Key elements of a successful brand

You have an eye-catching logo, a memorable slogan, and the right combination of colors. Does it mean you have a strong, successful brand? Not exactly, as the brand is much more than just these components. Your logo and graphic layout are just a surface of an ocean. What are the core, essential elements that constitute a brand, distinguishes it, and ensures constant trust and interest of the customers?

Make a statement, give a promise

When you’ve already established the vital elements of your business, including its purpose, logo, target audience, and all that, it’s time to make a promise. Make a statement, be heard, believed, and trusted. A successful brand needs to encourage its potential customers by simply explaining what they can gain and how would they benefit. Simple as that. What can you offer them that no one else can? Think it through and express it as straightforward as possible. Making a statement, presenting the brand’s values, and what you and your employees stand for is also noteworthy. Advocate for something, and the right audience will come to you.

How can you help?

Make your customers believe that the promises your brand makes will be kept. Tell them, or even better, instead of telling them, show it. That’s where the brand’s image plays a vital role. The right logo, slogans, website — they all convey a message; is your brand a first-class, premium service or a second-rate at best? Establishing a coherent image and making sure that every element supports the claim you made is a way to differentiate the brand from the dozens of others.

A successful brand keeps its promise

You made a promise, made a customer believe you, so now what? Keep that promise, live up to that statement. The reputation of your brand depends on the customer’s experience at every stage of the purchase. Browsing your website, visiting a store, buying and paying must be pleasant at least, if not memorable. A top-class brand brings the best possible experience. It pays off, as the customers return to you, give their recommendations, and mention your services to others. Word-of-mouth marketing is worth its weight in gold. 

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Websites built to sell

A website is to your online business is as physical shop front is to your offline business. It is one of the most essential parts of your online success. The key is to leave a lasting impression on the visitors who land on your page. If your website doesn't demonstrate professionalism, credibility and attention to the smallest details like high end memorable branding or thoughtful font selection, clients might be scared away. You don’t want to create an impression that your website is one of those sites created hurriedly for scam purposes, do you? Not to mention that 75% of your web visitors will judge your credibility based on web design. Apart from the products or services you offer, a professionally designed website can be one of the differential areas of the business. Remember that the online world is immersed with a huge number of sites. While the majority of these sites are bogus, there are a huge number of others which are marvellous; therefore, you are up against a very stiff competition. If you can get a moderately priced web design that looks professional and which is of high quality, then you would have conquered one obstacle to competing online.

Professional website will make your advertising effort much simpler in light of the fact that you won't be disappointed with high bouncing rates—since Google uses your bouncing rates statistsics against your with regards to search engine ranking. This is because professionally designed site generates confidence and interest. It also assures the potential clients that you are serious with your business, and you are there to stay-who wants to deal with a scam website that can disappear overnight?

Thus, a professional, quality, and credible website forms a basis of your longevity. It also ensures that your brand identity is noted.

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Think Branding

New brands don’t just come from nowhere. They work hard to get the recognition they desire. They’re smart about appealing to their target demographics. Before a product or service launch, they take the time to think deeply about their brand identities: the colors, fonts, and other stylistic choices that make them who they are. In short, they engage in smart brand advertising. Smart brand advertising – Delivers a clear message ‘a brand identity’ – Establishes and confirms brand credibility – Connects with prospects intellectually and emotionally – Motivates prospects to take action – Inspires customer loyalty Brand Identity A brand identity is just what it sounds like: the character and personality of a brand. A brand identity is defined by the brand’s logo, web presence, product or service offerings, copy, and other visual elements that face the public. It is important that the company really thinks this through. Because these elements identify the brand, they should be strong and consistent. The brand identity can say a lot about the company as a whole. The logo, in particular, communicates volumes. The old adage “a picture is worth a thousand words” applies here. Carefully matching the logo to the brand is the first step towards smart brand advertising. Brand Credibility Good brand advertising builds brand credibility. It inspires trust. Customers feel comfortable buying from a brand they trust. It also works to establish a brand as a leader in its industry so it can out - compete other brands. You can accomplish this in many ways, and a combination of approaches will probably be the most effective. Connecting With Prospects Brand advertising is about connecting and reaching out to potential customers to offer solutions they need. These solutions may make intellectual sense but they should make emotional sense too.

