What is a brand?
When we talk about “brand” we’re essentially talking about how your business shows up in the world and how it’s perceived. The way you look, feel, and sound to the people you want to reach.
Putting it simply, we can split this into two categories: your visuals and your words.
1. Visuals
Your visuals — your brand identity — is all about how you look and how recognisable you are. It acts as a consistent visual cue across all your marketing and communication, bringing your brand to life through design.
It’s made up of several elements, including logos, colours, typography (a fancy way of saying fonts), photography and videography.
If we take NIKE as an example, they’re known for their signature tick logo with strong black and white colours, bold headline font, and their focus on people in imagery, making them distinctive from other sports brands like Adidas.
2. Words
Your words — your brand DNA — is the essence and spirit of who you are. It underpins your identity and helps shape not only your marketing, but your behaviour and activities too. It’s a simple but powerful reference to ensure everything you do is aligned and cohesive.
Like your brand identity, it’s made up of several elements, including:
- Purpose, mission, and vision: why you exist, where you’re going, and how you’re going to get there.
- Core proposition: the reason why somebody should choose your product/solution over the competition — what makes you unique.
- Values: the things you stand for that guide your decision making.
- Brand language and tone of voice: the way you speak and write.
- Brand story: what brought you to where you are today — your narrative.
NIKE’s mission (you can see a theme here) is “To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete* in the world. *If you have a body, you are an athlete,” highlighting that they serve everyone, which is their big unique selling point.
And the way they write really brings this to life, with bold, inspirational, and unapologetic statements like “a better future lies on the other side of serving athletes* as only NIKE can.”
Supported by a brand story that’s grounded in 50 years of history supporting athletes, including Joan Benoit Samuelson, the winner of the first women’s Olympic Games marathon, they live and breathe their values of diversity, equity & inclusion, the future of youth sport, sustainability, and a responsible supply chain, are reflective of this.
All of these elements make them distinctive and increase their appeal to their audience, you!
So, why bother having brand basics?
Investing in your brand is critical for your success.
A strong brand identity and DNA ensures the people you want to reach, be it customers, investors, or the media, can easily identify you, understand what you’re about, and differentiate you from the competition. It’s a way you can build a reputation for your business, using a simple, consistent framework to lean on.
But, it doesn’t have to be complicated! Begin small and work your way up from there. As an early-stage startup, you don’t need all singing, all dancing brand guidelines, extensive colour palettes, or a story that’s as long as a novel. A logo, a couple of colours, and a paragraph or two will suffice for now.
As your business grows, your brand identity and DNA will need to become more sophisticated, so that you’re showing up as the most relevant and authentic version of yourself. You might include some clearer guidelines on how you use images, add in some more colours, or adapt your narrative based on a better understanding of your audience. These help to ensure there’s consistency and clarity in the way you’re applying your brand, which is especially important when others are doing this for you.
The biggest learning to take away is that your brand identity and DNA are intrinsically linked, so you have to treat them with equal importance for success, otherwise you’ll end up being all visuals and no substance, or vice versa.
