Tag: Social Media Trends

Idea Digital - Leading Marketing Agency in Dublin Ireland

24th May 2018

Our Rebrand Journey

After 22 years of breathing life into brands for our clients it was Idea’s turn for some love. We felt our mission, brand statement and values were no longer reflective of who we were. So we assessed the risk of rebranding, conducted a client survey, and then asked ourselves some tough, but thought provoking questions. Who are we, and what is it that we love to do?

The results of our client research gave us great reassurance about to our decision to rebrand. What also emerged from this process was that it was time for Idea & Idea Digital to merge under one overall Idea umbrella to create a fully integrated agency with a strong team of creative consultants.

Keeping the name Idea was probably the easiest decision in our rebranding process. It was too good to change. Initially it stood for Image, Design, E-Commerce and Advertising. All which remain relevant to the business today, but we work with ideas…creating them, growing them and making them happen, so it was a no brainer to keep the name, it stood the test of time since Ciaran Flanagan named the company 22 years ago! The client feedback confirmed that this was the right thing to do!

We divided our talented team into two and conducted an internal competition to develop a new brand and overall brand strategy for the business and we were delighted with the end result! We refreshed our colour palette (hello raspberry red!), modernised our logo and more importantly updated our brand values to reflect who we are now. We are thrilled with our new look, energy and feeling. But rest assured, we are still the same Idea that thrives on using branding, marketing and digital to craft strategic and design success stories.

Our new brand reflects the core philosophy of our business; collaboration. We believe great work comes from working collaboratively with great clients and fellow creative partners.

Our Rebrand Journey

There were several challenges we faced along the way:

  1. Time: Making time to treat ourselves as a client. Our client work always came first, which resulted in our rebrand taking a lot longer than we’d have liked (despite us having all the skills in-house!)
  2. Colour: After some initial testing it became clear that the neon colour we initially chose was going to be a nightmare to work with and reproduce consistently, so we had to change it! It is important to examine fully how a colour will work across all channels, digital, print, paint etc before going with it!
  3. Budget: it would be lovely to change everything at once, but that is just not practical, so we focussed initially on the client facing touchpoints…our website, signage, meeting room, furniture and redecorating key areas of the office (pop in and see our new look!)

Key learnings  

Don’t try to do it all at once, we had to phase our work with the rebrand for both time and budgetary reasons. Once the initial audit was done we knew the scale of the work involved and we had to break it down into phases…we are delighted to have our new logo/ website /documentation and initial office refresh done…but there is plenty more to come in the phases to follow!

Tips

Do some research with your clients, you might think you know what they want/think but let them tell you…this allows for concrete foundations for change/keeping some elements of your brand/values/name/colour palette/tagline/messaging.

Our advice for anyone rebranding

  1. Decide why you are rebranding in the first place.
  2. Understand the scale and scope of the task
  3. Set realistic expectations and measure performance
  4. Find out what people’s views of the current brand are before you change anything
  5. Involve your people in shaping a new brand for the future
  6. Use the opportunity to sharpen up your act across the whole business

 

Give us a shout if you’re thinking of rebranding or if you’ve a development you’d like to develop a brand for…having just gone through the process ourselves we know what it’s like to be in your shoes! info@idea.ie.
Check out some of the works done by Idea Digital

Also read:

 

link building blog

1st May 2018

Link Building: 5 Things To Remember

A link building process should be central to every website’s SEO strategy. But what exactly are links, and why are they so important?  

What are links?

Links are the streets and avenues that connect websites. According to moz.com ‘search engines have treated links as votes for popularity and importance in the ongoing democratic opinion poll of the web. Links aren’t everything in SEO, but search professionals attribute a large portion of the engines’ algorithms to link-related factor.’ So in other words, link building is important to boost your web ranking and website traffic. It helps algorithms see what websites are indirectly connected, helping them with quality control. To put it another way – ‘your tribe is your vibe’!

Link building is the process of ‘earning’ links for your website from other external websites. Backlinks can be received from social media websites and other directories, but usually come from blog posts and the content of other websites. Ideally, you would hope to receive backlinks from other companies in your industry and field. For example, a farm compliance application company may reach out to big players in the agriculture industry, such as Bord Bia. But how to you plan an excellent link building campaign?

