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Before creating an identity for your service or product you’ll want develop your brand strategy and define your brand’s core promise. This defines how you will serve your customers and differentiate your brand from its competitors.
Your brand’s promise is supported by various brand pillars – these make your brand memorable and reinforce its purpose.
Brand Values
These are the things your brand will stand for – they are the fundamental properties of your brand. At Four Pin Plug our brand values are to apply innovative thinking to deliver creative solutions for every client, every time. In doing this we add value to our clients’ businesses and forge long-term relationships that are mutually beneficial.
Brand Personality
These are the traits that personify your brand and attract customers on an emotional level. They are essentially human characteristics attributed to a brand name that consumers relate to. Creativity, reliability and problem-solvers are some of our personality traits.
Brand Story
Lets you communicate your brand’s values and mission to the world. Our brand story is a summary of what we do and why we love doing it. This is then distilled into four words that are used as our Brand Messaging tagline #ThinkDesignCreateResults.
Brand Positioning
This is where your brand sits in relation to other brands in the marketplace. It’s the ‘we are vs them’ conceptual space we want to own a consumer’s mind… ‘we deliver big agency results, without the expense.’
Brand Vision
Also referred to as Brand Mission at times, this is your intention for the brand and how are you going to realise that intent with your brand’s values and other brand pillars.
Once that’s in place we will help develop your Brand Messaging tagline and consider product positioning, key benefits, brand pillars, audience and tone of voice to guide your marketing across all touchpoints.
For existing brands, we carry out brand audits, assess marketing communications and check that they are ‘on brand’, that is they fit within the brand blueprint and deliver on its promises. We can create brand architecture: a plan of how multiple brands sit together as a family; as well as assist you with brand extension, line extension, multibrand development and new brands. We will also look at how your brand is experienced by (and delivered by) your employees, suppliers, partners and stakeholders.
After the brand core and messaging phases of your brand strategy have been developed, we create the visual identity. This is the ‘exciting’ phase where strategic insights are transformed into visual assets for the company.
This is the point where a startup or business rebrand takes shape and we collaborate even more closely with you. We design and present various options, each aligned to the brand strategy. The preferred logo is then finessed and made ready for use in all brand applications.
Brand Identity Guidelines
Once your visual identity has been created, it’s important for graphic designers and content creators / copywriters to apply it consistently across all communications. Brand guidelines empower everyone to do just that. They include verbal and visuals guides with examples.
Verbal guidelines:
Brand essence (personality, voice, tone); Tagline (brand claim); Value proposition and Messaging framework.
Visual guidelines
Logo; Colours; Typography; Imagery (photography, illustration); Iconography; Internal communication examples; External communication examples; Video and other interactive elements.
Depending on the business requirements assets can be scaled to include working examples for internal and external use. Advertisements, leaflets and brochures; digital templates for office application such as PowerPoint and Keynote presentations; website design and development; social media templates and content plan.
When launching a new brand or considering a brand refresh
We’ve created four proprietary brand development tools to help fast-track this process. Each resource is condensed to provide what’s needed without wading through reams of information. After all who has the time… plus we’re here to support you from brand inception and beyond.
These resources include:
Differenceometer – who you are, what sets your brand apart from the competition, what you strive to do and how you’ll do it.
Definometer– if you need to define a category and memorable brand name that will become your unique signature, this is your starting point.
Identimeter – once you’ve narrowed the field down to a few preferred names, this tool will identify the one that’s best suited to represent your future brand or sub-brand.
Brandometer – when you’re ready to establish a strong identity this tool will get the logo design off to a flying start.
We are an inbound growth driven communications and brand development agency based in Guildford that specialise in creative solutions to deliver ROI for your business.
