The Importance Of Brand Identity

In the modern, ‘21st century’ world we live in, we’re constantly bombarded by different products and services, all vying for our undivided attention. From the moment you wake up to when your head touches the pillow, the average person comes in contact with anything from 4,000 to 10,000 adverts a day! The sheer volume of interactions is staggering and most of these, you probably won’t even notice as you go about daily life. That’s where ‘branding’ comes into play. Modern audiences are extremely discerning with 45% of consumers expecting great design across the marketing and sales collateral they come in contact with. If you want to stand out and be seen, in such a tough and crowded marketplace, a strong brand identity’s essential.

---

so, what is brand identity?

Distilled down into its essence, it’s the visual manifestation of your brands values. It’s how you showcase your offering with clients, consumers and prospects, and how you interact with the wider world – It’s your brands ‘personality’ you’re communicating to your audience – your company name, how you deliver on promises and what your customers say about you creates an impression of what it’s like to do business with you. It’s so much more than just a logo!

In short “Your brand’s what other people say about you when you’re not in the room.” – Jeff Bezos, Founder of Amazon.com

 

The advantages of a strong Brand Identity

The strongest brands are instantly recognisable, even to small children and immediately convey a message about your offering. Companies large and small spend millions each year promoting and developing their brands, because they know it directly affects their sales and market share.

A strong identity has the ability to create a perception of quality – it generates recognition with your audience and makes it more likely they’ll remember your business. One of the most important elements of this is your brand colours. Studies have shown that using a distinct colour across your brand collateral can increase audience recall by as much as 80%. Think ‘easy jet’ for example. Once you have strong market recognition consumers are more likely to refer you to others and in turn, this can help you build brand loyalty with your clients.

A business with a strong identity’s more likely to be thought of as being well-established, experienced and reliable. It can also help build trust between a company and its audience, which in turn can contribute to an increase in brand loyalty. Distinctive branding can convey a sense of stability adding to memorability and helps to imply commitment and a sense of pride in how you brand’s presented. This pride can have a knock-on effect with your employees. When they’re proud of the company they work for, they’re more likely to want to be directly associated with it and showcase it to others. Nowadays, ‘Employee Brand’ and reputation has a ripple effect out towards consumers, (both existing and potential) and future employees alike, all of which can become strong advokates and contribute meaningfully to both brand preference and loyalty.

 

leveraging various touchpoints

Having a consistently represented brand across all your company’s touchpoints, such as social media, your website and advertising helps consumers remember you. Sending a consistent message through your identity and values means you’re more likely to be remembered by your audience and in turn, increase recognition of your brand. It also helps to establish you as a quality, reliable offering in your marketplace. Consistently presented brands are up to 4 times more visible to consumers. This increased visibility means you’re more likely to convert prospects into customers and with the average revenue increase attributed to presenting your brand consistently’s a staggering 33%*, it’s something you can’t avoid paying attention to.

Each time you interact with a prospect you have a chance to make a positive connection and create a memorable engagement. It’s well known that ‘people connect with brands that share the same values’, if your identity clearly represents your business, you’re more likely to attract the right people and when your brand resonates with your audience you become more relatable and relevant.

The recent pandemic’s made the digital arena more essential than ever for brand engagement, marketing and sales. Consumer decisions are often made in a split second, driven by memories, images and emotions created through brand identity and interactions. Brands don’t exist within a company or organisation, they exists in the minds of their consumers. The small details are therefore important, as that’s often what your audience will remember. These details can make you even more distinctive and elevate your brand above the competition, placing you front of mind when it comes to a consumers decision making. This is why as a ‘Creative Designer’ working in the brand team at Fortus we work hard on crafting a consistent, appealing brand by building on our strong foundations of colour, shape and consistency and never losing sight of how important the details are in helping us build a compelling experience for our clients.