Congratulations! You created a logo, plastered it across your website, business cards, brochures, product labels, and you think, “great! I’ve established my brand!”
But did you really?
What is a logo?
For the business, a logo is a visual shortcut to the character, history, and essence of your brand. It is an easily recognizable and reproducible design element that includes the name, symbol, and color scheme used by your company across media.
For the customer, however, the logo is the visual cue for their brain to recall experiences and relationship with the brand. So when a customer sees your logo, their memories of your brand are triggered. And these memories can either be positive or negative, depending on their experience with you.
What is a brand?
For the business, a brand is a personality, visual design (logo, typefaces, color schemes), customer relationship, marketing strategy, and the overall presence of the company across media platforms.
For the customer, it is the reputation of the business in their heads, it’s how they feel and think about your business. This is the quality they expect from you, and this expectation is not specific, rather it’s an emotion.
So the idea is, that when people see your logo, it triggers the emotion that they feel about your brand. Just like when you pass by a Macca’s and see their logo, you’re instantly able to remember how you cried over that one Macca’s commercial (because who hasn’t?) – and suddenly you’re craving a beef burger and go get one.
Building a brand for a small business
Ok, we know you’re not Mcdonald’s, but even they had to invest in building their branding for a long time. Building a recognizable brand can be very difficult now that the market place is more than overcrowded, . But you can take the extra mile in building your own by creating a brand style guide.
Your brand style guide will help you be consistent across all forms of media, may it be radio, tv, social media, or physical stores. It must contain your logo, the typefaces, the color scheme, the tone of voice for your written elements, and the personality that you want your organization to have overall.
By being consistent across media, your customers can create an association with the visuals you have established. And it creates a positive emotional trigger for your product that can eventually lead to sales.
But remember, consistent style elements will not help you if you are providing half-assed, ingenuine products and services. The best way to create a positive brand is satisfying your customers and doing right by them.
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