Category: Social Media Marketing

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7th November 2017

5 Essential Tips To Boost Your Brand Launch

The countdown is on! While launching a brand can seem like a daunting thing to do! Deadlines are looming and your ‘to do’ list is growing daily. With good organisational skills and the right approach you can make sure it all goes off (somewhat) seamlessly! There will inevitably be the last minute last minute piece of collateral that has suddenly landed on your plate, but who doesn’t like a bit of excitement! Follow our 5 essential tips to boost your brand launch!

1. Never underestimate a good list

Make a list of everything that you want to achieve – new logo, brand guidelines, business cards, merchandise, press releases, stationary, website, social media, signage etc.

Once you have a list of all items you would like to have at your disposal for the brand launch, weight each item in terms of how critical it is to have for the launch date. Now you have a list of all items needed in order of their priority.

2. Budget Realistically

Make sure to get accurate pricing for each piece of collateral on your list. Once you have these costs, you can assess which items are critical and affordable for your launch and which items won’t make the final cut.

One important piece of advice at this stage is not to cheap out on the merchandise, print or web materials. You have invested quite a bit of money and time on your new state of the art brand design, so don’t compromise the brand value now by producing the cheapest pens you can find. Perceptions are very important at the new launch stage of a brand, so guess what happens when you start handing out cheap pens? They end up in the bin, not a good start. Spend a bit more here and it will stand to you in the long run.

3. Strict Timelines

In an ideal world, you would have as much time as you need for such an important launch right? I’m afraid not, certain items have a very long lead time, and this is something you need to find out sooner rather than later to avoid any nasty surprises. Start with your brand launch date and work backwards. Using the weighted list, you can now assess what is feasible to complete within your allocated time and budget depending on design and production lead times. You will be amazed how quickly time flies when you have a concrete deadline, so don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today.

4. Prepare Detailed Briefs

Sit down and think about each item individually, what do you envisage the final product looking like? What exactly are you hoping to get out of this piece of collateral? What content do you want to include? A good brief will give your design team a better idea of exactly what you are looking for, meaning the first proof will be closer to the final finished product. This saves both your time and the designers time and will also serve as a good exercise to really analyse what each piece of collateral is going to do to support your launch.

 

Get a second pair of eyes to look over everything. When you are very close to the ins and outs of a company, you would be surprised the things that you might overlook assuming this is common knowledge. Imagine that you are briefing this to someone who has never heard of your company.

5. Don’t forget your internal rollout!

It is important that your new branding and messaging resonates with your current and potential customers. In order for this to happen, your employees need to get on board first. New brands will often come with some internal change, so it is important to make sure that all your employees emanate your new brand values.

One way to do this is to have an internal brand launch before the external launch. Unveil your new brand and explain the decision making that led to the new branding and why it looks like it does. This level of involvement will help to make it an exciting time for everyone involved and help your employees buy into the new brand direction.

Give your employees useful gifts with the new branding on it, a nice pen and notebook goes a long way!

Some additional takeaways

Make a plan, make sure everyone is on board and then stick to it. Get approval on initial direction from the top so that there are no speed bumps further down the line that could cause delays and cost money.

If you are rebranding as opposed to launching an entirely new brand, don’t be sentimental. Out with the old and in with the new! Get rid of anything with old logo and branding as this will help drive the new brand forward.

Talk, talk, talk! Social media is a great way to build momentum ahead of a brand launch, share photos during it, and thank everyone afterwards.

Finally… launch and never look back!

 

Mark Sheehan, Account Manager

The IDEA team has created and implemented many well known brands and would be delighted to discuss any aspect of your brand with you. Initial meetings with our team are free. Call us on 01 2500050.

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28th July 2017

The Importance of Property Branding

As the demand for property rises and new homes start to seem like they ‘sell themselves’ sometimes brand can be ignored or at least pushed to ‘second place’ behind the immediate requirement to build and feed the demand. This is a wasted opportunity for additional profits, building brand recognition and long term corporate growth. While square footage is at a premium in Ireland, developers are not. Don’t sell yourself short!

 

Why Invest In Your Brand?

By failing to build a brand, property developers can not only be losing out on potential additional profits but also long-term gains by building a reputation and workable case studies for future opportunities. In today’s world, the reputation and brand of the developer and high-profile case studies are central to survival and long-term success. Building your property brand ensures profits, prominence and prestige.

