Do you know what branding really is?

Branding isn’t just the logo, typeface, colors, and website for your company. They are the creative expression of your brand. Your brand is an essence, a feeling, and an aspiration that should guide the design and implementation of your brand through design and marketing.

Your brand essence is made up of three parts, which we call the brand foundation: you’re core values, your brand message, and your brand personality. Like any foundation, you want these three parts to be as rock-solid as possible, so the brand you build is on the best footing that will last.

If one or all of these parts of your brand foundation are not solid, that means trouble. The good news is you are watching this, and we are here to help. We always start with the brand foundation before we get into design and marketing, and that’s how we get unmatched results for our clients.

If you need some help, we got your back. DM me or shoot us an email and let’s talk about your situation and explore the right path forward for building your formidable brand. It’s too late to get it together.

Transcript

It’s your boy, Bobby G from Propr Design. And today I want to talk about what branding really is, right? So, you know, a lot of conversations we have, and my experience throughout the 20 plus years I’ve been in this game, you know, branding, for most folks is about a logo or a message, or look and feel right. Now, certainly, that is an important part of a brand. But that’s
the second part of the brand. That’s the expression part of a brand. Before you can get to an expression, right, you have to know what you want that expression to feel like, you want to know, what is appropriate to design, what’s appropriate to say, for your company? What’s the voice to say it in, right? So, before you can get to design, before you can get to a website before you can get to marketing? Right? What are you actually putting out there? Is it right for you, you’re just hoping to get lucky, you know, don’t help it get lucky, just do it the right way, and, you know, your business will be better off for it. So we have three parts that we believe make up sort of that foundation of a brand, right? The first part is your core values, the core values are the non-negotiable aspects of, of your business of your brand. Right? They are the things that you use to compete with your competition with, you don’t compete on, you know, features or services, right, because then you’re a commodity, you don’t want to be that because commodity just people just want the cheapest price. But when you compete on your values, you are creating a link a relationship with not just your customers, but your staff, your people, right. At the end of the day, people are buying things that people are making, your company is made up of people. So it’s all about those relationships Anyway, you can’t you can’t ignore that you can’t automate it, you have to acknowledge it and, and really believe in it, and you’ll be better off for it. So core values, you know, are those three or four things that are non-negotiable, right? And they’re not just words like integrity, or trust, right? Those are meaningless, put it in your own terms, right? You give a shit, you do the right thing. You act in your clients best interest, you act in your people’s best interests, like those are some of our core values, our principles at Propr. And you should have your own, you should be able to use those to make decisions, you should use those to compete with other businesses that are in your industry. Right. So number two, is your core message and your core message is made up of a few things, right? It’s not just what you do and who you do it for, or how you do it, right? Those are part of it. But the primary piece is that why? Why do you do it? Right. And, you know, it’s the why’s kind of made famous by Simon Sinek, and his TED talks and his books, but you know, that exists way before him. And, you know, really good leaders and really good businesses, historically, really focused on their why and it kind of leads to longevity, right? Then what you do is important, but that can change over time. But why you do it is another piece, it’s kind of non-negotiable, right? And that helps you you know, when you identify your core values and why you do what you do, and how to hire the right people, to work in your organization, how to find the right folks to work with, right, if you’re, you know, like an agency or you work with clients or customers, you’re on the service side or selling products to people or services to people, you want to work with people that share your values, right, you want to work with people that your why is making their lives better, right. So, what you do is part of that core message, who you do it for, as an also part of that equation, but that can change over time and your core message will kind of be the essence of all other messages you put out right and your core values or or your guiding principles for your company. And the last piece is the brand personality, the personification of the brand. This this establishes what’s appropriate in terms of messaging, right, not your core message, but what how you how you say your core message. tone of voice the language you use is an irreverent, is it formal? Is it laid back? Is it motherly? If you don’t know that, then you’re missing pieces to the foundation of your brand. If you don’t know, your core values, and your whole team doesn’t know your core values are in your head, then you need to extract those and make those tangible and practical to people. Because those are the tools that you’re going to give your staff you’re going to empower your staff with, to make have the courage to make the right decisions for your business, to create the kind of culture, that of excellence, that’s going to allow you to compete on your core values, and your products and services and features and whatever, and be better, right? And when you have those three pieces together, then you can get into that creative expression. So you start with your brand strategy. That’s your brand foundation. And then you get into creative expression, right? designing logos, whatever color palettes, typography, websites, content, you know, word image, video, marketing strategies, marketing plans, those all come out of, you know, the other side of things. So what we do Propr is we bridge that gap, right? We help you define your brand strategy as brand consultants, as marketing consultants, what’s the best message to get to the right people in the right place and get them to act, right? To become likable, to compete to win. So we want to bridge that right? Before we get into pushing any pixels and doing anything on the web and get it reading any data. We want to know what’s right, what’s appropriate for you. And then give you that knowledge and power as well as give us that knowledge and power to make the best decisions to get the best results. Right? So if you’re struggling with that, you know, Fret not, most people are, but the good news is you’re watching this and we can help. So drop me a message, shoot me an email, whatever, at Propr Design, we are all about getting those unmatched results for our clients. And we do it by bridging the gap between strategy and implementation.