April 13th, 2025
What Is Branding?
Branding is the art of shaping perception—it's how people see, feel, and remember your business. It goes beyond a logo or a catchy name; it's the voice, visuals, designs, values, and experiences that create a deeper emotional connection between you and your audience. A strong brand builds trust and loyalty. It can help you stand out in a diluted, over-crowded market. It is the personality of your business. Where do we start though?
Establish Who You Are
Your company has it's own personality: A tone of voice, style, and feel. Think about your best friend—how they dress, how they talk to people, how they are perceived—this same logic is built into what we call a brand. Branding can be applied to individuals as well as businesses. We look at influencers, celebrities, and artists—and they all have their own brands. Let's start to figure out your brand.
Mission Statement: Why do you exist? What is your companies mission?
Vision: Where do you see the company going?
Core Values: What do you stand for?
Example: The mission statement for Life Is Good is "To spread the power of optimism". You can already understand who they are as a company and what they are trying to do from this one sentence.
Understand Your Audience & Market
No matter how hard you try "You are not building a brand for everyone". Think about who it is you are trying to reach and how you are going to do it. Who is your ideal customer? What are their problems? How are you going to solve them? How does your audience interact with the world around them? Look to your potential competitors and study their customer base to get a general knowledge base. The better you can understand your target market the better you will be able to build your brand to reach them. If they are more playful and energetic then you will want your company to be the same. If they are serious and more straight forward then maybe you leave the jokes out of your copy and stick to formal visuals and designs.
This one ties right back into the last paragraph. You need to know who you are up against in order to creatively beat them at their own game. You see what they are doing and find the gap that you can fill. Maybe they aren't offering a specific service that you think people need. Figure out what your main competitors are not doing. You want to stand out amongst the crowd, and the best way is to fully understand who you are competing with.
Here is a quick list to get you started:
Name - First impressions are important, your name is simply that.
Logo - An icon to recognize you by.
Typography - Which fonts will represent you in all of your designs.
Color Scheme - Which colors define you. Think color psychology.
Tone of Voice & Personality - How you will sound when talking to your audience
In the photo below you can see a company I recently worked with, building out their brand identity. We created a logo, chose the font types, colors, and the overall personality of the business. The name was already playful, so we decided to lean into that tone. Whatever choices you make for your brand, you want to stick by their side forever. Why? Because consistency in branding is how we ultimately build trust.
We as human beings connect with one another through stories. Everyone loves a great story. Stories bring people together by activating a mix of thoughts, emotions, and human connection. As we engage with a story, our brains begin to mirror its events—feeling what the characters feel, releasing empathy-boosting chemicals like oxytocin. This phenomenon, called narrative transportation, creates a shared emotional journey that deepens our understanding of one another and builds a real connection. The key word here is connection. We want to connect with our target market, and the best way to do that is to tug on their heart strings with a narrative piece that they can share in emotionally.
A list of ways you can establish authority and presence in the market:
Social Media Profiles
Email List/Newsletter
Make Some Merch
You want to create this visual representation of your company (brand), and now keep it consistent everywhere. This is how we build trust and loyalty. By staying true to our brand guidelines we are subsequently telling our audience that this is who we are and this is what we stand for. We continually show up and deliver on our promises and our customers will slowly start to believe in us.
You've spent all this time now creating the perfect brand identity for you or your business, and now it's finally time to share it with the world! You can start putting out teasers that something big is coming, hand out your business card, and start to organically grow.
Start to grow your business and while doing so collect any data you can about your audience and how they are interacting with you. From your website, Google analytics, Google search console (how are they searching for things), Instagram engagement (what's working and not working)—Use all of this data to continually fine tune your branding and your approach.
