Branding and re-branding: how to bring your brand to life
From brand positioning to branding reputation, from idea to success. Finally online our new Ebook!
The concepts of branding and re-branding have now entered in the common language of insiders, i.e. those who, like us, deal full-time with the promotion and development of digital projects. The theme deserves to be explored as much as communication, advertising or social media. In fact, branding concerns the image of a brand, its identity, what describes it and represents it in the eyes of the public on the web (and not only). In short, it is a fundamental topic for anyone, from the smallest ecommerce to the largest information portal. Given and considering that our clientele is transversal and operates in various sectors, we believe the time has come to offer blog readers and those who follow us a specific focus on branding and everything that revolves around it.
We therefore decided to divide the material into its various forms, analyzing not so much the idea of branding in general, but rather its multiple facets in relation to the value and strength that a brand can express on the digital and offline market. In the coming weeks, we will be dedicating a complete article to each of these areas, an article which will then become a chapter of our third ebook. So let's see one by one the configurations that branding can take and what aspects distinguish the various forms of branding and re-branding in the case of showcase sites, blogs, online newspapers and other situations. We will proceed in no particular order without priority: from our point of view each piece contributes equally to the success of a brand.
THE BRAND POSITIONING: THE POSITION OF THE BRAND
The first term to know is brand positioning, a formula that we can quite likely translate as "brand positioning". What does it mean to position a brand? In a nutshell, it means presenting a company or a single product in a certain light, valuing the usefulness and strengths (real or presumed it doesn't matter) that that company or product boasts compared to the competition. To give a striking example, the energy drink market is crowded with drinks, but the only alternative that dominates the scene and can boast this title remains Red Bull. It is Red Bull that positioned itself years ago on the market as "the energy drink that gives you wings". How did she do it? We will find out in the next article!
THE BRAND IDENTITY: THE IDENTITY OF THE BRAND
If brand positioning is the process of positioning a brand on the market, brand identity corresponds to the identity that this same brand assumes in the eyes of consumers. The identity of the brand is its business card, i.e. the image obtained by assembling the various elements available with extreme care and coherence. Among the main elements we mention the naming (that is the name of the brand), the slogan, the logo and the colours, the vision and the mission, the packaging and the so-called company history. Developing brand identity is a delicate but fundamental step. If necessary, this step will have to be repeated in whole or in part after years to guarantee freshness and modernity, or perhaps in correspondence with significant actions such as entering a foreign market where there are other values and other dynamics. When we proceed with a restyling, we can speak of re-branding, or re-definition of the brand.
THE BRANDING STRATEGY: THE PROMOTIONAL STRATEGIES
Each brand can follow a personal strategy, useful for achieving the desired results. What works for one brand doesn't work for another, and what works in a given context may not work if the landscape changes. The most truthful branding strategy consequently appears as the set of promotional strategies used by a brand during a given time interval. These strategies include the part of content marketing, video production, social media management, event organization, guerrilla marketing and everything that can be useful to excite the public, feed word of mouth, build customer loyalty, increase fanbase and generate sales. Accurate analysis of the target and of the numerous variables involved is an essential premise for realizing one's brand strategy.
BRANDING DESIGN: GRAPHICS AND BRAND IMAGE
Anyone who has dealt with a web agency or with any communication project, such as the creation of a simple brochure, will necessarily have come to terms with graphics and design. This is a crucial point for a brand: if we eliminate the visual component, we give up one of the founding foundations of our identity and therefore of our history. Going back to the example of Red Bull, let's imagine how much less recognizable this brand would be without its typical colors (the blue of the can and the television promos) and without the cartoon drawings that have characterized so much the now famous fairy-tale commercials. The purpose of branding design is precisely to typify the brand and at the same time make communication homogeneous. In this regard, it is no coincidence that we speak of coordinated image, to indicate precisely that everything, from the website to letterheads, must be coordinated and presented with the same graphic design, the same colors, the same font and so on.
THE BRANDING LOGO: THE PAYOFF AND THE INSTITUTIONAL LOGO
If the branding design embraces more aspects of graphics and image, the branding logo instead includes the two pillars that represent a brand, the payoff on one side and the institutional logo on the other. These two pillars often go hand in hand because they appear together wherever they are needed, starting with the website and ending with the product packaging. An example of a very famous payoff is the motto "Just do it" by Nike, positioned par excellence under the white comma on a black background which is precisely the logo of the American brand of shoes and sportswear. Think Different is instead the payoff of Apple, two words that describe a world and that appear together with the stylized symbol of the apple. Finding the right payoff is a challenge, but it is clear that the stakes are very high.
BRANDING REPUTATION: DEFENDING THE BRAND NAME
A brand must not only be thought of, created and promoted: a brand must also be defended. Finding yourself with your logo manipulated or copied, for example, is easier than you might imagine. This is why the registration of the brand at national and international level, the purchase of domain names linked to the brand and other branding reputation actions must be taken into due consideration even by the smallest of ecommerce. Incurring plagiarism or being the victim of bad reviews from a blog are eventualities that lead to a huge loss of time or even money. We talk about the strategies to be implemented in this sense to defend ourselves, as well as the other previous declinations of branding, in our new EBOOK. Don't miss it!
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