Brand Decisions

Making the right decisions when embarking on a brand development programme can often be hard to navigate. However, it is a crucial aspect of its success, ensuring the business retains the equity it has built to date whilst realising the new opportunities it faces. A significant part of our value to clients as we progress through a brand development exercise is to advise and make recommendations about which aspects of a brand should be retained and which aspects should be evolved.

 

Here are some tips:

 

As you go through the process you should always make time to reflect and ensure that all brand design decisions are made within a strong business case context. In other words, don’t just consider the performance of the design elements in isolation, make sure they are contextualised and justified within;

 

1. Business context

 

The brand strategy has to serve and do justice to the business strategy. This means simple things, like ensuring the elements in question are developed with a true purpose, and that the execution of new ideas should not be such a seismic shift that your audience no longer recognises you.

 

2. Cross application performance

 

The brand design elements must be harmonious across all applications on screen and off screen. As you begin to develop the new design elements and apply them across all forms of digital and print collateral, be sure to reflect on all aspects to create a balance and synergy before honing and confirming their new governance. To do the above justice and launch a brand development program that is truly purposeful, it is important to acknowledge the comprehensive context of both the ‘business context’ and the ‘cross application performance.’

 

To this end we also advise considering the Origins and the Dynamics of your brand.

 

The Origins:

 

whilst introducing a repurposed brand language you should ensure that the brand leverages its high performing origins from previous life stages. Put simply, retain as much positive equity as possible by retaining and repurposing what has been successful to date.

 

The Dynamics:

 

in this optimisation, ahead of launch, you should recognise and retain the new factors that have introduced increased energy and purpose to the brand. Yet, you should control the application of them, ensuring that the new dynamics do not diminish your brand recognition. For example, the overuse of a new accent colour could make the brand unrecognisable from what originally made you great. There are of course a multitude of other decisions that need to be taken along the brand development journey, but the above highlights a few key areas that need to be considered and carefully balanced before pressing ‘GO!’