Your brand identity is everything. This identity incorporates the visual design elements that define your brand as well as the messaging you use to connect with customers. Altogether, this identity influences how your target audience will see your brand and what opinions they will develop.
A good brand identity will intrigue and excite new consumers in your target audience. Among existing customers, this identity should invoke feelings of familiarity. Meanwhile, it should be unique and recognizable while staying true to your business values.
Because of the brand identity’s power, it’s crucial that brands take a detailed, research-based approach to creating unique elements that highlight the brand’s values and goals. Understanding how to create a new brand identity that resonates with your consumers will allow you to maximize your reach and spark the emotion you hope to spark.
A brand identity is the unique presentation of your brand that makes it stand out amongst a sea of others. This identity often includes the logos, brand colors, fonts, and other visual elements that represent the brand. These elements speak to not only the presentation of your brand but also play an integral role in defining your brand’s personality and relatability to consumers.
For example, Coca-Cola is instantly recognizable because the brand has such a strong identity. Aspects of the brand, like the iconic bright red, the classic cursive font, and the polar bear mascot, make Coca-Cola products unmistakable and familiar. This identity is clear in their visual elements, but it also expands into their marketing efforts, as their content is consistently centered around joyful moments and togetherness.
A brand identity is often a consumer’s first introduction to a company or product, and it defines their initial opinions and perceptions. Your brand identity may invoke specific emotions, inspire initial opinions, or spark curiosity among your consumers. Creating an identity that pulls in customers and communicates your brand’s values requires detailed thought and strategy.
Creating a brand identity may seem as simple as choosing a name you like and drawing up a logo, but it’s important not to overlook the process and rush into selling your product. Having a strategy ensures that your identity is most likely to build a positive perception of your brand. To create a new brand identity that will resonate with consumers, you should take the following steps.
You can’t jump into creating a new brand identity if you don’t know what will work—research and analysis is an essential first step.
Start with market research and competitor analysis. Look at other brands in your industry or niche and assess what they’re doing to be successful among consumers. Think about your initial reactions to their brand elements and how they make you feel so you can do something fresh while learning from their core strategies.
Above all else, you should research your own target audience and determine the type of consumer you are trying to reach. The demographics and customer preferences that exist in your target audience will influence what brand elements and communication styles will best connect with them.
As part of your research, ask the following questions:
Using your answers to these questions, you can build the foundations of what your rebrand will look like. You should use these answers to inform the styling of your brand elements and your brand messaging so you can increase their impact.
Brand elements are an essential part of your brand identity, as elements like your brand name, logo, font, and colors will make your brand identifiable and relatable in the eyes of your target audience. These elements should align with your brand identity and values by invoking the emotions, feelings, and thoughts you want your consumers to feel when they use your product.
Key brand elements will include:
Don’t rush while creating any of these elements—they are all integral to how new consumers will see your brand and play a key part in making your brand memorable. In the creation stage, be sure to keep your market research at the forefront of your mind so that you can convey the proper visual messaging that your target audience would hope for.
Once you create and define these brand elements, they should be displayed across all your online social media platforms, your website, all product packages, and any marketing materials. Crafting and displaying these brand elements is the first step in building familiarity with your brand and making it instantly recognizable to potential consumers.
How you communicate to consumers is another crucial part of your identity. Your messaging is a fundamental part of your brand’s personality and informs how you structure your customer outreach, what ideas you pinpoint in your marketing efforts, and how you express your unique offerings to your consumers.
As you develop your brand messaging, consider all the following elements:
In all your brand messaging, you should maintain a unique voice and tone that is likely to resonate with your target audience. This voice and tone should be consistent across all channels so that your brand personality is easily recognizable.
For example, if your brand targets a younger, outdoorsy audience, your voice is better off fun and laid back, whereas if your brand is a luxury brand targeting high earners, it makes sense to have a more refined, serious tone.
No matter how you choose to focus your voice and tone, it’s important that it speaks to your audience and provides an opportunity for them to relate to you.
Conducting testing and gathering feedback will provide some insight into how consumers receive your new brand identity and whether it’s gaining the reactions you hope for.
When you implement your brand identity, you should maintain a degree of flexibility. Although some elements will remain non-negotiable, you should allow feedback to shape elements of your brand identity to maximize its appeal to consumers.
Some ways to gather feedback surrounding your brand identity include:
With this feedback, you can refine your identity for the sake of maximizing the impact of your messaging. If consumers aren’t excited or intrigued by your brand identity, you may have work to do to flip the script.
Maybe you should reconsider the voice and tone you use in your messaging to better relate to your audience, or maybe the visuals you use for your social media posts are not as appealing to your followers as you initially thought.
Regardless, conducting consistent research is the only way to learn these things and make refinements. These consistent assessments should guide your brand messaging going forward and provide insight into when a refresh is on the horizon.
A brand identity is important for establishing a strong first impression and building a sense of familiarity with your target audience. To create a new brand identity, you need a thoughtful strategy that involves market research, unique brand messaging, and ongoing feedback gathering.
At PETERMAYER, we support brands in finding and building an identity that speaks to their target audience. From there, we guide brands in presenting this identity to consumers through effective messaging, relationship-building, and creative outreach. As we help brands find their identity and personality, we help them unlock the inherent joy that exists in what they do.
Schedule a discovery call with us today to learn more about how we can help you create a new brand identity that resonates with your target audience.
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