Developing and promoting your company’s brand is essential to business success. Branding should lead to brand recognition, giving the company a competitive advantage in the market place. When you hear brand, you may think of McDonald’s, Kellogg’s, or Exxon, but companies of all sizes, in all industries need branding and brand recognition.
Branding
We can start by defining branding –how consumers recognize and identify with a particular company through its symbols, colors, and voice. Logos, colors, and typestyles represent a brand, but the information about the company that stands behind those symbols matters most. Branding concerns a company’s identity and differentiation. The characteristics and values your company represents determine identity. Start by asking what you want your company to be known for, whether it’s a long history of success, collaborative practices, or cutting-edge design. What is your company’s narrative, and how is it different from your competition’s? Also, who is your buyer or client persona?
Brand Recognition
Brand recognition is how well consumers identify your company and its message through visual symbols like logos, taglines, color schemes, and packaging, as well as auditory cues like jingles and slogans. It’s about how well the symbols represent a company’s reputation and characteristics. With brand recognition, potential clients need less comparative research when making decisions. The brand works as a short cut for them, because they feel they know the company already.
Design Elements
Design matters in branding because the logo, corporate colors, and typography evoke emotions and psychological interpretation in people when they see them. For instance, Crate & Barrel evokes a modern feel, while Restoration Hardware gives a more traditional sense. You would not employ a brightly colored, playful design for a funeral home or sedate colors and a more conventional logo design for a preschool. Some type fonts may be inappropriate for your organization. For example, a tagline in an ornate typeface may work for an antique shop but not a law firm.
Color
Color is one design element with big impact. Social scientists have been studying the psychology of color for centuries, evaluating how different hues in different combinations impact human behavior. Companies choose logo colors carefully to represent their brand. The right color scheme is essential for expressing the organization’s business perspective and approach. Colors can have different connotations in different cultures by different genders, so marketers keep customer demographic targets in mind when choosing.
Typography
Like color, typefaces or fonts can set a tone and evoke emotions. A serif font like Times Roman says tradition, whereas sans serif types like Arial and Helvetica may seem more modern. Some fonts are more easily read in blocks of text. Like with color, social scientists have studied how different types influence people. The lettering within a logo should work well with the tagline font. They don’t need to be the same font but should complement each other. A professional graphic designer is essential in these matters.
Logo Art
The shapes and lines in a logo should represent a company, too. For example, an architect or construction company may choose between a traditional house rendering or a stylized, impressionistic house drawing. A grocer may choose something concrete like an apple or a uniquely stylized company name. The design must be unique enough to be recognized and appropriate for the company’s brand message. Consider the chili pepper used as an apostrophe with the lowercase, simple type used in Chili’s restaurant logo versus the more realistic olive or branch design and script type for Olive Garden restaurants. The first says casual fun, and the second suggests a slightly less casual experience.
Consistency
Building a brand takes repetition and consistency. Building brand recognition means everyone involved with the firm understands and follows a style guide, which includes the logo design, color palate, and typography specifications. All must also understand and follow corporate messaging and tone of voice.
If a team member settles for something close to corporate colors or allows an alternative typeface for a slogan in an ad, either can erode the branding campaign efforts. Many companies develop a single-color version of their design to avoid settling for color substitutions because of the marketing budget. For example, both an all-black logo version and a three-color version are seen often enough to be recognized as symbols of the company.
The brand should be expressed in a consistent voice. Voice is a company’s communication style. You might even think of it as personality. Voice includes word choice, sentence structure, and even inflection. One company may use the word employees while another prefers team members. Some say customers, and others say clients. Writing can be very formal or relaxed and informal. Identifying and analyzing a customer’s or client’s persona helps a company align the brand’s identity with the beliefs and needs of its target market.
Behind the Brand
When you see a McDonald’s sign, you know exactly what to expect. You know what the atmosphere in the restaurant will be and exactly how the food will look and taste. All companies must back their logo and other identity symbols with a known set of characteristics. This includes a narrative, the voice or communication style, market specialties, relationship with the community it serves, reputation for quality or innovation, etc.
Why Brand Recognition Matters
As for why it’s important, let’s start with consumers and business decision-makers trusting what and who they know. A prospect can research various businesses and compare the information they gather, but if your branding has done its job, people will feel they know and trust your company with less research.
If you travel and need a hotel, you rely on brand recognition to choose where to stay. The same is true if you decide to have a house built and need an architect or home builder. The more often you have seen a builder’s logo at building sites around town or at community events, the more drawn to the company you will be and the more likely you will be to consider engaging it.
Branding also helps bring the right parties together. A builder looking for a cutting-edge architect might be drawn to a firm with a very contemporary and edgy logo in unusual colors and a reputation for unique design. Someone looking for a very traditional home may find a more sedate and conservative logo more trustworthy, especially if it’s backed by a long history of designing classic homes.
So, branding is about how you identify your company and brand recognition is about how well your branding works. To build recognition, a company needs effective symbols and messages that are consistent and seen repeatedly by the right audience.