8 DISTINCTIVE ESSENTIALS TO MAKE YOUR
BRAND IDENTITY STICK
What’s in a Brand?
A brand has eight essential elements, as described below—and all are interconnected.
Branding is a subset of marketing. Marketing is more about how you communicate your product to sell it to your target market. Branding creates a profound visceral connection to the consumer who encounters your brand.
If you love ice cream and are drawn to a particular brand, (Haagen-Dazs, Dairy Queen, or Ben & Jerry’s), and just thinking about it makes you quiver with excitement, that compulsion to buy your favorite brand is what brand managers yearn for! They want their brands to stick!
What Is Brand Management and Why Is It Important?
Someone who is keenly familiar with brands manages them as part of the marketing function. Brand managers ensure both the tangible and intangible assets of the brand are on point. The tangible assets are a brands’ external qualities such as fonts, colors, logos, packaging, and price. The intangibles are more abstract; they’re the internal feelings (ice cream!) that the customer experiences when they connect with the brands’ products or services. If you stick with the same brand and aren’t swayed to buy another in the same market, that strong attraction toward one brand over another is brand affinity. Think about your shopping list. When you buy soap, is it Dove Beauty Bar, Dial soap, or something else? When you choose soda for your family, do you prefer Coke, Pepsi, or something else? You snag that which makes you tingle with excitement! That emotional connection to the brand contributes to customer lifetime value, which has many facets, but in the simplest terms, it is: The present value of the future cash flows attributed to the customer during his/her entire relationship with the company (Wikipedia). Year after year, repeated purchases specific to a certain brand are highly coveted—and the primary goal of what brand managers hope to accomplish. 8 DISTINCTIVE ESSENTIALS:
What Is Brand Identity?
#1 Your Brand Story
The Savvy Swan Communication and Marketing Brand Story
8 DISTINCTIVE ESSENTIALS TO MAKE YOUR BRAND IDENTITY STICK: When deciding on my company name, Savvy Swan Communication and Marketing, I immediately and intentionally selected a graceful swan for my logo. Swans float with calmness, grace, and beauty. They are powerful, but in a muted way. They’re synonymous with friendship, loyalty, and honor. In mythology, they’ve also been seen escorting the chariot of the sun god, Apollo, who reigned over music. Swans are symbolic of light, vitality, joy, and growth, endearing qualities that are in sync with my love of music and the arts! The name “swan” comes from an Indo-European word meaning “to sing” or “a song.” In old Celtic tales, swans appeared singing songs of love. From a business perspective, if we love what we do, the workday isn’t frenzied or boring, it’s joyful and intriguing. The swan, as a singing messenger, relates to communication—and captures the essence of what we do!
#2 Your Brand Logo
Your brand’s logo represents your unique identity, distinguishing you from others in the marketplace. Have you conducted a Google search of your business? Do your colors, your graphic elements, and all the attributes of your brand come through with consistency? Please see Figure 1. This is what a Google search rendered for my company, Savvy Swan Communication and Marketing. Can you see that the aqua and peach are synonymous and consistent with the brand? The swan logo radiates through, as do all the properties of the brand that give it a unique identity.
The primary icon or symbol that represents your brand in the marketplace is the first impression you provide to customers. You’ll want your logo to be memorable, attractive, and unique. Here’s an excellent list derived from a variety of logo experts (hyperlinked) that is worth exploring:
- Lettermark: Very simply, the letters in the name make up the logo itself (NBC, H&M, IBM).
- Wordmark: True to its name, the entire word itself is the logo (Subway, Instagram, Google, eBay).
- Pictorial Mark: This is a simple, standalone icon or picture without words (John Deere, Apple, Target).
- Abstract Mark: Rather than a recognizable object, this logo is more of an abstract shape or geometric icon (Pepsi, Microsoft, Mitsubishi).
- Mascot Logo: In this type of logo the mascot brings awareness to the logo (MailChimp, Pringles, Green Giant).
- Combination Mark: This logo includes an image and words together in the graphic (Michelin Tires, Jaguar, Hallmark).
- Emblem: This logo shares similarities with both the Pictorial and the Combination mark; the only difference is that the words sit inside the emblem itself (Planet Fitness, BMW, Harley-Davidson Motorcycles).
The swan icon for Savvy Swan Communication and Marketing represents the embodiment of my love for the arts: ballet, music, theater, and other meaningful art forms that I identify with, based on my previous studies of the arts and past profession of operating a performing arts center. The growth characteristic—as in business growth—is a prime reason why entrepreneurs are in business. There’s symbolism in loyalty too, in that swans mate for life! All entrepreneurs strive for customer loyalty—as in repeated purchases, right?
#3 Brand Personality (Brand Voice and Tone)
Now that I’ve explained the types of logos and the symbolism of our business logo, let’s consider brand personality traits. According to Investopedia, there are five main types of brand personalities (listed below) that represent a particular market. Does your brand personify any of these qualities?
