Corporate and SME Branding

How the marketplace perceives your brand design is a barometer of your success, now and in the future. Having a strong brand design involves more than the visual aspects.   It is something used to influence business decisions, community acceptance and helps you make sound business decisions.

A discussion on brand design often starts with a brief history of branding usually alluding to the iron brands used by cowboys to mark cattle as belonging to a particular owner or ranch.

This brings visions of red hot irons with the business end burning away at the hide of a steer. The shape at one end of the iron end was unique to that ranch. This reference is really not quiet brand design, but more about the visual aspect of branding.

A strong brand is used to differentiate your company and what you offer to the marketplace. It’s what makes you stand out from the rest of the herd. For example, your company offers lawn care services. What is it about your service that makes people want to call your company before they call others?

It’s not your logo. A great logo helps “brand” some visual component into the mind of customers. However, people don’t ring you up based upon an clever logo. They call you because of something that makes you stand out from other lawn care professionals.

Perhaps your price is the lowest offered. How low will you take that price?

A business built around low-balling prices is a business sure to fail. There’s always someone willing to go into a price war against you. When that happens, how will you win? What will keep your customers from jumping over to the other lawn care company?

Price wars are won by companies who have developed and nurtured a sound brand design.  That means they don’t have to keep customers (or gain new ones) by continually lowering prices.

A strong brand design is one where people have an emotional connection with your company. You make a promise with your brand that is reflected by your employees, products and services.

People trust your lawn care team and they tell others about your company. When the competition comes around offering a discounted lawn care for the year, your customers prefer to stay with your company.

Brand design incorporates visual aspects such as colours, fonts and logos. These visual aspects are carried across your product labels, packaging, stationery, company signs and uniforms.

Brand design also is a promise to the marketplace which is reflected in a tag line, your mission statement, and culture. Your people, products, and service represent this promise to the marketplace.

Brand design uses imagery, colours and language to establish a connection with the consumer. Brands help people make a choice between a sea of similar choices. A well planned brand design reassures the consumer that they made the right decision to buy into your offer.