At Design Grafico, complete brand design is one of our favourite things to do – and, as it turns out, is something we’re also pretty good at. We recently won an International Summit Award for our work on RenoRun’s complete branding campaign, a full-scale campaign that saw every aspect related to the company fully branded with their image: logo, stationary, business card, uniforms, personalized vehicles – not to mention the development of an app. It was done so that every possible interaction had with RenoRun becomes a marketing opportunity. We created a 360-degree campaign that covers all bases in promoting RenoRun, their services and their brand, and is the kind of campaign that is essential to the relevance and success of a business.
What goes into a campaign, you might ask? First thing’s first, your logo. Your logo is your signature, your identifier – it’s you. Then look at how its components – colours, typeface, etc. – can lend themselves to an overall look. From there, evaluate all the possible communication and marketing tools related to your business and at your disposal that would need to be branded: signage, business cards, packing, commercial space, merchandise, social media, etc. Once those have been identified, brand each element individually, but so that it perfectly compliments the rest of your marketing materials; aim for the sweet spot where your marketing tools can hold their own and make an even more powerful impact when all together.
Your marketing suite is now ready to go, so how do make a statement in your industry? That’s where your brand comes in: what you are about and what you offer are key components in creating a brand narrative, and it is important that the tone of that narrative matches your business or product. An independent theatre’s branding and an accounting firm’s branding should be telling two different stories, about two different things, to two different audiences.
Now, how do you communicate your brand, how do you tell its story? You develop a strategic branding plan to lay out how it should be implemented: what is the feeling you are trying to sell? What is the reaction you are trying to elicit? Where will this branding appear? What channels of communication are best suited to your business or product? Who is your audience? Should you engage more with your current audience or appeal to a new demographic? What marketing mediums should you push, be it websites, applications, print media, etc.? These are the important questions to ask, as they will help define the blueprint of your branding campaign.
Finally, an essential ingredient in this recipe for success is the collaboration between your designer and yourself to find the solution that is right for you. You know your product and you know your industry, but your designer knows how and what to communicate, and to provide you with the tools to be effective. A successful branding campaign is all about knowing how to make it all work cohesively, including with your designer.