Here are Idea’s Top 5 recommendations:

(1) Create quality content

Before you set out trying to gain quality backlinks to your website, you have to give these websites a reason to share your links in the first place. Writing quality blog posts or articles on an industry-specific topic will surely stand out to the websites that you hope to receive recognition from. Try and make your pieces long, elaborate and thought-provoking. Don’t throw in random industry buzzwords where they don’t make sense. The algorithms will outsmart you!

(2) Guest post on other websites

Posting on industry-related websites is so key to link building. Make it a win-win situation and ask the owner of the website you are posting on to write one for your website too. More people will come across your website name and links which is sure to drive more traffic to your website. It’s a win/win for everyone!

(3) Be wary of websites linking to you

When it comes to receiving backlinks from other websites, you should focus on quality over quantity. A quality backlink is a link that comes from a reputable, well-respected website with a high Domain Authority (DA). A website with a DA score of over 60 is considered good, 40-59 ok but anything less than 40 isn’t too great. Receiving links from websites with a low or ‘spammy’ score may be picked up on by Google. Robots will crawl these spammy websites and may also deem your website to be ‘spammy’. Be selective in which websites you receive links from!

(4) Create aesthetic Infographics

Infographics have the potential to add real quality to your websites blog posts/articles. They’re simple, usually colourful, easily shareable and simple to understand. Infographics, when designed correctly, can really stand out on your website. Create an infographic that provides value to your reader. In turn, these people are likely to share your infographic on their website. Even better!  

(5) Share your content all over social media

Creating and sharing content on social media platforms is a great way to improve your backlink strategy as Google uses social signals for rankings. The best way to gain attention and traction on social media websites such as Facebook and Instagram in particular, as well as Twitter is to run a competition that is sure to engage with your customers and increase the number of links going back to your website.

 

Do you have questions about your website’s SEO or online strategy?  Why not talk to Idea – info@idea.ie.

We help businesses to grow online by providing various professional services like:

Follow Idea Digital to stay updated with the latest social media trends , tips and tricks and other Irish News
Also if you want to start your career in Digital Marketing filed, Contact us today we’re hiring!

 

Map Website

12th March 2018

The .ie Debate: Safeguarding your Intellectual Property

You protect your home with an alarm, your car with a locking system and your computer with a password. Have you ever thought about how important it is to protect your intellectual property?

Did you know significant changes have been made to .ie registrations? From this month, the need to show a ‘claim to the name’ when registering a new .ie domain will be removed. Do you understand the implications of this for your business?

Stipulations in the Past
Previously, an applicant wishing to have a website with .ie domain name must have proven they had a valid claim to the desired name and a real, tangible connection to the island of Ireland. Now, anyone with a connection to Ireland will be able to register any name with the .ie domain without having to prove claim to the name. Registrants will still need to prove their real connection to the island of Ireland, and provide photo ID to prove their identity, but they no longer have to prove they have a claim to the desired domain.

How this impacts you?
Would you like anyone to be able to set up a website that had your name, business name or trademarked material in its .ie address?

If you have intellectual property to protect, Idea recommends you register and safeguard any .ie domains that you don’t want to fall into fraudsters, competitors or domain stockpilers hands. Over 239,000 .ie domains have been registered. Have your protected yours?

Protection:
Chief executive of the IE Domain Registry (IEDR) David Curtin maintains “Protecting .ie domain holders has always been IEDR’s first and foremost priority, and that has not changed…. we already have in place many protections to safeguard the .ie namespace against hacking and malware hosting, and we are constantly updating our own technology and best practice to ensure that the .ie namespace remains secure.”

Idea believe a company should take the necessary steps to protect themselves from unavoidable confusion and unnecessary work due to not securing .ie domains that should rightfully be theirs.    

What you can do:
Now is the time to register your .ie domain extension for your website and protect your business and company name. Register your domain with us for as little as €75 plus VAT per year.

If there are any .ie domains you want to register or protect contact Oisin to discuss in more detail. Email oisin(at)idea.ie or call 01-2500050.

