Home Web Marketing The Basics of Brand Identity

The Basics of Brand Identity

by amol238

Brand identity can’t be built in a single day. It takes a lot of time, money and effort to turn your small business into a recognized brand. But a strong corporate identity is a must if you want to make your business successful.

A brand identity is the reason customers choose you over other companies. It makes your business appear professional and experienced. There are several factors that determine your brand image. Let’s quickly learn about these basics of brand identity.

What Is A Brand?

The word ‘brand’ is derived from the Old Norse brandr, which means ‘to burn’. It refers to the practice of burning a symbol or brand into the products by their producers. Brands originated in the field of marketing in the 19th Century, with the introduction of packaged goods. While marketing these goods, companies required a certain symbol or logo to mark their products. This process evolved in the creation of the brand.

Today, the word ‘brand’ means much more than this. The business brand is your promise to the clients to deliver the best. Strong brands evoke emotional responses from the clients. It reveals the truth about your company. Your brand highlights the unique qualities of your business and therefore, attracts the clients. It delivers specific information about your organization, its products and services. The brand is the first building block of your corporate identity and determines the position and strength of your entire marketing strategy.

Various Components of Brand Identity

The process of creating a brand image for your business is an elaborate one and involves a lot of planning. There are various components that make up your brand identity. These are as follows:

  1. Brand names of your business and its various products
  2. A logo for the company or product/service
  3. Visual vocabulary
  4. Stationery sets like business cards, letter head, envelopes, etc.
  5. Marketing materials like flyers, brochures, post cards, etc.
  6. Websites

Benefits of Brand Identity

Your brand identity conveys the idea that you are an established organization. It forms the impression that you are stable and have been around for some time. It also shows your level of commitment towards your business and your customers. This helps them to trust you.

Brand identity gives recognition to your business and attracts more clients. If they are impressed by your logo or website design, they will automatically select you over other businesses that fail to impress.

Your brand identity gives you a professional and experienced look. Your clients will be convinced that you are an expert in your field. This will make your company appear credible, which is the key to a successful business.

Brand identity makes you stand out from the crowd. It gives you an edge over your competitors. It will also help your clients differentiate you from other businesses offering similar kinds of services.

A well-established brand with attractive graphics and website design will make your business look complete and well rounded. The company can in fact appear bigger than it actually is.

The most important aspect of having a brand identity is that it explains the values and objectives of your business to the people. It explains who you are and what is unique about your company. The brand identity makes your customers familiar with the name of your organization and also makes it memorable to them.

Finally, a brand identity can boost your businesses confidence levels. You can consider yourself to be successful once you have established a brand identity for your business.

Re-Working Your Brand Identity

If you want to re-brand your business, don’t make too many abrupt changes. If you totally transform your brand visuals people might doubt a change in ownership or company values. This will end up confusing your customers and won’t work in your favor. A totally new brand will also break the existing emotional ties with your customers.

Instead, you can re-work your existing brand to make it look better and contemporary. At times even small changes can make a huge difference. But if you already have a strong brand identity, creating a completely new one might affect the welfare of your business.

Examples of Successful Brands

Let’s take a look at few successful brands that understood the basics of brand identity so many years ago and have established brands that have stood the test of time.


About the Author

Vineet Kothari is the CEO at MyCorporateLogo.com, a logo design company that provides custom logo design and website design and offers affordable logo design prices. Vineet graduated from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business and has worked in the digital design industry since 2005.

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16 comments

Navtaj Chandhoke July 26, 2010 - 6:58 am

wow! definitely an eye opener article.Thanks for sharing!

Reply
evan schulte July 26, 2010 - 6:59 am

Branding is really important. I mean, you can go anywhere in the world and know where to get a coke or a McD’s burger, because you don’t need to know the language if you know their logo.

Reply
Laptop Briefcases July 26, 2010 - 2:19 pm

I would’ve thought ‘branding’ started with cattle ranchers branding their livestock. I think packaged goods would’ve come much later.

A strong brand identity can help your company considerably. With the way you represent your brand, you may be able to gain customer trust much easier. They assume that if you’ve invested in branding, you must have been around a while and be serious about your business.

Reply
Mathew Day July 26, 2010 - 3:29 pm

I really haven’t created a brand yet and it shows. If I am to take my internet business to next level, I need to create a brand and promote it.

If you look at just about every successful business online and offline they all have one thing in common, a brand name that everyone is familiar with.

Reply
Julius July 26, 2010 - 7:33 pm

For a person who is just starting to build his brand identity, it’s a good idea to do an intensive research of the brand identities of other similar companies.

This helps in determining unique factors which others don’t have in their brand.

Reply
Gambir July 26, 2010 - 9:50 pm

yes, branding is important.. that is why marketing coming in

Reply
Dany Event Planning July 27, 2010 - 2:47 am

Really liking this one. At first I was rather lukewarm about it, but the way you adapted the logo for the Science and Art thing really added a plus point to it. And that bottle ad was just hilarious. Did you come up with that??

Reply
Web Strategist July 27, 2010 - 5:20 am

Great article. I think along with your brand message businesses need a proper web strategy

Reply
Singh July 27, 2010 - 1:39 pm

One of the things that all of these brands have in common are that their logos are easy to recognize. Simplicity is the best policy when it comes to creating a brand.

Reply
Plumber Sydney July 27, 2010 - 7:51 pm

Good info on branding. It’s extremely important to choose a brand and invest in it’s promotion. As you can see by those listed above it can really pay out if done right.

Reply
Dany Event Planning July 28, 2010 - 12:03 am

While logos primarily represent the visual manifestation of brand identity, they are most often the first point of contact with the brand experience. If the logo creates an initial image that isn’t consistent with brand identity, the organization starts off the brand experience by sending mixed signals.

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fajas July 29, 2010 - 9:33 am

it makes sense to understand that branding is not about getting your target market to choose you over the competition, but it is about getting your prospects to see you as the only one that provides a solution to their problem.

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eCommerce Web Solution August 2, 2010 - 12:51 am

Weather you are doing online or offline marketing, the main purpose of doing this always be to promote the brand. this depends on the products or services you rendered to your consumers.

Reply
Clayelle Wolf August 3, 2010 - 8:23 am

Brand frequency and reach is important once the brand is established. We encourage our partners to retarget site visitors to keep their brand in front of their prospect pool or existing customer base.

Reply
smart metering August 9, 2010 - 1:36 am

I think branding is really very great for the purpose of identifying the most important value of the thing. It itself gives the quality and popularity of your reputation by the symbol of a logo which represnts a good brand in the market.

Reply
Software Development Company August 27, 2010 - 3:37 am

Brand identity is really important in competitive era. You can also promote your brand via online and offline.

Reply

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