 

Developing Your Brand

So what benefits will a focus on brand bring? There are tangible and intangible gains for both developer and buyer:

● Developing a sense of place and community

● Creating a greater sense of pride of place and belonging for a new home development or town centre

● Adding monetary value to the householder as an investment purchase

● Adding monetary value to the developer by phasing the sales releases (a potential buyer is more likely to remember and be enticed by ‘Luxury Lake View: Phase 2 ’

● Future-proofing both the area and the investment for further phases

 

Not Just a Name

For a new home development, a brand is not just about a new development name, but about the qualities that associated with that name and how these are expressed physically through house style, landscaping, play areas, street naming, road signage and wayfinding.

This is combined with communication touch points during the planning, build and sales phases from brochures, signage, advertising and show units through mobile digital applications such as videos, 3D walkthroughs, websites and even virtual reality show units. A strong sense of the place is paramount to getting most customers to connect with the property.

 

Survive or Thrive – Let IDEA Be Your Guide

In over two decades of working with the property industry in Europe, IDEA has seen many great branding triumphs, as well as a large number of developers who failed to focus on developing their brand. Can you guess which group are more successful?

In our experience, those that survive the occasional and inevitable downturns, invest in their corporate profile and reputation – developing their brand as high quality, conscientious developers. Those that endure, have focussed on building the brands of their developments – and this has been fundamental to their success.

Successful property developers pay attention to brand building. This not only increases their profits in the short term but also helps achieve future development opportunities, impacts planning decisions and helps attract partners and investors- inevitably securing their long-term success.

Sink or Swim – Why Brands Must Evolve

21st March 2017

Sink or Swim – Why Brands Must Evolve

Branding Strategy

“To Evolve: to change or develop often into a better, more complex, or more advanced state: to develop by a process of evolution.”

The world as we know it is in a constant state of change. So it is imperative now more than ever that your brand must evolve and adapt to changes in both the market and your customer base. Why? Because your customers’ needs are always changing and your brand needs to ensure it can keep up or be at risk of losing them.

Know your Customer

When undergoing any change it is critical to always keep your end goal in mind. Ask yourself who are you selling to? Who does your messaging need to resonate with? In most cases this will be your end customer, so evolving and adapting from the bottom up will ensure you can now only listen to your customers’ needs – but you can effectively and efficiently deliver on them.

Remember, it’s not always about being the biggest or even the best, it’s about engaging with your customer so they feel like they belong with your brand. This brings brand loyalty and returning customers.

Adding Customer Experience

Brands need to be streamlined to communicate efficiently with customers who are becoming more demanding than ever. You must offer them more than a product or service; the most successful brands offer their customers unrivalled positive customer experiences.

By being proactive about your brand experience, you can position yourself for success. Additionally, by fine tuning your design and messaging, you are creating consistency across all of your brand touchpoints which will lead to great customer experience. Customer satisfaction (analysed with surveys and focus groups) can be a powerful and cost-effective tool, which can help you maintain a successful brand.

It’s not just about creating awareness or a persona – you need to create meaning for your end customer and stay ahead of your competition. This process needs to be thought through in detail, and a great way of doing this is to conduct an in-depth workshop. A quick fix is never a good solution and if you don’t adapt to address this in detail, it can derail future plans and projects. Quantitative and qualitative research can bring valuable results and help your roadmap your journey to success.

Stand Out From The Competition

Competition is increasing, as hundreds of startups emerge from the market, more enthusiastic and willing to do more to gain a customer base. One of the most important steps to gaining a market share is your website. To succeed in delivering your brand messages effectively, you need a sleek, modern website design that is easy to navigate and presents information quickly. Attention spans are decreasing, so brands needs to be aware of this ever-changing landscape in order to keep all elements of their business up to date. Websites are crucial, as these are one of the main points of contact with your customers. It is also very important when designing and developing your website to make sure that it is built in such a way to allow scalability. If your brand evolves and changes over time, you need to be able to update your website to reflect this.

When analysing your brand and business plans some can hold an “it’s not broken, so what is there to fix” view. IDEA would champion the alternative view that while your brand may not seem broken it could benefit from some maintenance. A machine that isn’t regularly oiled is more likely to fall apart.

Look at Apple – the world’s largest information technology company. Founded in 1976, the company’s logos has been re-envisioned and redesigned several times. Each revamp represents a fresh approach for Apple – yet while certain elements such as colour have changed, it’s apparent who the company is. Ask yourself this, would Apple now be worth an estimated $178.1 billion if they were still promoting their brand using their 1976 logo? Admittedly your company might not be Apple, but why not aim to be?