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22nd February 2018

4 Tips to Maximise your Pay Per Click Strategy

AdWords allows you to maximise your online advertising strategy – displaying your ads to the right people, in the right place and at the right time. Here are four tips to boost your PPC strategy in 2018:

(1)  Include Negative Keywords

Negative keywords are keywords that wouldn’t make sense to your target audience or bring in the leads you desire. Negative keywords remove the search results you wouldn’t want to be found under. For example, if you own a café and only sell breakfast, you would use ‘lunch’ and ‘dinner’ as your primary keywords.

If you’re unfamiliar with Negative Keywords, Google can walk you through the process step by step. Struggling to find inspiration for Negative Keywords for your campaign? You can check the ‘Matched Search Queries’ in Google Analytics to see what people have been searching for.

(2)  Insert Conversion Points on your Landing Pages

You’ve spent a long time optimising your ads so they rank highly on Google’s Search Engine Results Page, but then you link your ads to a generic landing page. This can prove to be a bit of a conversion killer.

Your landing page plays the most prominent role in driving conversions. You can have the most aesthetic website in the world but if you have no conversion point there’s a very good chance that customers will backtrack, unless they scour your website trying to find that all important CTA button.

Having a conversion point is an immediate selling point. The conversion point lines up with the ad that brought your customer to your landing page. The customer fills in your form and then you have a new conversion.

(3)  Set up Custom Audiences for Remarketing

Creating custom audiences in AdWords is a great way to help boost your conversions. You can create unique audience reports based on dates, page visits, actions taken on pages, etc.

For example, you can create a custom report based on people who have visited your landing page and pricing page. This allows you to track prospective customers who are potentially about to convert. You can then follow up with these people and hopefully entice them into converting. Remarketing is a handy tool and should be used in all PPC strategies.

(4)  Optimise for Mobile Phone Users

As of 2016, mobile traffic has surpassed desktop-based traffic. Since mobile traffic is steadily increasing, focusing solely on desktop-based traffic could be detrimental to your business. One of the best methods for optimising mobile is by adding sitelink extensions to your mobile based-ads.

When someone is browsing on their mobile they need real time information and do not have time to stop. For example, if your company sells customisable jackets you could have sitelink extensions such as ‘styles’, ‘designs’ and ‘colours’ which provide users with easy access. Sitelink extensions should be one of your key strategies when trying to convert more mobile searchers.

 

Paid Search is constantly changing – staying up to date means you can maximise your budget, resources and results.

 

Need advice about your online strategy? Talk to Idea!

15th February 2018

What does Psychology have to do with Design?

Over the last few years, psychology and cognitive science have been taking an important role in design discussions, especially when it comes to User Experience and Interaction Design. But what does psychology really have to do with design? Is this just a fleeting new trend or do both fields of study really mix? To answer these questions we have to go back to the basics and ask ourselves – what is psychology?

 

How Psychology Impacts Your Design

According to Encyclopedia Britannica, we can define psychology as a “scientific discipline that studies mental states and behaviour in humans and other animals”, and if we go even further, they describe cognitive psychology as a “branch of psychology devoted to the study of human cognition, particularly as it affects learning and behaviour.”

 

If you come from a design background you probably know that design involves the conceptualisation and creation of new things, but much more than that –  design is “a discipline concerned in planning the creation of a product or service with the intention of improving human experience with respect to a specified problem”. With that said, it’s impossible to design anything effectively if you don’t take into account human experience and consequently, the way people think. It’s the way people interact with the designer’s creations, how they perceive and how they appreciate it (or not) that will define if a product fits its purpose!

 

So that means every designer has to be a psychology expert? Of course not, but knowing the basics and trying to keep up to date with research on human behaviour and cognition will make their designs better by understanding the people that interacts with their designs. Of course this is not an easy job as the field is so vast, but let’s start with the basics!

 

The Basic Principles of Psychology on Design

Gestalt principles: This psychological theory explores how your brain tends to perceive the world around you.  Some of its principles are:

  • Similarity – If a user sees objects that look similar, they may automatically perceive them as individual elements of one group. That’s why in the picture below you see 3 lines of white dots and 3 of black ones and not a messy heap of circles.

