Most people consider brand identity to be the visual elements of a brand, and to some extent, they’re correct. It’s normal for companies to combine elements like logos, colors, typography, and other visuals to represent their brand. However, developing a brand identity requires a lot more than just visuals.

While a logo can be the symbol of a business, it doesn’t represent the brand entirely. In fact, designing the visuals is just a small part of developing a strong brand identity. With a plethora of businesses looking to make a name for themselves, executing a strong brand has become crucial to stand out in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

However, developing a strong brand identity is easier said than done; you need first to understand what makes a strong identity and what it takes to create one. In this article, we’ll explore some brand identity examples and tips to create one for your business.

Elements of Brand Identity

When executed correctly, a brand identity can inspire customers and foster a sense of loyalty for any business. It’s meant to represent nearly every aspect of a company and its activities; as such, a strong brand identity should feature elements that embody unique business aspects.

The first element is the visuals, which serve as the personality of your business. The visual element incorporates colors, logos, typography, imagery, and overall design style, all working together to create a recognizable image for the brand.

While visuals are undoubtedly important, company branding should go beyond what customers see, incorporating unique meaning into its business’s identity. Beyond visuals, your brand identity should also emphasize the brand’s credibility, customer trust, marketing, and company values. For instance, the three-pointed star of Mercedes-Benz might be a unique logo, but it also represents the company’s commitment to producing vehicles for land, sea, and air.

A business with a recognizable personality, built on trust and a clear mission, attracts individuals who resonate with what it claims to offer. Once these individuals become customers, this relatable identity gives them a sense of belonging.

What Makes a Strong Brand Identity?

Simply having a recognizable identity isn’t enough to resonate with the target audience, even if every element is implemented. Obviously, businesses stand a better chance when they create distinct and memorable identities, but some other factors make a brand’s identity effective.

To truly succeed, you need to build an identity that is scalable and can evolve with the brand. The Google logo is a good case study, evolving from its initial multi-colored Catull font to a more refined Product Sans typeface without losing its recognition and recall.

A strong brand identity also has to be flexible enough for different applications, including online and offline marketing. For this, it’s important to use simplistic and minimalistic designs that are easily adapted across any medium.

The customer is the central focus of any brand identity; hence, a strong identity should have all relevant elements complement themselves to reinforce the brand’s message, values, and personality.

How to Create a Brand Identity?

We’ve briefly explored the physical and psychological aspects of brand identity. However, building and executing a strong identity points to a more strategic approach. A strong brand identity design isn’t a random occurrence. It requires thorough analysis, planning, and execution to shape how customers perceive and engage with the brand.

Take Coca-Cola, for instance; all elements, from its iconic red logo to its Spencerian script font and noteworthy marketing campaigns, emphasize the brand’s strategic identity. So, how can you create an experience that resonates with customers and fosters recall? Here are tips to build and execute an effective brand identity

●       Research

Like every other business aspect, the first step to creating a brand identity is to do extensive research. This process involves understanding your target audience, researching the competition, defining your value proposition, and highlighting the brand mission.

These considerations all combine to help you better understand your brand, create a relevant identity, and structure the brand such that it appeals to a particular segment of customers. A good strategy for streamlining this process is through SWOT analysis. With this, you can identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in the market you wish to stand out in.

●       Design a Unique Look and Feel

The next step is to create a face, personality, or visual identity of the brand. The visual identity of your brand is what customers interact with first, so these elements should be consistent across all marketing mediums, from online platforms to more traditional ads.

As we’ve seen earlier, make your brand’s visual identity unique, distinct, scalable, flexible, and easy to use. The visual elements should embody the brand’s personality and values. FedEx embodies this perfectly, with its bold logo combined with a hidden arrow between “E” and “x,” representing the brand’s speed and efficiency in logistics.

●       Develop Consistent Brand Tone

Brands need to communicate with their community consistently, and similar to the visual design, there must be consistency in the voice and tone used to pass any message across. A consistent brand tone makes a company so much more recognizable and trustworthy while also creating the right perception among the audience.

Consider Nike’s “I Am Not A Role Model,” “Courage,” and “Find Your Greatness” campaigns; all these follow a consistent tone and reinforce the brand’s mission to bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world. A great way to check for consistency is through customer feedback.

●       Measure Brand Identity

Finally, markets evolve, preferences change, and previously effective company branding could become obsolete. There might be a time when rebranding becomes the most practical option for appealing to customers. As such, it’s crucial to regularly measure your brand identity, ensuring it still meets business goals and resonates with the intended audiences. Brand awareness, customer sentiment towards your company, customer loyalty, online engagement, and revenue are some of the key metrics that highlight the effectiveness or inadequacies of your brand identity. By tracking how your brand identity performs regularly, businesses can alter their strategies in response to customer’s evolving needs.