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The more I advertise the more successful I become

Uncertain times makes individuals careful, particularly with money. Clients decrease their spending, businesses have less, so they consider reducing expenses. So what then to cut? Numerous companies decide to cut the Advertising budget first. They consider Advertising to be an optional expenditure, when in certainty it should be considered as essential. Here are a few reasons why:

Strengthen Your Reputation 
What are you telling your clients concerning your business and what do you represent, and how are you letting them know? Eliminating your communication can convey a negative message. In the event that your Brand Image lessens in the marketplace what impression will that leave in the minds of your clients? In the midst of vulnerability you have to keep your Brand Image noticeable and bolster its strength. If people are more inclined to shop around for deals because they are feeling cautious about spending, then it’s not the time to reduce your visibility in the marketplace. Your clients watching out for bargains, and you most ensure they discover you through your #Advertising

Continue Moving Forwards 
Positive thinking can be difficult to maintain in uncertain times, yet business relies upon forward movement. For a business to develop it needs to generate new business, and Advertising is a key method for doing this. You need to guarantee that your Brand Image is still out there and in if you cut back on your Advertising, you are less likely to be able to do this.

Hold onto the Initiative 
Each activity can offer ascent to a response, and with vulnerability comes opportunity. You can step up to the plate with your Advertising to increase a competitive advantage. Be prepared, in light of the fact that putting resources into a downturn is an Advertising major – this is key and it's tied in with remaining ahead and winning a bigger share.

Business experiences cycles, yet in the event that you've kept up your Advertising during a downturn, you're better situated to receive the rewards toward the beginning of the recovery or upswing. You're as of now ahead of the race, before the starting pistol sounds.

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There are only 2 ways: Be distinctive or Be different

Differentiation is the idea that there is a different perceived meaning behind every brand - the key here being perceived, whether or not the brand meaning is actually different. In other words, if consumers do not perceive a difference, it may as well not be there. Differentiation as the “reason to buy” for the consumer. Academics have touted that brands will only succeed if their consumers perceive them as different from their competitors; however, research has shown that brand perception scores actually tend to be quite similar.

Distinctiveness is a brand’s ability to stand out so that buyers can easily identify it: “I know these sneakers with a swoosh are Nike, and these sneakers with three parallel bars are Adidas”. Distinctiveness is also a brand looking like itself. This characteristic is far more critical for brands than differentiation, as they need customers to quickly notice, recognize, and recall their brand over others. Not only this, but distinctiveness, or branding, is legally defensible. Branding can be trademarked, but points of differentiation cannot.

So how can a brand be distinctive?
Distinctive elements show customers what the brand is. These can include colours, logos, taglines, symbols, celebrities, or even advertising styles. In defining these elements, brands can begin to craft a story around who they are, making sure this story resonates and lingers with their consumers.

These elements are critical, as they play to the neuroscience that helps construct and reinforce memories. As such, the repetitiveness and recognizability of these elements help remove consumer cognitive burden. The more consumers can rely on an implicit reaction to a brand, the more likely they are to buy that brand #innovate

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Music is the strongest form of magic

David Huron, Professor at the School of Music (Ohio State University) describes the functions of music in Advertising - One of the purposes is entertainment. Music makes commercials more appealing by adding aesthetical value to it. Moreover, music supports the structure and continuity of an ad by e.g. emphasizing certain parts. Music also adds memorability to commercials. A popular song, for example, can help to create a lasting impression in the viewer’s mind.

Finally, songs can also provide a message without the viewers consciously noticing it through the lyrics. As mentioned before, different music genres target different kinds of audiences. The right use of music can lead to an increase in sales, but the wrong one can lead to a lot of damage for the company #championscreate

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Advertising is content. Content is advertising.

