Today we will talk about branding and how creative branding can help a company achieve its goals.
Let's start with the standard. Let's answer the standard question "what is branding?".
“Branding is all about creating a unique identity for a company. A well-crafted brand establishes recognition, making it easier for consumers to identify and recall the company amid countless competitors. Effective branding sets a company apart from the crowd, giving it a competitive edge. It helps consumers understand what makes the company special and why they should choose its products or services over others.”
Now let's try to understand what the word "unique" means in the paragraph above. In today's world, just having your own logo is not enough to be unique. Today, people are getting acquainted with new brands every day and look at the logo less and less every day. Someday we might hear such proposals.
"Wow, you've seen what a great logo they have" but that's a rarity these days. I will say more today, more and more companies are making logos in different designers on different templates. Or they use different standard fonts. You don't have to look far for city halls, the same Twitter has rebranded, and if you've seen their logo, you'll understand.
Today people look at design, at ideas, at creativity. Today, more efforts need to be made in order to build an emotional connection between users and the company.
Today, when creating elements of a company's brand, you need to forget the standard "Patterns".
When creating ideas for a t-shirt, forget about the lonely logo on the heart.
When creating notebooks, forget about the single logo in the middle of the notebook.
When creating stickers, forget about Pinterest or Google.
When you create your site, forget about standard sections.
Use creativity, tell a story, the story of your company. If there is no good story: Invent one. If there is no creativity: Look for it. Create everything around this story and you will never miss. Well crafted branding helps marketers make better ads, product teams make better designs, and managers make better presentations.
Branding has the remarkable power to appeal directly to people's emotions, forging deep connections with your company. By leveraging branding strategies, you can build strong and lasting relationships with your audience, transforming them into loyal and devoted customers. Craft a brand that resonates deeply with people, eliciting genuine care and interest, giving you a distinct advantage over competitors who fail to harness this potent tool.
Thief is an example of the word "interest" in the paragraph above.
But first, not much backstory. We are a small fintech company that develops fintech solutions for banks and other companies. And our company was going to take part in the expo where different companies showed their products and talked about their services.
Our team had the task of creating banners and other brand elements such as pens and stickers for the expo. Despite the fact that our company offers cool services, many people are not always interested in financial solutions, many of which are people who have no connection with the financial world and will never see these products. Because many of the products are designed for the back office. But the company did not need everyone to be interested in the product; we were looking for exactly those few customers who would need our products. We also wanted to increase our brand awareness. And for all this, we resorted to creativity. The design team developed a creative that the company's management believed in.
It was with the help of this creative that "Interest" was created. And then the quality of our products has already done its job. We decided to try and take a unique approach to every resource we had at hand and get the most out of them. To begin with, we decided to make the stickers as creative and unique as possible. And most importantly, we tried to focus on the fintech industry. Our goal was to get everyone interested in stickers. Regardless of industry, age or preferences. To do this, we have made each sticker independent of the industry or specialization. And I will make a small spoiler: Everything worked. The stickers did their job. A lot of people got interested and wanted to get stickers. Many people, seeing others, came to our booth and there our specialists and products came into action.
Another interesting experience for us was the creation of branded T-shirts. As I said, we tried to bring something unique in all products that would once again emphasize the unique style of the company. We thought for a long time with the team how to make a simple T-shirt unique. Our task was to make the employees of the company wear them with pleasure, and the people around would want to know what kind of company is behind these T-shirts.
And then, among many brainstorms and ideas, an idea came to our mind. And instead of a thousand words, I'll show you an idea and then tell you what the highlight of this idea is.
If you just look at the T-shirt, we see that the whole idea is very simple, we played with words. The name of our company stands next to such words as "Home" and "Happiness". This is how we show the values of the company, but the T-shirt also says that all the coolest things start with the letter "H", after which people mostly think about what else begins with this letter. And so we believe that this is how we did several useful things at once.
But there is history in all this and it connects it all with the culture of the company. Now, when we want to wish someone a happy birthday, we simply add one word with the same letter that is somehow related to this person, and then we personalize our T-shirt; now it is not only characteristic of the company, but also of our person.
The next task that our team faced was the creation of a notebook.
Here we have focused on the history of our brand. And the story briefly says that your journey to the bank begins with us. And we in the company believe that every task that lies ahead of us is a road, it can be long, it can be difficult, but it must be passed. And we used this story for our notebook. Here's what we got.
While the whole world is brainstorming, our team is doing roadshtorm. The meaning is the same, but the result is completely different. Good branding is not just about selling products; it's about selling dreams, emotions, connections. It's about telling a story that resonates, a narrative that transcends boundaries.
In the complex realm of business, a design team's creativity is the alchemy that turns ideas into gold.
