Your brand identity consists of all the visual elements associated with your brand. It communicates what your values are and your product in a way that is easily recognizable.
Creating a brand that is recognizable, timeless, and represents what you stand for as a human being is incredibly hard to do. Companies and brands take years to determine simple components to make their brand remarkable to us consumers.
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Our years of experience in the digital marketing and branding sector allows us to show you what brand identity is. Here’s a closer look at brand identity and why it’s vital for your business. We’ll show you the 6 most important assets essential for any business or startup.
What is a Brand?
Let’s begin with the fundamentals. Basically, brand identity is your company’s identity. It is the soul of who you are as a business. These are the assets you use to differentiate yourself from everyone else. These assets include, but aren’t limited to, logo, colors, and typography.
Your brand identity is the portrait you want your customers to see you as. It starts from the name you choose for your brand up to the tone of voice you use to communicate with them. A valid brand identity is what gives you a good brand image. This results in positive associations for your brand.
What is in a brand identity?
Brand identity differs from brand image. The former pertains to the visual elements such as logos, icons, symbols, fonts, and language shaping a brand. All these elements create an image in customers’ minds, and in turn, customers perceive a brand a certain way. The latter, however, is the result of brand identity.
What are brand identity examples?
Differentiation, unique personality, and consistency are crucial elements in brand identity. For the last component, ensuring consistency means you’re creating a solid image in your customers’ minds. This strengthens your connection with your audience more significantly.
Some brand identity examples are Nike and Coca-Cola. Nike’s swoosh logo has become an extension of the brand. Although the company doesn’t display the brand name on some marketing and branding collaterals, customers still recognize the symbol.
Another example is Coca-Cola, donning a memorable brand identity for 130 years. The bright white and red colors are recognizable, especially when coupled with the brand’s unique typography.
What are brand identity perspectives?
There are four brand identity perspectives for all brands. These are the brand as a:
- Product
- Organization
- Person
- Symbol
The purpose of having these various brand identity perspectives is to help entrepreneurs clarify and differentiate their brands from competitors.
Why Is Your Brand Identity Important?
To know if your brand identity is successful, it has to provide recognition. One look at it and people can tell that it’s you and no one else. Nike, Apple, and McDonald’s are perfect examples of successful brand identities.
Here are the most critical reasons brand identity is a must for your business:
Personality
Brand identity is your company’s visual representation of its values and mission. It sets the tone of your brand and clearly relays your message to your target audience. Personality is also what evokes emotions or the specific feelings that you want to elicit from your customers.
Brand personality comes in five traits. These are the following:
- Sincerity
- Competence
- Ruggedness
- Excitement
- Sophistication
While you can’t have all personalities, the most enduring brands emphasize on one main trait and an option of a second one. A good example of this is the iconic luxury brand, Hermes. This brand oozes sophistication AND competence.
Differentiation
According to Forbes, mobile eCommerce will make up about 54% of all online sales by 2021. This means that the eCommerce industry will see a boost in the number of buyers and sellers. How will you stand out from all that noise? Through compelling and distinct brand identity.
With the myriad of choices available to every consumer, standing out is no longer an option. You have to have a brand identity that helps you rise from all the noise. A logo that came from a template won’t do much in differentiating your brand. You need a professional designer to do it.
Perceived Quality
Rolex and Timex both give time, but why do you think people prefer to own one over the other? An excellent brand identity is key.
Consistency
A good brand identity allows you to send a consistent message across all your marketing strategies. It’s ensuring that all your materials have a consistent name, visual identity, and positioning across different locations or markets. Statistics from Forbes tell us that presenting a brand consistently can increase revenue by up to 23%.
Consistency also allows your brand to establish awareness, build trust, and encourage loyalty. A logo redesign or a change in your company colors can be tempting, and it’s not actually bad per se. But too many “upgrades” can ruin your chances of appearing professional and trustworthy.
Awareness
Increasing awareness means increasing your customers. How would people get your products or services if they aren’t aware of your existence? This is the main reason 77% of B2B marketers believe that branding is crucial for growth.
When you feature your branding visuals in more places, more people will get to see it. When people regularly see your brand, they become aware. This is vital in creating a good brand recall.
Loyalty
A Fundera study shows that 43% of customers spend more money on brands they are loyal to. Getting customers to buy from you is every business owner’s goal. But keeping customers loyal to your brand should also be on top of your list of priorities.
Brand image and brand loyalty go hand in hand. Well-planned branding identity visuals is equal to customers remembering your name or logo. And this leads to sustainable profitability.
A More Efficient Advertising
Once you and your customers know what brand you are and what you aren’t, marketing and advertising become more efficient. A strong branding identity lets you communicate your message to your target market easily.
