Creating Your Ideal Brand Formula
The word “brand” comes up often in business, yet there’s still quite a bit of confusion as to what a brand really is.Lab Creative has branding down to a science. Our method clarifies a very basic principle that is often misunderstood: Your brand is so much more than a logo.
Your brand is all the elements of your business that come together to represent exactly who you are. It is your current goals and future ambitions.Your brand is every interaction people have with your business. From the way you answer the phone, to the quality of the products and services you offer, to the way you are represented visually in marketing and social media.Yes, your logo is an essential part of your brand, but it is only one part.
You need to truly understand the messages you are communicating and the narrative that expresses your personality and identity to tell your story. And you must take time to determine why you do what you do, what makes you different, what personality you reflect, and what benefits your clients gain from working with you. When all the variables are clear, your brand formula adds up to a successful, recognizable visual design for your brand.
Your Brand Chemistry is a powerful combination of your well thought out Story and Design. When struggling businesses come to me for help with brand chemistry, I tend to uncover three common issues:
Their brand is too generic and unremarkable.
Their messaging and visual branding is inconsistent.
Their brand chemistry is ill-fitting for their target market/price point.
Fortunately, our expertise and method at Lab Creative helps our clients overcome these issues quickly and easily to get their brand back on track.Here are a few examples of how we overcame these common brand chemistry issues and helped our clients create effective, excellent brand identities.
1. Generic and unremarkable? Not any more!
Take a look at my client, Black Spruce Financial. Their brand was pretty basic and their logo meant just about nothing to anyone except Trekkies — and Star Trek fans weren’t exactly their target market. In the crowded Financial Services market, being recognized as an accidental Star Trek fan wasn’t helping these professionals find the clients or the reputation they deserved.
Like many business owners, the people behind Black Spruce Financial weren’t convinced that they needed a better, more inspired logo. We won them over with a deeper understanding of their business identity and target market. In the end, their goals and successes were summarized in a logo that represents their name and brand and stands above the crowd.This project was done in collaboration with Coin Branding.
2. Inconsistent messages? We’ll bring it all together.
Client Danny Pehar was torn between his image as a serious motivational speaker to a corporate audience and his book with a fun and quirky title, “Awesome at Being Awesome.” Both were motivational, but the messages were mixed.Danny’s public speaking website, Pehar Consulting, was over-the-top corporate and really didn’t reflect how “awesome” he really was. And his “Awesome” personality was left behind on a completely separate blog for his book.
All his social media handles were linked to this name as well, so corporate clients couldn’t even find him.It was clear to me from the get-go, that he needed to embrace his skills of being “Awesome at Being Awesome” and make this central to his entire business model, while moving away from the generic Pehar Consulting brand.Lab Creative worked with Danny to recreate his brand chemistry.
His logo, business cards, website and social media needed to reflect Danny as a person and a personality (including an awesome custom, hand-lettered font). The newly launched brand reflects his fun, awesome nature and works beautifully for his corporate audience. His brand is consistent across all platforms and sends the right message to everyone who finds him. An Awesome project in so many ways.
3. Ill-fitting? We'll design a brand that fits you perfectly!
When Susan Stewart first came to me, she was frustrated. She was getting clients, but they all seemed to want to pay her a fraction of what she charged and deserved. Just a quick browse of her old website revealed to me that her palette and font choices, as well as the layout made her seem “too light.” Her clients weren’t taking her seriously enough. They perceived the value of what she had to offer at far less than what it was worth. Take a look.
We transformed her brand to reflect and represent the beautiful, funny, inspirational motivator that she is, and allowed her light-hearted perspective to shine through as a unique selling feature.
Thanks to her rebranding, Susan gets paid what she deserves and attracts the right clients. We didn’t change a thing about Susan or her content — they were perfect just as they are — all we changed is how Susan presents herself to the world. See for yourself. Big difference, right?
So, how does your brand stack up? Does your brand represent what it should and communicate your story effectively? Does it create the right chemistry with your clients?