Since the inception of modern industry there have only been a few companies that have endured through the shifts of political power, withstood self inflicted business blunders, and have weathered major economic downturns and turbulence. Businesses like Nike, Apple, Southwest and others can attribute their endurance and long term success to innovation, smart leadership and even luck; but perhaps the heart of long term business success can be attributed to the building of and maintaining of a strong brand foundation.
A brand foundation literally acts as such for the appearance, messaging, and culture for the business and brand. But what specifically makes up the anatomy of that foundation? Also, what elements are needed to create a composite of this anatomy? Let’s take a look at some of the elements of an anatomy and the tools you can use to craft these elements.
- “Why Statement”: For followers of Simon Sinek, this idea will not be foreign to you. Many companies can easily establish what they do and how they do it, few can tell us why. As Sinek can tell us in his book “Start With Why”, it is essential for a business to clearly articulate the why behind their company. Why does the company do what it does? Why was it formed? When a brand can establish and clearly state it’s why it is well on it’s way towards establishing its foundation.
- Target Audience: Establishing who you are building your business for should go hand in hand with why you are doing it. Identifying the people you are trying to connect with can be a crucial element in maintaining your brand foundation and making sure you never lose your way when steering the ship of your business.
- Establishing Features and Benefits: After knowing the why of your business and who you are building your company for, you can now begin to establish the potential or existing features of your business(ex. Nike projects the feature of having consistently strong athletic products which leads to the perceived benefit of athletic excellence through Nike products.) Establishing the features of your business and how your audience, customer, or user will benefit from these features are crucial to establishing the foundation of your brand.
Of course these are just a few of the elements that make up the foundation of a brand. Here are some tools I use to help craft and establish these elements:
- User Personas: Through strategy and research, a target audience can be established by crafting personas that represent certain demographics and psychographics that relate to your potential target market. A user persona can establish what businesses a potential user interacts with and why. This research can be used to establish messaging, marketing campaigns, and design assets that are intended to resonate with your desired target audience.
- Brand Analysis: This is also called a brand audit but that doesn’t sound nearly as pleasant! This versatile analysis can establish the voice & tone of the brand foundation, further explore the concerns and pain points of your users and message as well as analyzing the strength and weaknesses of your competitor brands
- Brand Attributes: After establishing things like the why and the who and and conducting a brand analysis you can start to establish the brand attributes for your business. This can include establishing the voice and tone of your brand, the look and feel, and the features and benefits of the brand. The attributes can be established in list form and used to conduct and create marketing/advertising campaigns and design assets like a logo or full visual identity system.
To sum up establishing a foundation for your brand and business can help you create a foundation and build a road map for your company to use for all the stages of it’s growth and maintenance. What are some of the things you are doing to establish the foundation of your brand? Let me know in the comments below.
Zachary Hill is a designer and Brand/UX strategist and is the co founder of Creative Honey, a podcast and blog dedicated to the journaling of the creative culture.
