How a good brand strategy can make all the difference

What is a brand? One definition of a brand is the personality that identifies a product, service or company name and how it relates to customers, staff, partners, investors, and indeed any third party who may have a relationship with that brand. A bit dry perhaps? How about, it’s what others think of when they think of your company.

Some brands are better at this than others. McDonalds personified their brand with a clown called Ronald McDonald, and many other major brands subscribe to the cult of personality to ensure that their customers engage with their products including Colonel Sanders (KFC), Mickey Mouse (Disney), and Snap Crackle and Pop (Kelloggs Rice Crispies). These are just three examples, but they are all around us, and have been for years – remember the martians from the Smash advert, or the Wimpy Beefeater?

Other brands resort to strong images or typography. Coca Cola, with its wavy lines over the words, using strong red and white colours, is immediately identifiable, as is the almost hourglass shape of the bottle. It’s the real thing, apparently, and as a tag line this is outstanding, suggesting that nothing else will do.

Nike with its tick symbol is also globally famous, recognised in every language and culture as being synonymous with sports wear. That said, the amount of money invested in making this happen over the lifetime of these brands would pay off our national debt. Almost.

One hugely successful brand that is closer to home belongs to the serial entrepreneur Richard Branson in the shape of Virgin.  His empire stretches across multiple sectors, from planes and trains, to banking, casinos, holidays, and even space travel, and everything is stamped with the Virgin brand. The cult of personality here is Richard Branson himself, the constantly cheery, adventure seeking, ballooning, yachting, egotistical entrepreneur, love him or hate him you can’t deny that despite not everything he does being successful, the strength of his brand shines through every single time.

The Slightly Different brand is small in comparison, but in our defence we haven’t been going as long as Virgin, and we don’t have Richard Branson at the helm, and unless you’re reading this while running a company called Virgin something, neither do you. That doesn’t say that you can’t plan to be as successful or more successful one day, which is where the importance of a brand strategy comes in.

In the last ten years we have diversifiedSlightly Different into different areas of our core service, including separate wings for online and offline design, website development, and online marketing, and we plan to roll out a few other Slightly Differentt services in the next year, all with the same attention to detail and quality of the services that you already know us for.

Indeed, the name Slightly Different might just become a bit more visible from now on, and while we aren’t planning space travel just yet, we believe that the value of a good brand is half the battle.

If you haven’t thought about your brand strategy, now might be a good time. Give us a ring on 01326 327416 to see how we can help.