I’ve had a number of conversations with different people about their take on branding. Some feel a brand is comprised solely of the visual aspects (logos, business cards, signage). Others feel like a brand is an association, when people see your business they think of love or social innovation and others still feel branding is the voice – what your business sounds like, what kind of words and phrases you use.
So what is branding? What goes into a brand? In short, everything. As stated above, your brand is your visuals, it’s what people associate with your business, and it’s your voice/tone but it’s also your story, your passion, your purpose, your personality, your mission. A potential customer should know each one of these things about your brand because that’s what’s going to convince them that they should do business with you.
If you’re like me, examples are crucial to your understanding of a particular concept. So I’ve given a brief breakdown of Brands by Brie’s brand.
Mission: To increase the online presence of small businesses and nonprofit organizations through effective story telling via social media and email marketing.
Passion: Brands by Brie is passionate about stories. Telling stories, reading stories, sharing stories.
Visuals: Brands by Brie’s visual component is very consistent. We stick to a four-palette color scheme and use the same font in each graphic, a font pulled from our logo.
Associations: You can’t actually know what other people associate with your brand unless you ask them so I polled a group of business associates and asked for them to share what connections they made with my brand. Some common answers were: loyalty, consistency, networking, love, organization.
Personality: Brands by Brie’s personality looks a lot like mine and that’s not by accident. In having a self-named business, it only makes sense for your brand to line up with who you are as an individual. I’m a people-person who loves good conversation and memorable activities which brings us to Voice/Tone: As someone who loves good conversation a lot of my blog posts and emails are conversational. To me, when you read anything coming from Brands by Brie, I’d like for it to feel like we’re sitting across from one another at this coffee shop down the street from my house, it’s my favorite coffee shop in all of New Orleans.
Hopefully these concrete examples have provided you with a little bit more insight on what a brand is. Know someone with a business or non-profit who needs some help developing their brand? Be sure to share this post with them. Are you the business owner or founder of a non-profit in need of help? Email me at brie@brandsbybrie.com and we’ll get something started.
