In your personal life, you’re not just a ‘human’. So why should a business be just a ‘business’?
We all have different facets. They shape what we do, and how we live our lives. We may identify with a gender or an ethnicity. We may identify as parents, or as friends. A part of our identity may be based on what we do for a living, or what we’re passionate about. And we put all these things forward to communicate to others who we are, and what we believe in.
It’s the same sort of thing when it comes to businesses.
There’s much more to your business than the fact that you work in a particular field and you’re registered with Companies House. By developing a brand identity, you can ensure you’re communicating this with your target audience.
Understanding brand identity
Just as our personal identity shapes how we present ourselves to others, a brand identity shapes how a business presents itself to its audience. Ultimately, a brand identity takes everything that a business is about, and translates it into a visual element that fully represents that brand.
When you build a business identity, you can use this to define how you put your business out there in front of your customers and audiences. Your business identity impacts everything from your logos, colours, fonts, and layouts to your website design, marketing materials, content, and packaging.
Why is brand identity important?
As humans, we’re naturally visual learners, and we use visual cues as part of day-to-day life. Imagine you were asking a friend to pick up another friend from the train station. They’ve never met. You tell your friend that the person they’re looking for is called Dave, and is a web developer. You also mention that Dave is 6 feet tall, with dark curly hair and a beard. It’s clear that Dave’s name and occupation aren’t going to be useful in recognising him. We need visual cues to help us out.
That’s pretty much how it works with businesses, too. A business’s name, and information about what it does, aren’t necessarily useful to visual learners when it comes to building brand recognition and familiarity.
Instead, audiences need visual cues. That’s why a brand identity is so important.
Connecting identity and perception
The human mind is trained to connect certain visual elements with specific ideas and concepts. That’s why, for example, eco-friendly businesses often use green in their designs. We automatically connect the colour green with nature and the environment. We can use this to our advantage.
Businesses can use the psychology of colour – and other forms of psychology – to turn all the characteristics they identified when building a brand strategy into a powerful visual representation.
What this means is that audiences aren’t simply looking at a business name and function. They’re not looking at web developer Dave. Instead, they’re looking at a logo or other form of imagery that helps them recognise who this business is, through the way it presents itself to the world.
Defining and building brand identities is our speciality. Get in touch to find out more.
