In the beginning, there was brand. War paint on the face of the tribe’s warriors, an ancestral tale that gives the clan their shared identity and a maker’s mark on the side of a sturdy wooden wheel — all are examples of our deep instinct to give transcendent meaning to nearly everything in our life. It’s DNA deep.
In today’s world, everything is branded — from geographic destinations to religious faiths, from civic organizations to celebrity pets. Without branding, products and services become commodities, indistinguishable from one another. A powerful brand is an intangible entity that is strangely capable of forging relationships, extracting emotion and influencing behavior. A brand’s aura exists in and around an organization, its people and its offerings, influencing what it stands for and does. A strong brand identity communicates essential information about an organization. When consciously and carefully crafted, strong branding can properly position a business for growth, elevating it to the next level of success.
What Does Branding Include?
More than just a logo and a color palette, your brand communicates a personality, values and an identity. A robust brand establishes its position within the landscape, makes a promise to its constituents, sets itself apart from the competition and communicates a clear, consistent message in a true voice. If creating and fully formulating a brand from A to Z sounds like a tough, painstaking, multi-step process, that’s right. It is. Nobody says building a brand is easy, but it’s well worth it. Just ask Apple, Nike or Coca-Cola.
At 3Headed Monster, branding services are a big part of what we do for our clients. In fact, we’re known as the Tomorrow Brand™ agency. We have a habit of working with companies that buck the status quo and win. Nimble and lean, we go full immersion to help brands find their voices and use them.
When a frozen yogurt franchise needed a way to stand out in a crowded category, they came to us for a brand identity refresh. We repositioned them as a place to create-your-own treat that is all about originality. The quirky orange cartoon unicorn we created became the perfect embodiment of the brand and an ideal spokes animal for their “Be Orange” messaging.
What about when a brand has never existed before? When a men’s grooming startup came to us for a complete brand identity package, we took them from business plan to fully launched in 100 days. We worked with our clients to develop the company brand name, positioning, brand identity, package design, retail experience, website, social media and advertising. Their launch knocked it out of the park and since then, the company has achieved national distribution and sold through its inventory multiple times.
How Does Branding Benefit a Business?
The equity acquired by a brand over time accounts for a big part of an organization’s value. While every case is different, a survey done by the Cap Gemini Ernst & Young Center for Business Innovation says that as much as 50-90% of a company’s total value can be attributed to intangible assets like innovation, employee satisfaction and brand equity, among others. (Brick-and-mortar organizations’ intangibles account for about 50% while those of e-commerce businesses account for a whopping 90%.) Why is this? Intangible assets like branding are so valuable because of the huge role they can plan in an organization’s growth and success.
A strong brand can yield the following benefits for your organization:
- Customer loyalty and trust. Companies with strong branding earn higher levels of consumer trust and tend to have customers for life. Once this loyalty is set, customers are less sensitive to price increases, more willing to forgive a company misstep and more likely to support product and service line expansions.
- Strength in the marketplace. Better branding leads to increased customer recognition, which boosts market share and revenues. This growth tends to give an organization other types of leverage in the marketplace. For example, packaged goods manufacturers may see improved product placement in retail stores.
- Increase value for shareholders. Big brands gain more attention at their IPOs, and their shares tend to trade at higher prices.
- Improved employee recruiting and retention. Powerful brands receive more resumes for open positions, giving recruiters a wider selection of applicants from which to choose. The cachet of working for a prestigious brand often ups a company’s employee retention rate, even if its benefits and pay aren’t as good as their competitors.
Given all the marketing noise companies must get through to reach their customers, it’s tough to overestimate the value of strong branding. To discuss how our branding agency can help your organization, contact us today at (972) 685-0479. Let’s get started.
