Every day, an average of 6,000 ads grab your attention. And every year, more than 25,000 new products. What is the factor that makes you make these and not other buying choices?
Brands
Their identity is not just a marketing slogan. Each distinct personality combines diverse elements into a coherent system that makes the brand tangible and acts on the senses: you can see it, hear it, touch it and hold it in your hand. “One eye sees. The other feels.” — Paul Klee, a Swiss-German painter of the last century. If only he knew how true his opinion would be in the era of marketing of the 20th century!
Logo design is not everything. What is brand personality?
The brand's personality is based mainly on the archetypes of identity — collections of universal patterns of behavior, understood instinctively across cultures and years. Not only do they allow you to personalize your emotions, but above all they build a bridge between the motivations of your audience and the solutions you offer.
And if the basics are already behind you, and marketing strategy, brand building and branding are no strangers to you, it's time to take concrete actions for your business. I have prepared for you 4 simple steps, thanks to which:
- identify the desire you want to arouse in the audience at the point of contact with your brand;
- you will identify the personality and behaviors that will help trigger these desires and the emotions that accompany them.
Ready?
Step 1: Ads vs. your audience's true desires — do you understand them?
It is possible that you are already familiar with the marketing ladder of advertising benefits, built from 3 basic tiers:
- What is it?
- What does it give me?
- What does it give me that it gives me?
Well, Marty Neumeier, in his bestseller “Reversing the Brand” adds one more to them:
- What will I become because of this man?
Discovering precisely this deep need of your audience can turn out to be a milestone for your business, thanks to which your marketing strategy takes a concrete direction.
An example?
Brand engaged in the manufacture of lawn mowers. Their customers need equipment that will keep their lawn in good shape. But are you sure? If you start digging, you will discover that the audience may actually be concerned about the nice surroundings of the house. Going one step further — for a sense of pride in their own backyard and belonging to the micro-community in which they live. And if this community can boast of working for the local environment... Maybe they just want to become better people and feel that they are doing something good for the world?
Now it's your turn.
Step 2: Determine your position in the market — this strongly influences branding
You can now match the customer's desire so defined to the archetype that best evokes them. If your audience is looking for freedom, the archetype of your brand may be the Explorer. And if they desire a sense of community and belonging, the best choice will be a Companion.
Attention! The desire of your audience can be perfectly matched to the solution you offer and the archetype you choose. But this does not mean at all that it will fully reflect their own personality as well. After all, not all those looking for a moment of pleasure in milk chocolate are lovers themselves.
Defining the archetype on which you will base your brand building and its identity will also allow you to determine your position in your specific industry and help answer the questions:
- How will you stand out from the competition?
- Who will you become for your audience?
- How will you plan your strategy?
Step 3: Before you make a company logo — think about how to stand out
You have met the needs of customers, you have chosen the archetype, a friendly advertising agency is already doing a new design of the company logo for you... Come back! Suddenly it turns out that your competition has done exactly the same thing. What now?
Get creative.
A common and advantageous solution is to combine 2 archetypes that are not mutually exclusive (i.e. not located at opposite ends of the circle). An example of such a combination is a brand from the IT industry in the form of Companion and Wizard. After all, nothing prevents the technological magician from being a friend of the consumer at the same time, right?
However, remember the right proportions. The basic archetype you choose at the beginning should be no less than 70% of your personality. Spend the remaining 30% on differentiation. And most importantly, never mix more than two.
Step 4: Build a new personality and base your marketing on it
Once you've developed your mix, it's time to shape your brand's personality. To do this, it is best to ask her a few questions related to your specialization, market or even general views of the world.
- What do you like and don't like? And why?
- What is the purpose of your existence?
- What is important to you in this industry and what do you definitely want to change?
- What is the greatest value you bring to your audience?
- What would you like to protect them from?
Is it difficult? And yes and no. You would certainly be able to answer them yourself. However, the snag is that your brand should do it—according to its own archetypal beliefs—not you. When you hear her subjective opinions and see her personal attitude and aspirations, you will surely look at her differently than before.
This personified form of the company no longer communicates exclusively in the language of transactions. It becomes a personality built around desires and emotions — exactly what your audience expects. In this way, in part, and branding and brand building are already behind you.
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Wally Olins in “The Brand Book” argues that the intangible value of a brand often exceeds the tangible assets of a company, and the concept of a brand regularly appears even on the balance sheets of companies.
Today, logo design and advertising alone will not do the trick. Therefore, try to incorporate branding and the personality behind it into your activities and see for yourself how they can affect the success of you and your company.
“After all, it's never too late to become who you could be!” *
* — George Eliot