- Excitement: carefree, spirited, and youthful
- Sincerity: kindness, thoughtfulness, and an orientation toward family values
- Ruggedness: rough, tough, outdoorsy, and athletic
- Competence: successful, accomplished, and influential, highlighted by leadership
- Sophistication: elegant, prestigious, and sometimes even pretentious
By assigning human characteristics to your brand name, you show an inclination to attract customers from the market segment that matches the traits of your brand or company. I’ve identified a hybrid type of customer that shares traits from #4 and #5 (Competence and Sophistication) as being congruous to my brand; thus, I’d create advertising campaigns that target customers who are sophisticated and successful within the demographic age range of 40–60 years old. 8 DISTINCTIVE ESSENTIALS
Your brand voice and tone are distinctively yours and are part of your brand personality when communicating. In accordance with my brand voice and my tagline, “Trumpet Your Business to the World!” there’s a musical nuance in conveying my brand tone, but it’s sweet and succinct, not thumping or boisterous. She’s a plain-spoken swan, but her tone is instinctively friendly, respectful, and cheerful, not sharp! She’s in harmony with the emotional overtones of the message and reacts appropriately to the message and audience.
Please contact Savvy Swan Communication and Marketing if you wish to launch your brand, expand your social media presence, or boost your social connections. When we represent your company in a social media setting, we capture the essence of your brand to a T, keeping your brand’s voice and tone intact.
8 DISTINCTIVE ESSENTIALS TO MAKE YOUR BRAND IDENTITY STICK: The brand voice is your company’s personality. It personifies your company’s mission and values, which are “fixed,” like a song in one key. Similarly, your company’s values are internally aligned with your moral compass. They’re stable. They act as the catalyst for the ethical behavior that supports all your company decisions. The brand tone is your company’s attitude. It modulates emotionally when expressing a song’s melody, but remains in harmony with the brand’s personality traits. You impart tone on the phone, in your body language, in social media channels, on the company website, in your personal social media channels, and within the organization as you talk with peers. Tone represents the company in all communications! Here’s a great list of adjectives to consider when selecting your brand tone: 8 DISTINCTIVE ESSENTIALS TO MAKE YOUR BRAND IDENTITY STICK. https://www.boone.kyschools.us/userfiles/2268/my%20files/girvin_website/tone_word_list%20and%20definitions.pdf?id=489557.
Bringing Your Brand Personality to Fruition
#4 Your Company’s Color Palette
A critical component of brand identity is your company’s color palette, which is unique to your brand. You’ll want your colors to remain consistent and recognizable in all your external advertising and throughout your workplace. From new hires—to long-term workers—to remote workers, a brand identity guide will help employees keep your color palette consistent across all promotional channels. Coca-Cola’s shade of red is clearly defined and famously unique to the company. A brand identity guide, accessible in a general drive for employees who prepare marketing collateral, helps alleviate deviations. Many companies use brand guidelines for managing brand identity in all its promotions. Learn more about the branded colors of popular brands in the United States at this website: https://usbrandcolors.com/coca-cola-colors/.
The primary color for Savvy Swan Communication and Marketing is aqua because it represents water, and it happens to be a favorite color of mine! Color selection must be aesthetically pleasing if you are to enjoy interacting with it on a regular basis. For my secondary color, I chose the color peach. On the color wheel, aqua and peach are complementary colors (positioned opposite to one another), and they blend beautifully. When used together, they are attractive and powerfully effective. Using gradients and various percentages of opacity, changes the hue saturation and keeps the same colors fresh and interesting. Here’s an interesting article about the use of colors for your brand: https://www.thesprucecrafts.com/definition-of-complementary-colors-2577513.
#5 Typography/Font
8 DISTINCTIVE ESSENTIALS TO MAKE YOUR BRAND IDENTITY STICK: Your company’s font style should fit your brand’s personality. My font style is Century Gothic, a sans-serif font. Sans-serif fonts are commonly used for the web, but I’ve lengthened the font for my business title by 15%, making it taller and more elegant, playfully emphasizing the length of a swan’s neck. Sans-serif fonts tend to possess a modern, minimalist appearance. Minimalism embodies clean-looking lines, lightness, and tranquility—typical qualities of a swan. It captures the swan-like elegance I was flirting with, fitting the bill nicely for my typography.
#6 Your Tagline
8 DISTINCTIVE ESSENTIALS TO MAKE YOUR BRAND IDENTITY STICK: A tagline is a short phrase that encapsulates your company’s positioning and brand identity into a single line (the tagline) that emotionally connects to consumers. A catchy and original tagline should capture the spirit of your brand’s identity—its character, personality, and promise—differentiating it from others in a way that is easily remembered.