What do we talk about when we talk about “advertising”?

1. Advertising is content. You can't think of ads as separate things any more. Without a captive audience, there's no such thing as "advertising" any more. It's just content. And it needs to be good/interesting/relevant content if you want to get anyone to pay attention to it.

2. Content is advertising. Might sound like a repeat of the point above, and in some way it is -- but it's highlighting the flip side. Any content is advertising. It's advertising something. Techdirt content "advertises" our business even if you don't realize it. Every bit of content advertises something, whether on purpose or not.

3. Content needs to be useful/engaging/interesting. This simply ties all of that together. If you want anyone to pay attention to your content (which is advertising something, whether on purpose or not) it needs to be compelling and engaging #innovate

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Type - vital component in the world of advertising

Typography refers to the art of arranging type. By using decisive typography you can create interest within your advert, as well as making the advert reading aspect effortlessly. This is a great way to grab readers attention making them more likely to read your advert, and hopefully purchase from your company, or recommend you.

When it comes to branding your business through advertising, typography is an important tool. Choosing the wrong font can give the wrong message, whereas choosing the right font can really drive the message home. 
Choosing the right words to use to get your message can sometimes be hard, words are powerful and depending on the design you use, as well as the type font can result in how the reader comprehends the information. You need to make sure your adverts are readable, the design and visual aspect of art also need to appeal to your brand. Imagine using comic sans on the Ministry of Health advert, for example, it just wouldn’t work. The message wouldn’t be taken seriously.

When you are trying to make your advert a success you need to make sure you are using the correct font, point size, colour, and letter spacing. All these small details can be the difference between your advert being a success or being a failure #innovate

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Let's pop ya colour

When it comes to building a brand identity or a content marketing campaign, it can be difficult to know where to start. You may have an initial idea but bringing it to life and getting your message seen are always harder than initially thought.

Generally, you want your content to resonate with your audience in some way and for them to reach and engage with your marketing. A study published in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science suggests that the psychology of colour may also be key to accomplishing this objective. The study demonstrates that consumers’ response to a brand’s identity and its use of colour may also affect their affinity for a brand. This means that marketers who successfully use colour psychology can influence purchasing habits and brand loyalty. While no one colour has been proven to drive sales more successfully than others, the use of colour psychology does appear to impact a brand’s ability to make itself stand out.

Many brands make use of the Isolation Effect, a principle that suggests that a unique colour in a field of uniform hues will stand out more. Brands that apply this psychological principle to brightly coloured call-to-action buttons on their monochromatic landing pages, or to bold packaging that stands out among competitors on store shelves, may have much more success in driving consumers to purchase. Colour is just one of many psychological tools that marketers can use to build successful brands.

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Know that advertising is key ingredient in business strategy

Businesses use advertising to accomplish varied goals, and companies place those ads in diverse media to further business goals.

1. Product Introduction and Awareness - when a business introduces a new product, advertising provides a means to make a large market aware of the product. Ads often focus on the product's solution to a common problem, such as a new cell phone's touted ability to solve the "dropped call" problem.

2. Product Sale Events - advertising provides an effective way to inform the market about limited-time product sale events. Sale-based ads can be generated by local retail outlets, or can originate from the product's national manufacturer. In many cases, the national manufacturer shares the cost of the ad with the local retailer. This type of advertising is called co-op advertising, and commonly uses manufacturer-supplied graphics and ad templates. The local retailer's name appears as the local product outlet.

3. Product Differentiation from Competitors - businesses frequently use advertising to show how their product has more benefits, or is more effective, than similar competitors' products. In some cases, the retailer feels it's necessary to advertise because the competition is blanketing newspaper pages or television airwaves with its own ads. Unless other market retailers that aggressively highlight their own products, they are likely to be overlooked in the minds of consumers.

