More and more business owners are becoming aware of the benefits of good design and branding, but many still don't fully appreciate what branding can actually do and how it can achieve specific goals. I hope it's fairly well understood that your brand identity should at least communicate what your business or product does, but by actually connecting with your potential customers or clients on their level, your brand identity can increase your sales exponentially.
Regardless of whether you are trying to pitch your business or products to individuals, small businesses or large corporations, at some point the decision to actually purchase will be in the hands of a human; an individual that your design can influence. Due to the nature of marketing, you will be targeting individuals because they already slot nicely into predefined categories that are of interest to your business. These might be based on professional status, social status, wealth, age, sex, location, personal interests, to name only a few. Regardless of which categories you intend to target, you need to understand what they want and how best to present that to them.
Colour is the very first thing that people see and is possibly the most important in setting the tone of your brand identity. Getting it right can immediately make a purchaser feel more comfortable with their decision. You can choose a colour that reflects what you are offering or you can try to inspire a sense or feeling. Warm yellow might be the perfect choice for the branding of a honey product, but it can also inspire a sense of youth and vibrancy. It would be completely inappropriate to choose warm yellow for a consultant offering financial services. Just the fact that you yourself have preconceptions about pink, blue, beige or green illustrates this point perfectly.
The actual design style and shapes will also turn an audience on or off very quickly. A fashion conscious audience might respond well to a very funky or trendy design which certainly wouldn't work for forging long term business relationships. Sharp edges and straight lines currently appear very modern and are great for a male dominated audience, but studies show that females respond better to softer and more gentle designs.
The language your company or product adopts for the name, strapline, headlines and copy will also determine which audience will buy into your brand. A company director will obviously demand a much higher degree of sophistication than a teenager, yet a teenager is likely to be completely fluent in the language of txt. Through language you can present yourself as a heavy-weight market leader or a very honest and open business as demonstrated by a particular smoothy company that has recently captured the nation's attention.
By considering the elements of your brand identity in terms of what the individuals within your target audience will respond to, your marketing will be much more successful than simply producing designs that you think look nice. Ask yourself; is your brand identity appealing to the nature of your target audience and giving them the confidence to buy or simply satisfying your own tastes and perceptions of good design?
Written by James Good
Published in Enterprise Magazine - Summer 2007