Tashana Baterip
Helping Small and Medium Businesses Achieve Their Full Marketing Potential | Digital Marketing Expert
Visual Brand Identity And Your Business
First impressions are everything when introducing your company to a new customer or target audience. You will want them to remember you by creating branding unique to your company. Your visual brand identity works at the forefront of your business and is the first way your brand communicates with your customers using logo, brand colours and fonts.
The ultimate goal is to make your company’s personality and values shine visually, creating an emotional connection between the consumer and your brand. However, it’s important to note that before getting stuck into creating your visual identity, you need to have your brand strategy complete.
Why is it essential to have a brand strategy before creating our visual identity?
To envision your branding, you must have a strong brand strategy. This purpose is to understand your brand inside and out thoroughly. There is no point in moving forward with an idea if you don’t have the research behind it. It’s a recipe for disaster! If this is something you would like to be more clued up on, we’ve got a frame that can help.
Brand Purpose
What is the purpose of your company? For example, are you providing a service? Products? What is the ultimate reasoning for your company?
Brand Vision
What does the future hold for you? Imagine the next five years. Where is your company, and what is your vision for it.
Brand Values
What are your company’s core values, and what do you stand for in this world?
Target Audience
Who is your product or service aimed at? Build a profile of your ideal customer, including their demographics, problems they may face and behavioural patterns.
Market Analysis
How can you stand out? Take some time to research your market and discover where there are gaps. Market analysis can help you differentiate yourself from your competitors.
Awareness Goals
How will your customers learn about your brand? Come up with a plan on how you will create brand awareness.
Brand Personality
Humanise your brand and help your audience make a real connection with you. You can do this by making a description of your brand as if it was a human.
Brand Voice
You have to talk in the language of your audience. Create a tone of voice that they can understand! This should also fit into your brand’s personality.
Brand Slogan
One to remember! Your tagline should say it all. Make yourself memorable with a slogan that best describes your brand.
Once you’ve completed your brand strategy, you will understand your brand more than ever. It’ll give you a clear outline and should spark inspiration for how you see your visual identity.
How to use visual branding to connect with your audience
Visual branding is made up of a series of design elements which include; colours, shapes, typography, materials and functionality to create the overall brand logo, fonts, and brand colours. When making these graphic elements, you will use them across videos, social media posts, content strategy, and brand awareness. This means you should thoroughly research, test and develop your visual brand strategy to ensure that you are speaking to your core customer.
What makes a compelling visual brand identity?
Let’s look at Oatly as an example. Taking a bold approach with its marketing decisions, this Oat Milk brand has made its mark on the shelves. Although Oatly has been around since the 1990s, this rebranding only happened in 2014 under new management. As a soft reminder, you don’t always have to stick to what you know, and change is good.
Forget the intelligent packaging. Oatly focused on creating their brand identity through striking graphics and thick black lines. They are also known for using slogans on their packaging that make you look twice, for example, using quotes from lawsuits against their slogan ‘Milk, but made for humans or their campaign ‘Are you stupid?’. Brave, we know, but they are confident in where they have positioned themselves as a brand and understand that this is what differentiates them from the rest.
Conclusion
Take inspiration from Oatly, and consider where you want to position your brand and visual identity. Are you subtle? Fierce? Playful? Your brand personality should shine massively through when it comes to anything visible. Building a solid brand strategy will lead to an even better visual identity. You’ll know if it is effective as it will attract your ideal customers.
