The Five Basic Benefits of Branding
(Estimated reading time: 8 minutes)
Introduction
You’ve probably seen a family crest or shield used to represent a family from European culture. You may have seen a monogramed letter, sealed with a wax stamp, made by a family ring. You might be aware of wood workers marking their finished projects with a wood burned signature or symbol. You may be familiar with the tradition of ranchers using hot iron to literally “brand” the cattle that belong to their herd.
Simply put, this is where branding comes from. However, there’s a lot more too branding than logo designing and branding cattle. It has to do with feelings and what many in pop culture call “getting triggered.”
For the sake of brevity, let’s assume that each of these groups of people that I listed above are types of families.
Each country has a flag that represents a people group. This people group resembles a big family with inherited traditions, whether they all get along or not. After-all, who actually has a family that always gets along well?
That big family is broken down into houses or bloodlines that each have an inherited craft, trade, and name. Typically a house is represented by a word or a symbol. In recent history the most common last name in the United States was Smith. If you’ve studied the English language, then you understand that a smith’s job is to forge metal objects and tools for the region.
A country’s flag, a family’s crest and the word “Smith” are basic examples of branding.
Associations
We as humans naturally have mental and emotional associations with everything we see, taste, smell, touch or hear.
When you see a yellow letter M or the colors yellow and red most people start to think about a certain fast food chain, whether they realize it or not. It won’t take long for you to recall what the jingle sounds like. You may even remember several jingles from the last few decades.
When we smell a loaf of sourdough bread we automatically feel a certain way about it. Some of us love it and others hate it.
When we touch a quality piece of paper, we feel a certain way about it based off of our past experiences with paper. Random fact: Did you know that all U.S. paper currency is made of cotton?
There are many reasons why people choose to use quality paper. It has to do with our feelings and the association that we assign to objects. When a different type of paper is used we communicate quality, worth, and care given to the information on that paper. We are always communicating, whether we like it or not, and people are always judging us based on our behavior.
I’ll say it again. We as humans naturally have subliminal, mental, and emotional associations with everything that we see, taste, smell, touch or hear. The same goes with how we think about people and businesses.
Reputations
When we get down to it, branding is reputation.
Have you ever noticed how it takes years to build trust with someone and five seconds to lose their trust? Branding is reputation.
People and businesses can either have good or bad reputations. Those reputations make us predisposed to be skeptical or sure of their intentions.
This is why people choose to go to a big box store instead of shopping local. The big box store has a reputation that proceeds them and their branding is attractive. No one ever sells a product, they sell an experience and a feeling.
Feelings
Branding is feelings.
I love how Dale Partridge, founder of Sevenly, says it.
“At the core, brands are just feelings.”
It’s not how you feel, but how others feel about you.
Branding is about how your audience feels about your company and not how you feel about it. That is the hardest thing to understand and the most important thing to remember.
Branding deals with how other people see you and not how you see yourself. Branding takes educating others and the public. You can never actually control how people see you, you can only influence how people see you over time. This is why branding is like playing a very long game.
Business Branding is an ongoing discussion of creative guidelines and guardrails that, once set in motion, are slow and difficult to change. Think about how you want your business to feel and how you want other people to feel about you and your company image.
Branding is the most important part of a business to manage and the part you have to be the most patient about. Like respect, branding is the thing that takes years to build and only seconds to lose. Branding has to be protected.
Interior Design Note: Branding can even lead to interior design. This can help people feel safe in your workspace, store or meeting place. The more inconsistencies there are with colors and images in a space, the more people begin to distrust you.
5 Quick Benefits of Branding
1. Consistency — Branding creates consistency which helps people feel safe to know what you’ll keep giving them.
2. Excellence — Branding creates excellence which helps people want to come back for more.
3. Guidelines — Branding is a set of creative guidelines for anyone working with you.
4. Protection — Branding is a protection and prevention plan for negative reviews on and offline.
5. Stress Relief — Branding allows you to stop thinking so much about what you want to look like, feel like, or sound like and frees up your time as a business owner.
Our Branding Packages
What I’ve told you is that branding is very important to the longevity of any business. That’s why we offer business branding as our primary service.
We help set up startup businesses by crafting a full brand identity and image. We have worked with many different companies to give them a tailored image that best resonates with the needs of their audience or customers. The branding packages help set up guidelines to communicate and market best to the business’ audience. Our branding packages help protect the brand from distrust on the internet by eliminating inconsistencies. The branding packages help startups begin with a great reputation before they launch their flagship store or product.
Branding is important because it is a set of creative guidelines for the social media managers, HR managers, and any other creatives that a business owner may want to contract or hire in the future.
Without a full branding packet, the company's social media and reputation becomes inconsistent, inefficient for recruiting, and vulnerable to negative reviews online.
During the branding process we work closely with the business owner through a series of meetings or calls, surveys, and questionnaires. This process takes several weeks and a company rebrand can take years. Owners with a branding packet get a 5% discount on all other design services offered by FRD.
Purchasing a branding packet from FRD provides businesses with the opportunity to have website design, copywriting, and social media management.
We hope that this has helped you better understand business branding and its importance. If you are interested in the services that FRD offers, reach out via email or the contact form on our website.
Email: farissryandesigns@gmail.com