You’ll be able to know what to tell your audience and how to say it. When you define your brand’s identity and story, you’ll be emotionally connected with your customers. This, in turn, will make the creation of ad campaigns straightforward and gain positive results.
Attracts Top Talent
As your business grows, you’ll be needing to expand to include more people in your team. When you have a compelling brand identity, attracting talents will become a breeze. This is proven by an Everyone Social study that shows that over 90% of people would consider leaving their job if offered a position in a company with an outstanding corporate reputation. When you have quality people working with you, your brand gets even better.
The 6 Most Important Types of Brand Assets
We recommend that you create a brand guideline or brand bible. This will make sure that as your company expands, your brand is still consistent. The brand bible will also allow an outside vendor, say a design service like Penji for a turn-key, plug and play solution.
You can check out our brand guidelines here to get a better idea of how your company’s brand identity can be created for success:
1. Logo/Mascot
If you saw someone with a red polo on or when you watch TV and see a lizard speaking, what are the first companies that come to mind? If your answers are Target and Geico, you would be correct!
A logo or a mascot is a critical asset for your brand and is one of the brand assets that clients typically request from Penji. It is normally the first visual representation that an individual experiences with your company. A logo can consist of many forms and variations, however, we recommend that when you want to design a logo, think of something extremely simple. The simpler the better. A logo tells the internal employees, prospects, and partners who you are.
Some things to consider when creating a logo:
- Do not rely on trends. You don’t want to be a trendy come one day and an outdated one the next. Stay true to what you stand for.
- Use high-quality icons or images
- Create a customized font: Finding the right font can be tricky but find a way to make it your own. For reference, look at Amazon and FedEx
- Stock art is awesome, but be careful there are ZERO restrictions
- KISS! Keep it simple stupid!
- Make your colors printer-friendly. You will thank us in advanced.
- Make your logo, business card friendly.
- Too many words. Don’t be too wordy.
- Be original!
2. Typeface/Typography
This is pretty self-explanatory. Make sure that your font is a preferred web font and will work with any and all devices. Your typography can and should be different from your font. Things to consider are creating a font for your logo, website, marketing materials, call to actions, and other marketing materials. They can be different but should be relatively the same.
3. Legal
Before you read this, understand your strengths. Unless you’re a lawyer, do not write your contract, legal on your website, or play with your terms and conditions. Leave it to the experts. Your legal documentation will allow your business/startup to simply look the part.
4. Brand Colors
Color is essential to differentiating your brand from your competitors. If you’re a startup, you tend to lean more on the vibrant and brighter side. Whereas if you’re a professional service company, you lean more towards the more dark and trusting colors. Some colors to keep in mind for a startup are:
- Purple (That’s our favorite color)
- Pink (That’s our second color)
- Neon related colors
- Lime green
- Bright purple
- And other bright or vibrant colors within a color wheel
Some colors to keep in mind for a professional services company are:
- Navy
- Deep Red
- Gold
- Deep Orange
- Brown
- Deep Green
5. Graphic Elements
What kind of icons will you use on your website and marketing materials? Are your icons flat, thin, three dimensional, colorful, or simplistic? Your graphic elements will allow you to further showcase your brand.
6. Images and Broll
Ah, these important assets for your brand identity are easily the most difficult. Are you the type of company that enjoys stock images or do you want to be faceless? Either way, it’s important to determine your b-roll footage and imagery. If you are the cartoony type, it may be best to hire a cartoonist or illustrator.
Creating your own imagery or finding clever stock images can help your business stand out. Our good friends over at Owners Magazine wrote an incredible article highlighting the free stock image websites for your brand.
Signing Up for Penji
Hiring a freelance designer can be a tedious process. To save time and energy, many ventures opt for Penji. The sign-up process is painless.
Just go to the website, fill out the form and pick the package you need – Pro for two users, Team for five users, and Agency for 10 users. All the plans come with unlimited design projects, unlimited revisions, and daily output.
Requesting Brand Identity Assets for the First Time
Once your account is up and running, you can request for your very brand identity assets, be it a logo, graphic elements, or images for your branding needs.
1. Create
The dashboard allows you to provide instructions and express your ideas to the designer. As it’s not always easy to translate visuals into words, you can attach links to the task card in case you’ve come across images that you want to inspire the design.
2. Revise
You can have the design revised until it’s exactly what you want for your brand. Just direct the pointer to the part of the design and type in your comments. And to keep you informed about the project, an email notification will be sent to you every time there’s a new design or a message from your designer.
3. Download
Once you’re happy with the design, click download and the image will be automatically saved to your computer.
The Bottom Line
Brand assets represent the brand, so it’s surely a factor you’d want to invest your time, energy, and efforts on. These visual assets will introduce your brand to your audience even before you utter a single word. So, they shouldn’t only look beautiful but professional as well. Penji can help you create the best brand identity assets. Check out our plans and sign up today.