4. Product Breakthroughs and Advancements - advertising is used to communicate dramatic product breakthroughs. Institutional Advertising to Promote a Good Image - type of advertising isn't really designed to increase sales, but is structured to promote a good image of the company or product. This perception will hopefully translate into future sales. even if the consumer doesn't buy the product right now, the company will have kept its name in front of its consumer market.

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Ad success: Define. Evaluate. Activate. Repeat

Content distribution plans have never been more important than today. A content distribution plan is a strategic guide that helps an organization disseminate its content, whether it’s promoting the latest blog post or sharing a new ebook. Publishing content can only take you so far; a content distribution plan makes sure that content is seen by the world. Content distribution plans are increasingly important because of the amount of data that individuals and brands are creating each minute.

89% of marketers say awareness is their brands #1 goal therefore there’s a whole lot of content being produced each minute and it’s pretty damn noisy. To cut through the noise and grab their attention, you not only have to produce quality content consistently but also do a killer job distributing it. 
Producing content is one thing - distributing it is another. Without distribution, your content won’t reach your target audience. They won’t know about your product, what it does and how it can help them reach their goals. They’ll have no clue why they should park their marketing dollars with your brand rather than your competitor. You won’t have enough leads to sell your product to.

But content distribution has always been regarded as the Achilles’ heel of content marketing. Not everyone knows how to do it right. For most businesses, content distribution means dumping links on social media, spamming forums, and running ill-planned ad campaigns in hopes of generating leads. They forget that not every content distribution channel is suited for their business, and that even if a channel works, it won’t give them the same results each time. To get consistent sales leads from your blogs, ebooks, email newsletter, podcasts, webinars, and any other content assets, you not only need exceptional content but also a solid content distribution plan. We are talking about the kind of stuff that drives brand awareness, generates leads, and opens the door to conversations with your prospects.

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Early to bed, early to rise. Work like hell and advertise

Without advertising of any kind, businesses DO fail all the time.

They may resist for a few years, in the state of a “financial zombie” - nor dead, or alive - and then quietly disappear.

Because THIS is true: One can have the best product or service on the face of the planet, but if no one knows about it, it’ll make no difference - they might as well have the WORST product or service.

Why do you think Coca Cola - the company with the highest “awareness level” in the world - spends hundreds of millions of pounds a year on advertising?

To stay relevant and top-of-mind… and to make you reach for a bottle just to “taste the feeling”. We live in a busy world.

We ourselves are busy and keep endless to-do lists.

That makes it easy to forget about a product or service unless we need it right away. (The hospital is not top-of-mind unless we get hurt and need to make a trip to Emergency. And when we do, we go to the closest one available…) By advertising, you “engrave” your product or service in the mind of your prospects and clients, so when they DO need it they reach for yours, instead of the competition.

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Fit is not a destination. It's a way of life

That's the suggestion of a short but intriguing video on Big Think recently featuring New York University neuroscientist Dr Wendy Suzuki. In it, she explains what her work is uncovering about the benefits of exercising in an unexpected new domain - creativity.

Her research deals with an area of the brain called the hippocampus, which is associated with memory. Injure this area and you'll suffer from amnesia. But according to earlier research, those with damage to their hippocampus also struggle when it comes to imagination. “An experimenter back in 2007 tested amnesic patients on tasks of imagination. And she asked them can you imagine a situation that you've never experienced before. In this case, it was imagining a tropical beach. And she compared the responses to people age matched and education matched people without hippocampal damage,” professor Suzuki explains. “What she found was these hippocampal patients, these amnesic patients who had normal language abilities, we’re unable to imagine a future scenario.” The trouble with the hippocampus, therefore, doesn't just mean you can't recall that beach vacation you took, it also means you can't imagine a future one in any great detail. “There's multiple modes of evidence suggesting the hippocampus is not only involved in memory but is also important for imagination. A key component of creativity,” professor Suzuki summarizes.