Strategy for Success

Always analyze and review your branding – you can either be moving forward or standing still. So ask yourself this where are you, and more importantly – where are your competition?

We believe there is always something you can improve on. Being stagnant will not bring success, so why not choose to be a champion? IDEA are here to advise on how you can build and develop your brand to help you engage with your customers and bring customer loyalty. Why not get in touch?

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25th January 2017

5 Tips On Being The Best In Branding

Although there have been thousands of books written on the subject of branding, there are some simple points worth considering in relation to your brand.

 

1) Branding is not just for big companies

Too often brand experts use examples such as Apple and Nike to explain branding. This gives the impression to SME’s that branding is expensive and only a ‘Big Company’ issue. All companies and organisations have brands, they just don’t all deliver them effectively. The first step is to identify your organisation’s core values and see if these are been delivered to the right audiences. Your brand, in essence, is your business story. The variety of tool you use to communicate this should reflect your history, values and ambitions.

 

2) Your logo is not your brand

Your logo is simply the single consistent identifying mark that helps people recognise and remember you. Your brand can be the way your telephone is answered, it can be your elevator pitch as well as all the other items such as websites stationery, packaging and brochures.

 

3) Your brand ambassadors

Your most effective brand ambassadors are staff. If they don’t get it your customers and suppliers won’t. We encourage every company to explain the brand’s history and values to their staff so that they are delivered consistently.

 

4) A Strong Brand is a Consistent Brand

The key to good engagement with your brand is to keep it consistent. In fact, consistency and coherency are the two key goals of any brand. If you’re a small company it’s relatively easy but if you are larger Brand Guidelines are essential. Brands can be like a virus, as soon as you release a new brand into an organisation it simply spread. Without guidelines, it becomes a bad virus and can kill your brand.

 

5) Try to be brave

We live in an extremely visual world, 85% of your brand’s delivery will be in the visual arena. There are many bad brands out there and simply being another one should not be your goal. Be extraordinary and tell your story well, ensure that at every point that your brand touches other groups or individuals that it is striking and memorable.

 

Finally, don’t do it yourself – hire experts.

Nicholas Cloake (MIDI) Bid & Retail Account Director 

The IDEA team has created and implemented many well known brands and would be delighted to discuss any aspect of your brand with you. Initial meetings with our team are free.

 

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26th September 2016

Avoid confusion – Our tips for writing a great brief

In our eye’s, the single most important document we use on our projects is a briefing document. When we’re approached by a client with a new project we need to gather specific information which will give us a better understanding of the clients needs. While you, as a client, can easily just jot down some notes and points that the client gives you it is far more productive and organised to have a document that you can fill out along with the client and a list of questions and topics that will guide you in the meeting. Alternatively, some clients decide to write their own briefs which are just as helpful but may be missing some information so you may like to add to it.

So, in saying that, where do you start when writing a brief? Well as the song goes… “Let’s start at the very beginning”…

CLIENT BACKGROUND

If you’re working with a new creative team then it’s a good idea to give them a short background history so they will get a good understanding of you and your business. You should communicate to them what your ambitions are for the business so they can get an impression of your personality and the personality of your business.

PROJECT OVERVIEW

You need to give as much information as you can on the project itself. The deadline for the project is very important and from there you can work backwards as to what stages need to be completed by when. Details such as the objective of the job, your target market, any restrictions the project may have and examples of work you like or dislike which will give them an understanding of their expectations. You also need to let them know if you have any resource materials such as imagery or illustrations that needs to be used in the job.

PROJECT DETAILS

The next step is to determine the specifics of the job. The medium it will be executed in so whether it’s online (i.e. website or social media) or offline (i.e. brochure, packaging, signage, advertising) and all the information for this. So for example if the job was a brochure you need to discuss the size, quantity, how many pages might there be, any finishes you might like such as gold foil or a special paper.

Sometimes you might have fixed idea’s of what you’re looking for and sometimes you won’t, so you will need guidance from creatives on what will and won’t work and what idea’s they might have to best suit the project. By having all the above information first this will help you and the creative team in coming up with a strategy that works for you and your business.

And that’s it! Some of these points might seem obvious but by having them in a structured way in a document before you meet with your creative team will ensure you don’t forget anything and will be fully able to brief the job as best you can. You might find it opens up your mind to other avenues you hadn’t thought of or give the creatives a much better idea as to how the project might develop.

Get in touch

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