Gestalt principles 1 - Idea Digital

  • Closure – It’s the human eye’s tendency to see closed shapes even when they are not! Have you ever noticed the panda in the logo below is not complete as there are no lines on his back or head? Probably not!

Gestalt principles 2 - Idea Digital

  • Proximity. When objects are placed close together, the brain perceives them as a group rather than seen individually even if they aren’t similar. That’s why you see the U in the logo below even when it’s made of lots of non-similar elements put together.

Gestalt principles 3 - Idea Digital

  • Figure/Ground. This principle demonstrates the human tendency to separate objects from their background. The “figure” is always the most important piece of information, so you perceive the logo below as a basketball player in front of a blue and red background and not only as a hollow silhouette because the human figure has more importance than the other elements.

Gestalt principles 4 - Idea Digital

Von Restorff effect: This effect predicts that when multiple objects are present, the most different one is most likely to be remembered! That’s why we use different colors and shapes when we want to call attention to something, like those Call to Action buttons!

Hick’s Law: This law states that the more options users are exposed to, the longer it takes them to make a decision – causing unpleasant feelings. That’s probably why most designers like to keep things simple and present just one or two options.

As we said before those rules are just a tiny piece of the research involving psychology and design – these shouldn’t be taken as an invariable truth. Psychology is science and science involves testing and retesting hypothesis all the time. This means that what is a rule today can change completely tomorrow because behaviour changes just as people change! Isn’t this fascinating!

 

Inis Leahy, Graphic Designer

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3rd January 2018

Bricking it: Building your career

While everyone has a different career path, there are skills and advice that can be useful for everyone. Idea were delighted to attend the ‘Bricking it: Building Your Career’ event last week, hosted by The Marketing Society. Speakers included Fiona Sweeney (Strategic Marketing Director for Kerry), Orlaith Blaney (CMO for Ervia) and Jules Fallon (Founder and Managing Director of 1st Options) – and they all had interesting points to deliver:

Go Back to Basics:

Orlaith Blaney has a career spanning over 23 years in the Advertising industry – and her take home point is simple, effective and yet often overlooked. She explains we can often forget to say ‘thank you’ to clients – they will be surprised but happy. Keeping a strong working relationship is key. Orlaith also advised there is so much opportunity out there – if you are not fully content in your current position then get out and explore more opportunities – life is too short!

7 Steps for Success:

The next speaker Fiona Sweeney began her career in 2000 when she began an Internship with Smirnoff Ice. Fiona has worked with many brands such as Diageo and Coca Cola and Superquinn. Retail she explains is definitely something that all people should experience – it’s a tough and fast-moving industry. The next change in Fiona’s career was to join Kerry as Marketing Director. Fiona has seven golden rules that she believes are key to develop and sustain a successful career:

  1. Only you will fight for your career as hard as you – It’s your own career and you have to work hard to put yourself in a position for promotion and self-development.
  2. Let your position guide you – if you find your position or work is getting a bit stale then it is time to look for other opportunities.
  3. Be self-aware – think about what you can leverage in yourself to be successful. You should be accepting of your flaws but be proactive in your attempts to fix them.
  4. Emotional intelligence is king – it’s important to network and interact with people who are in your industry.
  5. Find a great leader – reach out to someone who inspires you and ask them for advice and motivations that will drive you. Don’t be afraid to reach out to someone – most people will be flattered and happy to help!
  6. Embrace the fear – Being uncomfortable is good and needed if you want to progress. It’s ok to make mistakes, but learning from these mistakes is the challenge.
  7. Be insatiably curious – keep learning and asking questions.

It’s Good To Talk:

The final speaker Jules Fallon was modelling from a young age before accepting it was not her desired career. She decided to continue in the industry, albeit in a different role going on to found 1st Options Model Management. As echoed by Fiona in the previous talk, she believes finding a brilliant mentor is key to success. Old fashioned communication – such as asking your mentor to go for a coffee – is the best thing to do. Finally, Jules stated that networking is imperative. Get your name out there and watch your reputation grow she advises.

Thank you to all speakers for your invaluable advice – we are feeling inspired!

 

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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.

 

Get in touch

Ready for some lightbulb moments?