uses vulgar slang in a conversation? Or a rapper covered in bling, talking about the need to end poverty in the third world? It would probably create a feeling of cognitive dissonance. Apparently, the language a brand uses and the messages it conveys needs to be on point as well, to create a coherent identity.
Now, that’s enough, is it? Not quite. So, you manufacture your products with sustainable materials, you have made sure that all your retail staff only wears vegan clothing, your communications department plays the trombone about your aim to reduce carbon emissions to zero — and the tabloid press prints paparazzi photos showing your CEO squeezing his Cadillac Escalade through a burger joint’s drive-through. Hello, fiasco. So, the third element you need to address is how your brand and its representatives are behaving. Only when you have nailed all three aspects, your brand will be perceived as consistent and authentic.
At the core of all of this are your thoughts about your brand's identity. You might want to start by asking yourself: Where do we come from? What can we contribute to the world at large, and to our customers in particular? And what are we doing really well? Then, you can build up from there; defining your values, essence, appearance, and tonality, which in turn inform your behavioral guidelines, corporate language, key messages, design templates, and so on.
Does that sound like a lot of work? Probably. But guess what: If you are in this for the long haul, you know that it pays off rather well to have a solid foundation and strong brand identity.
But Why Do I Need to Work on My Brand Identity?
Your brand identity is a differentiator on the market, and having a strong one can drive your revenue efforts significantly. Decisions made for your identity help to facilitate decision-making for strategy, product shaping, recruiting, and many other areas. Especially if your teams grow or your brand gets older, you will need an alignment on Brand Values, Brand Statements, and Brand Strategy.
Working on your Brand Identity can create the belonging of everyone involved in your brand — whether that's your employees, investors, clients, or other stakeholders. Today, in a world of constant noise, where many companies are doing the same as the others (we're looking at you, chicken sandwich), it's important to find a connection on an emotional level with all of these people, to make your brand stand out and create a sense of relevance — which, in turn, becomes loyalty (belonging).
And don't forget something crucial from today's world: Belonging, today, also requires you to make quick (and intelligent) decisions, going forward. People want to actively decide for a brand when acquiring its products and services — something that resonates with their values (a promise), things like sustainability, moral values, and environmental aspects. In 2020, for example, 41% of all consumers were value-driven and trusted in the brands they consumed (IBM).
So, it's about time to work consciously on your brand, don't you think?
How Can I Work On My Brand Identity?
There are many different ways to work on your brand identity. And luckily, there's not just one way to do it, because every brand is individual, with various qualities, strengths, weaknesses, challenges, and market requirements.
That's why the assistance of an experienced agency is often a great start to make a leap in the right direction. But it's not always an agency doing it, it can be a dedicated team of essential stakeholders from your company, or even a true role challenging the status quo.
From time to time, these strategic jobs were done by management — and in long cycles — thinking of big rebrands and repositionings.
But the world around the consumption of goods and services changed in the last few years — time to delivery, instant availability, and globalization has sped up the interaction between brand and consumer in different touchpoints, with consequences on the development of these goods.
What's agile on the product level, adaptive in design, and growth on the company level, is at the same time a constant evolution of your whole brand — whether you want to control it or not. At the same time, decision-makers aren't at the same place and not working at the same time, on the same decisions. Asynchronous methods or remote collaboration is increasingly important to the success of a brand, and nothing exclusive to a multinational superglobal company.
So, it's time to understand your brand identity as a living being of your company. One that needs constant care and attention. And for that, it needs new tools and partners.
How is Brand Identity Management Going to Evolve?
Finding answers for challenging topics like the future of Brand Identity Management needs the involvement of different powerful innovators. This is one of the reasons why we teamed up with the OST University of Applied Sciences. Together, we raised the question about the digital future of Brand Identity Management. How can we care about the heart of a brand from different directions, with the challenges of the modern world?
Our last 1 ½ years of research resulted in an exciting prototype that gives us the possibility to test different methods, challenge limits, and understand the needs and requirements of your brand. And it's really refreshing to get professional support from people that have research in their DNA and that bring new perspectives on the interaction with our digital platform.
The result of our collaboration is a set of methods that is ready for you to be tested and to be used in your daily activities around your brand. Jump into the four categories Company, Core, Competition, and Stakeholder to understand your brand as a solid foundation of all of these areas. Let's give some examples:
- Write the Founder Icon — a method to reflect the way your brand was shaped by your founder(s) and how it was born, challenging the market or a status quo in your industry. Help others to understand the challenges of this time and create a feeling of heritage while developing your brand.
- Shape the Personas you interact with — with configurable templates that allow you to decide which information you want to record about the buyers and users of your brand—meaningful profiles of interactions that dig deep.
- Face your Competition & Market with a solid stance — and use your knowledge to make a picture of a market dynamic — helping you to position your own brand, and stand out. What are your strengths and weaknesses, and what are theirs?
And these methods are just a few of our carefully selected 20 techniques to manage your brand identity in a digital environment — independent from location, time, and the number of participants.
Discover a platform that levels up your strategic decisions and involves new stakeholders that would never have enough space in one of your meeting rooms.
Join the Future of Brand Identity Management!
🌟 Click here to join the Brand Identity Canvas Early Access Program. 🎯
To join the future of Brand Identity Management, you just need to apply for our Early Access Program. We are looking forward to having you onboard, friends.
Written by Patrick Hummel and Andreas Peter
