Everyone knows that branding takes strategy. You can’t just dive into branding willy nilly, you’ve got to study your competition, determine your position in the marketplace, and focus in on your value proposition.

I don’t mean to play down the importance of these steps, they’re very important, and you’ve got to do them first — they’re just not the topic of this post. Right now I want to talk about what comes after the strategy — what then? How do you take all that hard work and translate it into a brand that people can connect to?

It’s all a part of the very meticulous process of branding.

Visual translation, the graphic design of branding
Hopefully, the strategy phase of branding was developed using a group approach, involving key decision makers. The visual translation phase of branding takes all of this information gathered, uncovered, and developed in the strategy phase and translates it into a visual form that people can see and relate to — the visible brand “fingerprint.” A clear and accurate brand fingerprint can communicate assets like integrity, zero defects, and innovation and make them palpable. Visible. Understandable. Audiences will know at a glance “who” the organization/product/service is, what it is saying to them, and why they should buy, react, or be moved. And it will be real, it will be authentic, and it will stand the test of time – because what people see represents the synthesis of the brand strategy.

The benefits
The benefits of developing the visual components of the brand directly from strategy exercises include:

• A brand mood that will communicate to customers on an emotional level, because the design is based on authentic aspects of the brand’s character and personality

• No unpleasant surprises at the design stage, because the mood is a direct translation of strategy jointly developed by company decision makers and creative team

• The main visual components of the brand will look and feel “real” and will become the pillars upon which other marketing materials will be built

• There will be no need for new themes, visual approaches, or deviations from the established visual translation. Brand equity builds with consistency. This is a cost-effective benefit.

Design for brands developed in this manner will last a minimum of 4 to 6 years, and for many brands, much longer. Being true to the organization’s authentic self is how trust, loyalty, and sustainable relationships are developed between organizations and their audiences, and this doesn’t happen by accident. Great graphics and cool animation aren’t effective if they don’t accurately communicate the organization’s character or brand – if the organization’s brand and it’s image are not aligned, “brand schizophrenia” occurs, which significantly affects the quality of the relationship and level of trust with valued audiences, including customers and employees. Both lose trust when they don’t know what to expect.

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This entry was posted on Friday, February 16th, 2007 at 12:41 pm and is filed under Brand Basics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.