How is this fact at all related to exercise? Apparently, the best way for healthy folks to stimulate the hippocampus and generate new brain cells in the area is to get up and get moving. “Because of those brand new brain cells in my hippocampus, I'm also enhancing my imagination. So the hypothesis that I'm working on in my lab is: Can exercise actually enhance creativity?” Suzuki says.

The idea that exercise is a creativity booster is still a hypothesis and more study is needed, but according to Big Think, Suzuki has “a wide array of research” backing up her idea. Gym haters might not love to hear it, but it looks like there could be one more huge benefit of getting a regular fitness workout.

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Design is not just aesthetics. It is much more than what we see.

Good design is not just what looks good. It also needs to perform, convert, astonish, and fulfil its purpose. It can be innovative or it might just get the job done.

1. Good design is innovative - it can both be a break-through product or service, and a redesign of an existing product or service. A break-through product adds a before unseen value and function to the market and the user, while a redesign improves an existing product. Innovative design always develops in tandem with innovative technology, and can never be an end in itself.

2. Good design is functional - useful design fills its intended function – and likely both a primary and secondary function. A useful design solves problems and through its design, it optimizes a given functionality.

3. Good design is aesthetic - an aesthetic product has an inherent power of being able to fascinate and immediately appeals to its user’s senses. Only well-executed objects can be beautiful. The aesthetic quality of a product is integral to its usefulness because products used every day have an effect on people and their well-being.

4. A good design is intuitive - it explains itself and makes a user manual unnecessary. A design makes how to use, perceive, and understand a product obvious. A good design explains its function. It clarifies the product’s structure. Better still, it can make the product clearly express its function by making use of the user’s intuition. At best, it is self-explanatory.

5. A good design is a good business - assuming a product is designed to sell, a good design does well in the competition and stands out in a competitive market. Good business means a positive profit, why a good design sells well.

6. A good design is long-lasting - in a society of over-consumption, a good design has an important objective. It builds on sustainability in the sense that design and materials are durable and not just a trend. Waste and over-consumption is not a part of good design. It avoids being fashionable and therefore never appears antiquated. Unlike fashionable design, it lasts many years – even in today’s throwaway society #innovate

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Branding Re-Branded

An evening of inspirational chat and a day sat on the other side of our ‘Dig’ process – we take a trip to Bristol for an evening with Michael Johnson of Johnson Banks to do just that.

A talk with the Johnson Banks founder took us through the highs and lows of the branding process in 5 steps, not forgetting step 2.5 – the space in the middle where we sit around trying to translate strategy into creative. We heard about some of the design guru’s best projects, some of which have pushed boundaries, and a few of his own personal targets, including raising £2 billion for Cambridge University. With over £800m already raised, the campaign seems to be working wonders to educate the next generation.

The workshop explored the process of brand and the balance between thinking and doing, something we believe in. A strong, well thought out brand enables you to engage with diverse audiences and ensures your message is clear, meaningful and delivered consistently. Effective branding can change customer perceptions and build long-term relationships. Bad branding, on the other hand, can mean being completely misunderstood, considered unsuitable or overlooked – something reiterated by examples of what some brands have achieved and where some have truly failed.

Working through a branding exercise allowed us to open a dialogue between our team and others in the industry about what works well and what doesn’t, identifying gaps in various markets and ways to build a brand around the gap including narrative, visuals and campaigns to promote it.

It was a great opportunity to turn the tables and approach this as a client – a very interesting experience!

A huge thank you to Michael for his energy and enthusiasm and giving our team the chance to meet fellow creatives at the beautiful studio.

We at Radka Advertising know how important developing and adopting the right branding can be. We also know it’s vital that all imagery should be formed around the true identity and individuality of the client. This is something that we take great pride in; getting to know our clients and understanding who they are, what they do and their unique message. We do this through our Dig process – it’s a key factor in why our branding is so successful.

If you’re looking to brand or re-brand why not get in touch and let us know who you are, what you do and how we can help you get your message across.

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