Building a Strong Brand Identity: Strategies for Differentiating Your Business

Get an edge over the competition by aiming to be:

• Recognisable
• Differentiated
• Memorable

As part of a comprehensive branding strategy developed by any reputable brand consultant, investing effort into developing a strong brand identity becomes crucial in connecting with your audience and cutting through the noise generated by competitors. Your brand identity represents the outward visual expression of your business to the audience. The brand logo or identity mark, as the most prominent visual element, ideally captures the essence of your brand’s identity. Additionally, colours, typography and other visual elements contribute to an overall personality that characterises your brand. Together, these elements shape the audience’s perception and form the basis of a relationship between them and your brand.

As a brand consultant, we are only too familiar with the way companies navigate their marketing strategies based on brand identity and brand story.  The concept and significance of brand identity requires a recall of the three stakeholders on the scene: yourself, your audience, and your competitors. Each plays a vital role in building your brand identity and determines whether you have been successful as a brand consultant.

Ask yourself: What do you do and what do you represent?

Your value proposition underscores your business. Remember that providing value to your audience goes beyond the product itself; it extends to the experience you offer, along with your business’s purpose/mission, and its values. With a clear understanding of these aspects, your brand’s personality beings to take shape.

• How might you visually depict your value proposition?

Ask yourself: How do you want to be perceived by your target audience?

“What do I want our audience to think about us? How do I want them to feel about us?”

Developing a brand identity involves creating a strong impression and appealing to your audience in a way that resonates with them. Conduct research into your audience’s preferences to gain insights to inform your creative decisions. With an understanding of those preferences, you will then be able to incorporate them into your branding strategy.

Your brand identity serves as a means of communication, conveying both informational and evoking emotions. Each design choice represents an opportunity to creatively communicate and connect with your audience. This becomes especially important in today’s highly connected digital world.

Ask yourself: What is the competition doing?

Familiarising yourself with your competitors allows you to draw insights to inform your creative decisions.

• Who stands out and what about their brand identity plays strongly to their advantage?

Learn by examining leading competitors and how their brand identities have contributed to their successes. Conversely, examine brands that have faced setbacks or backlash due to their creative choices. Look for commonalities and trends among competitors, as they might provide valuable information worth investigating further. As a brand consultant, we are always looking at the competition and using data science to understand how customers and prospects view both the competitor and your brand.

• Are there any commonalities and does this indicates specific trends?

While the aim is to stand out, if competitors seem to be conforming to a particular standard, it might be for good reason and be worth investigating further.

Your brand has a personality which can be uniquely expressed through visual element.

By taking the time to plan your creative strategy and determining goals for building your brand identity, you will be at an advantage to position your brand in a way that is distinctive.  A unique personality stands out, just like a likable personality attracts others. Similarly, a brand with a strong personality of its own can attract and engage with its audience.

Much can be said about the technical elements of design when creating assets that express your brand’s identity. However, these visual elements and their usage should ideally align with the goals of being recognisable, differentiated and memorable.

Colour Palette

Colours have the power to evoke emotions, and when used intelligently, can distinctly characterise your brand and form an intrinsic association with it. A single colour alone can serve as a differentiation factor. Consider the green of Xbox or the blue of PlayStation, or the colour used by major Australian banks like ANZ (Blue), Commonwealth Bank (Yellow), Westpac (Red and white) and NAB (Red and black).

Deciding on a main colour is essential as it helps define your brand’s overall tone.

• Warm colour: can be described as ‘stimulating’, such as red, yellow or pink.
• Cool colour: can be described as ‘assuring’, such as green, blue or purple.
• Neutral colour: can be described as ‘simple’ or ‘refined’, such as white, black or grey.

You can build upon this by considering your logo, and further expanding the colour palette so that it can be applied across various branding materials.

Logo

A logo can convey a lot of meaning, but at a momentary glance, it should be visually comprehensible and represent your brand in a unique way. Based on your brand name, there are several approaches to logo design.

• Text-based logo: including a wordmark, letterform (brand name as a single letter) or letter mark (brand name as an acronym).
• Image-based logo: including a depiction of something (pictorial mark), a brand mascot, or an abstract symbol (abstract mark).
• Combination logo: incorporating both an image and text (combination mark).

For a brand that has yet to achieve wide awareness, it may benefit from its brand name forming a text component of its logo to aid in creating familiarity and association. The addition of colours to your logo, beyond the initial main colour, creates visual activity, which can be described as more “exciting”, but also more complicated. The choice should align with the goals you determine in your creative strategy.

Typography

Fonts vary widely, and while there is never a single correct font to use, a carefully selected font can inject personality and emphasis into branding materials. You might select from one of three categories to suit a specific use-case.

• Serif typeface: This uses letterforms with ornamented smaller strokes at their ends, called ‘serifs’.
• Sans-serif typeface: This uses letterforms that omit serifs from the ends of their primary strokes.
• Script typeface: This uses letterforms closely based on handwriting, typically with joined letters and flourishes at the end of strokes.

It’s usually best not to be overbearing with particularly vivid fonts. Consider the tone of your messaging for specific written material, and whether it’s a fitting opportunity to let your brand’s personality stand out.

Nothing stands still in the business world.

As important as it is to carefully consider plan and construct your brand identity for the long-term, the marketing environment is always changing and your brand consultant needs to be across these variances. Over time, your brand identity should evolve as your business grows and changes, as well as your target market, and most importantly, your competitors. Be prepared to iterate and innovate your ongoing strategy to help keep your brand feeling fresh.