Recently, we hosted an insightful webinar called “Brand vs Branding”. Radek Kocjan, a Senior Brand Consultant at Admind, talked about how to invite an audience to participate in your brand’s life through the act of branding. Now, we will tell you the most important tips to remember. Thanks to them, you will make your brand more and more interesting for a wider audience.
Let’s consider how different people perceive what we generally call a brand. From a brand designer’s perspective, brands are systems of symbols (like a logo, typography, iconography, colors). They need to be arranged in a meaningful and flexible way. For designers, the process of brand creation ends when a brand book is completed. It is a manual about how you can use the brand, when you create, for example, a marketing campaign or make a video.
For brand designers, brands are narratives or stories. They see them mainly in the context of culture and of the environment in which they exist. They are looking for answers to questions:
- What does the brand do?
- What are its brand values?
- How does it stand out?
These two joined perspectives (visual and narrative) are what people see when you sell the brand’s products or services. What’s more, the audience feels the gap whenever they lack data. For example, if there’s no information necessary to contextualize the brand and to explain what the brand does, people will fill in the blanks themselves. Eventually, they’ll say: I don’t care about this brand, it’s not for me.
As you can see, it’s crucial to coordinate these two worlds – the symbols and the stories. It’s not only about the visuals, but also about all touchpoints, like the interior design of the store or whatever the employees say when they pick up the phone. The brand is an intersection of these two worlds. Always be aware of that.
Think about society
Society is the first thing you should always think about as a brand expert. A few years ago, we didn’t even use such words as COVID, pandemic, lockdown, or home office. Now every brand is trying to adapt to the present situation. During the pandemic time, we can observe the rise of new brands, with a more conscious branding approach, that have grown out of the related needs of society. An important fact is that the pandemic is not the only phenomenon people care about. That’s why you should try to understand, what’s important for your audience, and whatever it is, a climate change or a healthy lifestyle, you should make your brand refer to these things in some way. We’re not saying that your food shop should invent a miracle cure for COVID. Instead, it can make it easier for older people to shop without leaving their homes and putting themselves at risk. In that way, the audience will understand that you are on their side.
Provide brand audience-oriented communication
This is related to the previous point. Many brands make the same mistake, which is to talk about the brand, its products, and services over and over again. Meanwhile, your audience wants to hear about something completely different – themselves. They don’t necessarily want products that are “the best on the market” or “using the latest technology”. Instead, they want solutions that solve their problems and focus on the reality around them. For example, there were many great communications from brands during the lockdown, that were supportive, cheerful, and optimistic even though companies were facing business problems. This kind of communication helps to connect the audience to the brand.
Join forces
Association with other brands, specialists, celebrities, cultural goods is always a great way to expand your audience. One of the examples of such associations, Radek Kocjan mentioned during the webinar. Marioka Shoten is a tiny bookstore of “a Single Room with a Single Book” in Tokyo. It sells only one book, and more precisely, multiple copies of one title that changes weekly. Its challenging, minimalistic philosophy and well-curated shows attract numerous visitors from all over the world. The audience knows that books are selected by people who have impeccable taste and know their stuff.
Such association makes you sure that the book you buy will be top-of-the-range. Another example is The Strategist. and aggregated stuff in their articles. People don’t like to read about brands, but they like to read about lifestyles, for example. So, if your brand appears in a text: “10 things you need to take on a winter hike in the mountains”, this is the potential to attract a new audience.
Invest in a surprising partnership
At that point, we aren’t talking about such an obvious connection as Nike and Jordan partnership. We encourage you to move your brand in a surprising direction that people wouldn’t usually associate with your company. A great example is a collaboration between ABB (as a title partner) and Formula E. ABB is a very technical brand and in order to make their technology more exciting, they ventured into the field of motorsports. Which is all about technology, precision, and excitement. Through such partnerships, ABB is increasing its visibility and bringing motorsport fans into contact with their brand.
The conclusion
To sum up, according to recent research, average western consumers are confronted with 10 000 branded communications per day. If you want to stand out among them, you need to focus on what people are actually interested in. It’s important to remember from this article that a brand is never about products or services, it’s about people. And if you want to invite the audience to participate in your brand’s life, your brand should be present in the life of your audience.
Do you find this article interesting? We encourage you to watch the entire webinar “Brand vs Branding”.
