What is brand identity?
When you think of McDonald's, what do you picture?
Yellow arches?
Ronald McDonald?
Yellow and red?
Food?
This is a great example of brand identity.
Brand identity is the image your customers think of when they visualize your brand. It is made up of a few key features that help build trust and recognition with your audience and can be the difference between making a sale or missing out.
The key components of brand identity are:
- Brand Name
- Logo
- Brand Colors
- Slogans/Taglines
- Advertising Mood and Tone
Brand Name
Businesses spend tons of time and creativity crafting the perfect brand name.
Sometimes brands take a creative spin on their product offerings, like Ring, who offers video doorbells and home security systems.
Sometimes businesses will choose a single word that sets a tone in their audience's mind when they think of the company. Kind Snacks and Honest Company are great examples of this concept.
Another popular way to develop a strong brand name is to use a person's or family's name. Johnson & Johnson, Bush Brothers and Sam Adams are perfect examples of this tactic. They evoke a human element and warm feeling of supporting a family when purchasing the brand.
There are tons of ways that businesses come up with their brand name, but it is undoubtedly one of the most important factors of brand identity because it sets the tone for the rest of your marketing efforts and business strategies.
Logo
Your logo is like the visual version of your brand name. Often your logo includes your brand name, or a version of it, and your brand colors (which we'll discuss next).
Logos help give a recognizable image to your business name. It's like a stamp that your audience comes to trust and when used properly, can help sell your products and services without directly telling your customers to buy.
Logos should be clear, simple and quickly understood at first glance. This makes it easier to keep your logo consistent in different marketing and social mediums. These are great examples of easily recognized logos:
Brand Colors
Brand Colors can have a dynamic impact on your brand and how your customers feel about your business.
Marketers everywhere take advantage of this concept all the time. One of the first considerations is that the colors of your brand complement each other. Clashing colors can automatically give your customers an uneasy feeling about your brand. Complementary colors, on the other hand, feel good to consumers and that feeling translates to your brand.
Marketers will use brand colors for other reasons too. For example, did you know that the color blue is associated with eating less? It's a great dieting tool, but how many fast food restaurants do you know that use blue in their branding? In contrast, how many fast food restaurants do you know that use the color red in their logo? Red is associated with warmth and comfort and grabs attention.
Makes sense, right?
When you are deciding on your brand colors, first think about the most important emotion you want your customers to feel about your brand. Then, choose complementary colors that help promote that feeling.
Slogans/Taglines
Slogans and taglines can further drive home the emotion you want your customers to feel.
What's the difference?
A tagline acts is like a logo in that the goal is for it to become so recognizable that you automatically think of the business when you hear or see it. Think of Nike. Their "Just Do It" tagline is arguably one of the most recognizable lines that makes you think about doing activities (i.e. sports) as well as a great selling point ("Just buy it").
A slogan can be very similar to a tagline, but the distinction is that the focus is to promote the mission of the business. Think of MasterCard's slogan: "There are some things money can't buy. For everything else, there's MasterCard."
Slogans and taglines give you another chance to tell your customers what you want them to know or how you want them to feel about your brand. It can be a great tool if used correctly.
Mood and Tone
The mood and tone of your brand solidify how you want your customers to view your business. All of the components we've discussed so far build toward that end result.
The easiest way to explain this is through a few basic examples. At the simplest level, your colors and logo can evoke a mood and tone into your advertising. For example, if you choose bright colors, your brand can be thought of as fun and happy. If you choose more neutral colors or solid colors, your brand is likely more serious and sophisticated.
You can portray so many different emotions through your brand's mood and tone and it is a much more subtle and easily accepted way to tell your customers to feel a certain way about your business.
On a larger scale, advertising like commercials and video can portray even more about your business mood and tone. For example, if you've seen the Bounty commercial featuring the couple making smoothies and their son playing with toys when the dad steps on one of the toys and throws the drink all over the counter.
There are tons of things about this commercial that affect how you feel about the brand. Just to name a few, the scene portrays a perfect afternoon with the white surroundings and calm scene. Until the drink is spilled, disrupting that perfection. Then Bounty paper towels are there to save the day and return your family to that perfection. The take away? Use Bounty paper towels and be able to live a perfect life with your family.
To Wrap Things Up...
There is so much that goes into a business' brand identity and how your audience feels about your business and more importantly, how they react to your brand is the direct result of that marketing.
When these components properly align, it increases your audience, their trust in your products and services, and helps your business grow.