Creative Matters: Three Essential Branding Tools
A simple step-by-step guide
A short explanation of a branding tool for everything and everyone.
Making a thought, process, product or service into a tangible concept is a very common struggle for most startups and small business owners.
A branding tool that I have worked with (That works for everything from Investment Banking brands to dog breeding) is Brand Personality. Its an easy tool for everyone in your team to understand and hard to fuck up, and always delivers results that triggers creative thinking in even the most square thinkers.
BRANDING
First of; Branding is actually very simple. Its just made complicated by people that make money from the gibberish lingo and tacky-wacky keynote presentations in meetings that kick in so many open doors that everybody gets a cold from the draft.
For starters the definition of what a brand is can be explained with a lot of different buzzwords and catchphrases, and one of those explanations are:
A group of people’s similar feelings and beliefs about a product, service, organization or character.
Sounds simple doesn’t it, thats because it is. For example; Japanese cooking knife brands are for some reason perceived to be of better quality and stay sharper for longer because along long time ago they used to make samurai swords, right?
THE TOOL: A BRAND PERSONALITY.
One of the easiest ways to define a brand is to conceptualize it into 3 human characteristics based on the consumers preconceived notion of thus brand.
As branding is about feelings and beliefs and not facts, its important to be as clear as possible when briefing a marketing-, product- or service-development team on your brand. Its also a hell of a lot simpler to give feedback in a creative work environment.
For example; Lets say your brand is defined as: Trustworthy — Posh — Sexy, it would be hard to move into the dog toy market (but not impossible).
So in order to pin-down your characteristic all you need to do is these three simple work shop steps: Collect, Organize and Re-create. In a start-up situation this should be done together with all the stakeholders plus at least one outsider. The steps are very simple and you do not need be a “creative”.
The step by step guide.
1. COLLECT
First you need data.. good old quality clean data.
A vast amount of knowledge about your users is paramount to any organization and the first step in understanding your brand. Why they think and act in correlation with your product or service should effect not only the current situation of your business but lead the way in all the future product and service development.
If you are a Start-up and you don’t have any “real” users yet, then target the competitions users together with the perception and expectation from the Stakeholders.
The primary part of the data collected should be via Qualitative interviews, as that is the best way to get unbiased information. What you are looking for is “a faster horse” scenario when asking about user needs. The only big no no is asking yes or no questions and avoid all group interviews like the plague.
The Banana Brand example.
Let say we have a product and brand we call the Banana and we want to collect data about our consumers, we need to establish the following:
- What problem your product or service is solving for the user?,
- Why the user has that problem?
- Why they choose your product or service?
Banana Qualitative Interview data example:
Why do you eat fruit? “I like the sweet taste and its more healthy then a cheese sandwich or chocolate bar.” “ I am trying to think more about what i eat.”
Why did you eat the banana? “My blood sugar was low. And the banana looked tasty.” “Its high on calcium I think?” “Of all the fruit in the basket it was the most appealing, as i wanted something sweeter then an apple and bigger then the grapes.”
What did you think of it? “It was sweet and felt bigger then it looked as I didn’t need to eat anything after.” “It was different, it was sweet and not sour like the apples.”
What is your relationship with bananas? “I loved them as a kid and my grandmother used to mash them in my porridge in the morning.” “ Never had one before, but i like them they are very nice to hold and easy to bring along.”
Compared to other snack foods what is your opinion on bananas?
”They are really good as I am on the go a lot and you only need one hand to eat them.“ ”Also the peal is very smart as it shows you when its ready to eat.” “Great design, the cover tells you by the color if its ready to eat.” “ You can buy five at a time and hang them on hook in the kitchen.”
2. ORGANIZE
Sort it out and boil it all down.
All your data (in our Banana brand case, Qualitative Interview statements) needs to be organized into three fields from a users perspective:
The Discovery field: Which is the first impression. It can be visually attraction or rumors about the brand prior to use.
The Experience field: The actual use of the product or service. How was the usability, or how did it solve the users problem.
The Loyalty field: Whats the opinion after use. Regrets, opinion about the competition, improvements.
So in The Banana Interview data example start first to highlight the words of typical brand value such as adjectives.
“I like the sweet taste and its more healthy then a cheese sandwich or chocolate bar.” “ I am trying to think more about what i eat.”
“My blood sugar was low. And the banana looked tasty.” “Its high on calcium I think?” “Of all the fruit in the basket it was the most appealing, as i wanted something sweeter then an apple and bigger then the grapes,”
“It was sweet and felt bigger then it looked as I didn’t need to eat anything after.” “It was different, it was sweet and not sour like the apples.”
“I loved them as a kid and my grandmother used to mash them in my porridge in the morning.” “ Never had one before, but i like them they are very nice to hold and easy to bring along.”
”They are really good as I am on the go a lot and you only need one hand to eat them.“ ”Also the peal is very smart as it shows you when its ready to eat.” “Great design, the cover tells you by the color if its ready to eat.” “ You can buy five at a time and hang them on hook in the kitchen.”
With the different adjectives in mind, try to position each word in order of user perspective field. Also try to translate valuable parts of the text into adjectives, for example:
“mashing up bananas in porridge” can be translated into adaptable with other products.
“on the go” “with one hand” can be translated into accessible and resourceful
The result being:
3. CREATE AND RE-CREATE
Start cooking.
The last step is to create common denominators with-in each field. The point is to end up with 3 words without any contradictory.
If you come across strong negative words save them, they are the brands evil twin and should be treated as a wake-up call.
The result should now be that you have a brand personality.
For The Banana Brand example: Smart — Sweet — Healthy.
The bonus with this process is that you also end up with a pocket size version of a Customer journey.
Now as a practice; write a product development brief for your brand.
For example:
What would an digital service be/do/look like?
What kind of dog (real or fictional) would you breed?
What kind of person (real or fictional) would you sponsor?
What other brands on other markets then your own would be interesting to connect with?
Guest post by Carl Dackö, MA, Master of Science in Business and Design and Founder and Creative at www.Dackoform.com
Opus Brand Consult (Los Angeles, Munich, Paris). We are Creative Business Consultants who help established businesses thrive in the age of Digital Transformation. From branding and marketing strategy to communication and sales, Opus facilitates the implementation of modern digital resources to give companies an edge in a digitally transformed marketplace. Contact us: +1.213.446.7986 OpusBrandConsult.com