My tagline is: “Trumpet Your Business to the World!” Swans communicate; they sing. They visibly and audibly make their presence known. That’s the essence of why you’re in business—so it’s important to build awareness and engage with your customers frequently in the most relevant channels where they gather. Keeping that in mind, you’ll want to write engaging content for social channels and on your website that embodies the characteristics you’ve interwoven into your brand. For example, swan characteristics such as having a delicate neck and white plumage represent elegance, grace, and stunning beauty. These superlatives illustrate my brand personality in that the swan is feminine, a little splashy, chic, poetic, sophisticated, and savvy. Her tone is soothing and serene, never harsh or dark.
In social media, where written content lives forever—you have to be mindful that the superlatives chosen for your brand are captured in your messaging. Superlatives should also match the prevailing mood but remain germane to the brand’s tone.
Remember, external societal shifts and industry fluctuations, as well as internal company restructuring and employee transitioning, can unsettle your brand in times of change. Shifting needs and industry fluctuations may mean that your brand tagline or the brand itself may need tweaking or a fresh rebrand. McDonald’s does a rebrand every 7–10 years to stay on trend, to introduce a new look to its restaurants, or to introduce a new product or menu rollout. To learn more about rebranding, here’s a good read: https://vim-group.com/en/blog/top-ten-reasons-for-rebranding/
#7 Your Brand Promise
“Delivering Your Strategic Marketing and Communication Projects Swimmingly with Flair!” is our brand promise—and we do it in swan-like fashion (ahem) with grace under pressure! Your brand promise is as good as it gets—but only if the promise remains unbroken. Think of planting a garden of your favorite vegetables. You prepare it by placing tiny seedlings into rich, organic soil. You water it, nurture it, and make sure it gets plenty of sun. Before long, your garden begins to grow and thrive, until finally, you have all the freshest ingredients needed to make a salad of the finest quality—and with a taste that’s unmatched by any of the finest restaurants! You made it happen! Your undivided attention to detail, beginning with prepping the fertile soil, to nurturing the seeds, is the intangible quality that brought the garden to fruition! The “tangible qualities” are the vegetables—the delicious taste! A brand’s promise comprises of its tangible and intangible qualities that together make your product or service highly desirable. The profound connection and experience that resonates with customers on a sensory level is your brand promise.
#8 Your Mission, Vision, and Values
The mission, vision, and values of your company are significant to your brand. Your mission is a statement about why you exist in the marketplace, which target customers you serve, and which services or products you offer. Your core values are aligned to your moral compass, and they’re the catalyst for ethical behavior. Your core values influence important decisions that drive your mission; therefore, it’s important that your brand voice and brand tone are compatible with your core values. To learn more about mission, vision, and values, please read my earlier blog here.
What Are the Advantages to Building a Brand?
- PRICING—You can charge a higher price point for your products or services.
- PROFITABILITY—Savvy brand managers are vigilant of competitors, the market, and the environmental landscape. Regular research keeps your brand in an advantageous position.
- RELEVANCE—Social media effectively helps a brand go viral, and understanding customer needs via social channels keeps the brand relevant as it ages.
- INTANGIBLE DIFFERENTIATORS—Customer support, customer relationship management, and customer loyalty, along with taglines, positioning statements, and brand tone, represent brand image. “Intangible differentiators” are an often-overlooked facet of brand management. Deepening your brand associations will capture the attention of customers. The persuasive emotional bond that your brand creates through its intangible differentiators is a highly effective marketing strategy. 8 DISTINCTIVE ESSENTIALS
Musical dynamics add contrast to music, heighten emotional connections, and provide depth. Similarly, when your brand message is communicated effectively, you establish an emotional connection with your audience that can reap dividends in long-term value. A solidified relationship requires you to keep customers by reminding them of what the benefits are of their relationship with your company, as opposed to the competition. Periodic communication reminds customers of your intangible differentiators, such as value-added products, services, and delivery that bolster your company’s presence in your customers’ minds. Without e-newsletters or regular updates to magnetize the bond between your company and your customer, your brand is easily forgotten. Contact us for all your communication and marketing needs!
At Savvy Swan Communication and Marketing, we have a team of brand specialists ready to work with you by a project-based arrangement or on an ad hoc basis! Visit our website at www.savvyswan.com.
By Patti Kondel, CEO, Savvy Swan Communication and Marketing, MBA from the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, and MA from Emerson College, Boston. Patti is a business and marketing specialist, brand booster, lover of the arts, yoga practitioner, content creator, and cookie connoisseur—the sweet variety—and for marketing consumption, Internet cookies too! Let me help you trumpet your business to the world! Contact me today!
Savvy Swan Communication and Marketing is available for business opportunities around the globe. We also welcome related news, contributing article submissions, and helpful blog tip posts from our kindred community. If interested in submitting compatible content, please email info@savvyswan.com.