Brand identity is the first impression of your brand. With the right design, color, logo and personality you can make an impact that makes it hard to forget and create an everlasting effect that can be leveraged in the long run effectively.
But the question which pops up often is how do you create a strong brand identity that maintains brand’s relevancy in consumer’s minds?
Let’s dive-in to explore the 5 traits of a strong brand identity, with the help of examples.
- Backed up by research
A strong brand identity will always be backed up by good research, this means knowing what your competitors are doing as well as researching your audience and knowing what they want and also making sure who you want to target.
For eg. If you're a hair care brand and you’re trying to sell high end hair care products, then you would want to target women and men who fall into the income bracket that you want to focus on. This will require research on what the logo, color scheme of your competitors look like and what they are doing right and what they are doing wrong.
With this research not only you’ll be able to replicate what they have done right, but this will also allow you to observe what could have been done, that would be out of the box and work for your brand.
- Meaningful Visual Identity (Logo)
Starting from the basics, a meaningful logo which can communicate what your brand stands for is a necessity for a strong brand identity. Since a logo provides instant recognition, investing in a thought-through logo that works for your brand should be your priority.
When designing your logo or even finalizing it, make sure your logo has the right color, shapes, graphics and text. This means making sure that when it all comes together, what you have in your hands is unique, simple and memorable.
For this, let's take the example of Mcdonalds, a simple alphabet, color that attracts kids as well as adults, easy to understand and easy to remember. So peeing it clean and easy to understand should be your priority when it comes to creating the right logo for your brand.
Communicative Slogan
A slogan or a tagline that is communicative, catchy and has a good recall value is something we often ignore for our brand but it is a crucial part of a strong brand identity, so you must look around and observe that even if you don’t want to, you will remember a good slogan and tagline.
So get creative and have fun with rhymes or alliteration to craft the perfect tagline for your brand, while also keeping it simple and easy to understand.
For this you can pick out some examples that are all around you, like:
LIC: “Zindagi ke Saath bhi, Zindagi ke Baad bhi”
Apple: “Think Different”
McDonald’s: “I’m Lovin It’
We are sure you have heard them and remember them as well, because they are not just simple, but impactful as well.
- Definitive Brand Tone (Tonality)
The language you use to communicate your message has a huge impact on the type of customers your brand will attract and how people will perceive your brand. So make sure you choose the right tone. While this part can get tricky, a good and deep research can help you in the long run and help you communicate what you want to effortlessly. Since the tone which you decide in the early stages will dictate the strategy in the future, it will also remain consistent throughout the branding process
For Eg. Tansihq, a jewelry brand cannot use the same language that Pizza Hut is using to communicate with their audience. Another example would be Zudio and Zara as brands can't even use the same language to communicate because they both are trying to target people who fall into different income groups. While Zara will have an approach that feels more premium, Zudio will present itself as more attainable.
So make sure you choose the tone your brand is going to have wisely, since this will remain consistent for all sorts of communication in the future in order to build a strong brand identity.
- Focus on your story
The idea, story and the emotions behind your brand matter more than you think. So focus on how you got there and craft it in a way that people resonate with it and want to be associated with your brand.
Because when you look around, all good brands stand for something. While some may have the goal to save the place with sustainable practices, some might just want to fix a small everyday problem.
Failing to have a good brand story and not establishing brand values in the early stages can lead your brand to feel extremely corporate and less alive, which means the lack of human touch can be evident and lead to not standing out in this competitive market.
To study the case of a good brand story, let’s take Jaipur rugs.
Jaipur Rugs was started by Nand Kishore, who had grown up seeing the plight of underpaid carpet weavers who often came from marginalized social backgrounds. So he started the business as a social venture to help them, with a loan of 5000 rupees that he took from his father.
Now not only does this have a good emotional punch to it, but also sets Jaipur Rugs apart from other brands because of its emotional connect. Now not only Jaipur Rugs uses this story well, it also constantly builds up on it on social media, so people don’t forget what they stand for and what values they have as a brand.
So these were the top 5 traits of a strong brand identity which you need to focus on while building your brand. Last but not the least, always have room to evolve, since what works today, might not work tomorrow. So don’t blink and keep listening to what's happening around you and how your brand can change according to it or even leverage it.
