It can be forgotten, in all this talk of creating relationships with people, that a vital responsibility for your brand is to ensure that you are identifiable. This means that you need to be able to be identified by people, but also that people want to be identified with you. We do this by shaping a culture and communication which might attract people to being a part of your brand. This can be achieved by:
Clearly communicating the brand across channels
Are you using the best channels through which to connect with people? Rather than trying to attract people to where you are putting your messaging, could you be putting your messaging where more of your audience already is? Are the channels you use to communicate a good reflection of the brand?
We will work to assess the most effective way to communicate the brand using the available budget. There should be no pre-decided tactic for communication – strategy should be media-neutral and the information on audience, competition and market will help inform the implementation.
Communicating messages to change perceptions of world-renowned sports venue
Developing internal cultures reflective of brand
Your brand is shaped by people’s experience of you and the business, so how you behave is fundamental to that experience. Your brand ideology, character, value, language, must resonate through the whole business and so the culture and behaviour of all levels of staff will impact on the perception of the business and brand. If you have one then your HR department should be as aware of the brand as your marketing department.
What makes your brand so unique can be the culture. What it is like for people to work there will show in how they feel about the business and the brand, and so how they ‘live’ the brand. A brand is not delivered through a brand guidelines document, it is delivered through experience and relationships.
Shaping an identity through culture in a competitive industry
Creating identifiable appearance and language
An identifiable design style is where ‘brand’ all started many years ago, and it is still important to your organisation today. Designing a visual approach that reflects your brand and helps reflect your brand strategy is a vital part of communicating your brand successfully. Your brand needs to be recognisable and reflective of why people might want to be a part of it.
What you write about is important but how you write about it is equally as important. Can you reflect the personality of your brand through the way you speak and write? Of course you can. You can write about the same content but in different ways, all of which will send different messages to the reader about your brand.
A visual appearance which attracts people for who you really are
Specific communications and content creation
Once you have defined your communication strategy, and there is a visual design approach agreed for the brand, it is then necessary to produce the various communication, marketing, content creation, etc. These might include promotional literature, websites, large format graphics, advertising, marketing messages or campaigns, press releases, unique content, etc
All of these specific communications should be informed by the strategy and use the visual approach.
Creating content people will want to read and return to
Image © Hazel Tsoi