BRAND   :  CREATIVE  :  VIDEO  :  WEB  :  CULTURE  :  MARKETING

Brand Creation Process

Branding is all about showing consistency and creating an image. The base of any brand strategy is designing your Logo, Website, and Promotional Materials to have cohesion. The value your product or service provides coupled with consistent branding increases your equity.

Take a look at Coca­Cola for example.

Coca-­Cola’s brand represents happiness in a bottle. Their “Share A Coke” campaign is the embodiment of their values. Share happiness. Share a smile. Share a Coke. Branding their business with Christmas, Valentine’s Day, The 4th of July, etc. makes visible year round and extending an open invitation to joy.

The consistency of their marketing materials is in the underlying message of sharing, whether it’s with family, friends, or strangers. Coca­-Cola’s brand equity is revealed in their brand loyalty that spans generations, ethnicity, and ultimately the globe.

We love to share at TalenAlexander, but we’re more about the love. We love what we do, which is create solutions through intensive brand development.

Your company:

Find out where your company brand currently stands. You should fall into one the following areas:

1. Your customers understand your product line and services and know exactly what you are going to deliver.
2. Your customers have a neutral view of your company because they don’t really comprehend what your products

are nor how you can be of service.

3. Your company’s visibility is infrequent and your customers have little understanding of who you are or what you

deliver.

In order to do so, we will collaborate and:

• Create a list all the features and benefits of your product line and services.
• Next, learn which benefits are most important to your customers?
• Finally, understand what benefits are emotional to your customers?

Your Image:

• Define the colors, logos, fonts and other visual elements that best represent your identity.
• Design a coherent strategy based on visibility that carries throughout all customer facing materials. For instance, websites, business cards, brochures and flyers.

In order to do so, we will:

• Create a Tag Line. Think of your tag line as your mantra and through our partnership we will encapsulate your brand into a concise statement of purpose.

Your Message:

What are you saying to your customers? Whatever it is, you need to make sure everyone in your organization carries the same message.

Front facing aspects of your brand from the clothes your customer facing staff wear to the signature on your email to the avatar on your social pages. They all need to convey the same message and carry the same consistency. Every firm has their own approach to their Brand Creation Process. Here is ours:

Consultation

The initial step with any branding project is determining the client’s needs. I meet with the client, ask questions, received as much existing brand collateral as possible; Sales brochures and other printed product information:

Visual aids, web content, sales scripts, demonstration scripts, product data sheets, product white papers. We then feel out how our client, you, envisions their brand being communicated to the public. By following this process we are able to determine whether or not we are the right fight for your business goals. If we’re a fit, we will provide you with a GFE Retainer to secure our services.

An Action Plan is necessary if you have several projects that will operating simultaneously; Web development, new marketing campaign, rebranding, etc. However, an action plan is not required until a solid foundation has been created:

Logo, Tagline, Domain, Landing Page minimum, Local Indexing, Basis Collateral.

Research

Once a project is underway, we spend time researching our client’s business in depth. This may include holding employee interviews, examining your existing website and social presence, and understanding your industry.

This extra research is key in discovering your unique culture. The information gathered is then used to craft your custom-tailored brand with consistency across all your marketing collateral.

Conceptualization:

The conceptualization stage can take anywhere from 2 weeks to 6 months depending on the complexity of our client’s problem and the time consuming act of the creative process; 1) Preparation, 2) Incubation, 3) Illumination and 4) Verification

Our incubation process begins with creating a list of keywords and/or sketches based upon information gathered in the research stage. All of this falls under the preparation stage.

Refining Stage

This is where the best ideas conceived during the conceptualization stage are more closely examined. Worthy marks are redrawn digitally accurately in Adobe with duplicate assets. <­­­I want to simplify this into layman’s terms.

During this stage appropriate typefaces, color schemes, and brand elements are designed. In the case of designing ornate logos, a rough mock­up is drafted and presented earlier in the refining stage in order to gauge our client’s response.

Presentation

As standard practice we send our client’s skeleton mock­ups of their business cards, letterhead, social icons, web design, etc. In doing so, we are able to provide our client their brand collateral in its practical application. We believe in transparency, so along with each preview a detailed summary noting design elements are included. By doing so, our clients are able to view our thoughts on their re­designed brand collateral and with the ability to include notes of their own.

Revisions

Upon receiving feedback from our client any noted design elements are addressed; color, font type, graphic modification, etc. In the rare instance none of the logo concepts are satisfactory, additional concepts are available for purchase.

Finalization

Once our client has given us the thumbs up on their newly created/redesigned brand, all finalized design files are compiled. Finishing out our creative process we begin implementing Phase 2, Brand Visibility. Assistance with printing can be arranged, as well as any stationery or online presence needs.

We live through our brand, and we encourage you to do so as well. “We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel…just have a little more fun with it.”