BRANDING VS BRAND IDENTITY

Another key element of your branding to consider is your brand identity. Many people think that the terms branding, logo and brand identity all mean the exact same thing, but that’s just not the case. They all work together but with this post I wanted to cover the key differences between branding vs brand identity.

As I’ve spoken about before, getting your brand noticed is about so much more than a logo. It’s just one part of the process. A process which you can’t underestimate, neglect or put off – it’s so important to how your business performs. And I’m not just saying that because I love it! Let’s start with the key differences…

THE KEY DIFFERENCES BETWEEN BRANDING AND BRAND IDENTITY

First up, branding. To put it really simply this is the experience your brand creates for your ideal client. It’s everything from your mission, your core values, your images, your tone of voice, the way you speak on live video – it’s every touch point they can interact with you on. Your branding creates the promise of service and standards, so it has to deliver consistently. From first discovering you, to placing an order, then coming back for more, you want your customers to feel something special. That’s how you build the brand loyalty and love.

Branding also enables you to shape your business strategy. Whether it’s differentiating your products from those of your competitors or, how, what, where, when and to whom you want to communicate your brand messages.

Now, let’s move on to brand identity or brand design as it’s sometimes called. This relates to what you see and feel based on a brand’s visuals. From colours and fonts to logos, graphic elements, patterns and photography, brand identity helps to bring your strategy to life in the imagination of your target audience.

This is the visual side of your brand, you could call it the face, embodying the core values and personality of your branding in a strong visual way.

If you can nail this combination and get everything working together, then people should be able to recognize the brand without seeing the logo. It’s much easier for the bigger corporations, however what’s to say someone wouldn’t notice a post from you on Pinterest if it uses the same colours, fonts, imagery, graphic elements or of course, your logo.

MAKING THEM WORK TOGETHER

As I’m sure you’ve seen so far there is a lot of cross over when it comes to branding and brand identity, but hopefully this framework will enable you to bring them together in distinctive way.

Start by defining your mission statement. What do you want to stand for? What are your goals? Who is your audience? Where do they shop, live and spend their time? What keywords sum up our brand? This will give you the foundation of your branding.

Then, once you have that, and you are 100% happy with it, you need to translate that into visuals that bring it to life. Yes, your audience will react to your principles and values, but with great imagery, graphic elements, fonts and colours you can steer their imagination, helping to create the perfect image of your brand in their minds.

One final thought is to make sure you consider how you fit into your brand, it’s values and its story. Just like your visual identity, you are representing your brand with each post, email, skype call, live video or client meeting, so your branding and identity should reflect who you are. This is so crucial. And the added personality is often what sets brands apart, because if your audience relates to you as a person, they’re way more likely to buy into the brand you’ve created.

I hope this post has helped the branding process for you and when working with your designer or design studio, always make sure you’re happy with both your branding and your brand identity – getting them spot on is the key to making it happen as your brand really takes off.