The role of branding is central to my creative work. I see it as further proof as to what motivates us every day to purchase. Brands have always allowed people to stand out from a crowd, identify themselves and simply feel reassured that they are part of something relevant and trustworthy. Brands can evoke such strong connections in consumers they will even go as far as to express negative behaviour towards competitors. Successful branding is perfecting these appreciated divisions of separation between various target audiences to achieve long term loyalty. Apple brought this to life with their infamous ‘I’m a mac, I’m a PC’ campaign which was the public labelling of PC users as boring and uncool. Aligning technology products with personalities and provoking such a strong reaction from this campaign generated some effective – albeit brazen – brand values and was very successful.

Branding is powerful and the commitment to building a strong brand presence should be the central plank in any marketing mix. A football stadium with great heritage can be rebranded overnight to a name such as ‘The SportsDirect Stadium’ and will also drive Olympic organisers to crack down heavily with the policing of small businesses’ use of words like ‘medals’ or ‘gold’ during London Olympics – penalising them to an excessive level for even slight useage because branding is a huge motivator for sales – by associating a brand with honest worthwhile values is shown to be a large factor in purchasing decisions. A strong brand can command trust and respect from consumers to buy, and most importantly justify repeat purchasing, even though the quality and specification of the product is comparable to competitors. Making your brand a mental safe space in a purchasing decision is the holy grail of marketing. Once your brand has achieved this through consistent branding will it experience growth.

What makes a brand work? It’s a very strict commitment to consistent design aesthetics, message and tone of voice that is based on honest truths and ‘stakes in the ground’ – stuff that people can believe in that is presented as an interesting narrative or engaging brand story. 

What’s the brand story? Facts about products are boring and forgettable, stories fascinate and get talked about. Virgin or Apple’s advertising is an example of brand storytelling and conversation for the purpose of entertainment and education that is an important part of developing a brand. Giving your brand a narrative gives consumers an experience which is emotive and this in turn gets remembered. How did your brand start? How are you making things better for people? What events are happening with your business that people need to know about? These are all solid narratives to use when building your brand. This could be a history of sporting achievement such as Mercedes Benz or an unusual story of quality control for example the 40th version of a Water Displacement spray in WD40.

Another example of this is the continued success of Virgin – there is an inspiring story of how Richard Branson started out, his entertaining advertising, and ultimately you feel like if you ever had a problem with his products or services you could almost get in touch with the man himself and he’d sort it out. This is a fantastic example of a brand with an interesting story to tell, has a personality that appears to respond and listen to consumers, and projects real honesty and credibility as a result.

What on earth is in a brand anyway? and is good branding good design? well, David Oglivy the legendary advertising guru was once quoted as saying “if it doesn’t sell it isn’t creative”, and also “The pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying.” In short, there is a balance to be achieved with a good message and good creative – which results in a great brand and that, in a nutshell is my job.

Brand objectives, brand consideration and strategy is behind every piece of work that I do. Good results of design work are often the result of good brand strategy. Consistent brand elements designed into your communications are cues for people to try, buy and repeat buy, and can make or break a good idea or venture.

If your idea, venture or business is not working as hard as it could, you could benefit from looking at your brand and applying some extra creative focus on your communications to simplify and bring to life the inspiring and interesting aspects of your business that will get noticed and generate sales. It’s only by increasing your visibility and presence in the market through smart branding messages and design to generate an emotive draw – then followed afterwards by justification through core message and facts will a brand succeed. The result of all this initial creative effort will be the ultimate goal – promotion of the brand by customers themselves – as word of mouth is the best medium of all.

Traditional ‘word-of-mouth’ recommendation is nowadays more likely to be in the most convenient form which is social media recommendation, with many people recommending you to others by liking and sharing your message. (Likes and shares being effectively votes of confidence). By creating engaging brand social media messages, images and short videos that are likely to be shared it is possible to get enormous reach with friends sharing the post between themselves.

Social media also shows that customers are much more responsive to your brand, when they feel they have been listened to and responded to online. Social media provides an excellent platform for customer engagement in the form of Direct Messaging and public replies, giving brands an opportunity to publicly show they care and solve problems quickly. With a solid social media presence and responding to customers this way, this online customer service is likely to result in the Gold standard of ‘word-of-mouth’ – the positive review on Google, TrustPilot or TripAdvisor.

Contact me for a chat about your design requirements and I can help give your communications a boost with some honest assessment, creative thinking and a new look approach. I don’t use marketing clichés or powerpoint, only honest opinion, creative ideas and the means to bring them to life. If you need a freelance designer who won’t drop the ball, for brand identity, digital, print, photography and all-round creative, give me a call..

If you’d like to discuss new ideas and some fresh creative to take your business forward please get in touch on 07813 311253, email me at chris@chrisparkerdesign.co.uk or fill out the contact form here