By Elvire Gosnold, Director, Blabbermouth Marketing: One of the first questions I am asked when meeting a prospective client for the first time is, 'How do you ensure my adverts will not look the same as the other adverts in the same publication?'. The answer is 'brand'.
Brand is one of the most fundamental elements of marketing and vital in the promotion of your company. First impressions do count and repetitive brand reinforcement softens up prospects. I see many companies in the channel start out with a quickly thrown together logo and have never invested the time to take a step back and think about how their image and character is perceived by others.
How can companies take their logo and branding to another level and define their corporate personality? Brand identity is a mixture of vision, design, focus and detail. A brand needs to be well thought through as it has the purpose of communicating your corporate personality and values and also your business focus. A flash image is no good if no one has a clue what you specialise in or what your USPs are.
Establish a corporate personality and ensure this is present in all your communications, but be realistic. Just because you like a TV advert showing a gimmick it does not mean it is right for your company or the team that represents it. Ensure that you have full buy-in of the brand with your staff - their interaction with the client needs to further reinforce your image and message.
Detail is key and constant branding really helps to push your company into the forefront of your prospects minds and reinforce existing client engagement.
Finally, make sure your revitalised brand image is present in all corporate material. I often find there are sneaky documents hidden away in hard drives that are used regularly without others knowing!