usdp_brandboost

Design

Your Brand Needs A Boost: Part 1

Last Updated on February 10, 2022

Attempts to reposition a company (aka brand redesigns) are famously—and ridiculously—expensive.  

Take Gap for example. In 2010, they launched a new logo. Within six days they pulled it and reverted back to the original logo. This poorly received blunder cost them an estimated $100 million. Most of us don’t have $100 million to spend on one single project.

We think radical rebranding is costly and unnecessary.

Our philosophy is that an evolution of your brand is much more useful and cost-effective. What most companies need is a boost—not a budget buster. To make brands healthier, we take your hard work and evolve, reposition, and elevate your brand to help you remain relevant and differentiated in an ever-changing marketplace. We call this a Brand Boost.

Definition of Brand Boost

How healthy is your brand?

With so much digital noise, it’s easy for companies and products to unknowingly camouflage themselves among the sea of options vying for customers’ attention.

A healthy brand:

  • Has a unified message
  • Has a clear voice
  • Uses one logo across all mediums
  • Enforces uniformity
  • Is nimble and adjusts to shifts in its audience

These are the core criteria we use to gauge brand health—and whether a brand needs a boost. Nearly every Brand Boost begins as a website redesign project. Over the years we’ve discovered that brands tend to evolve as we go through the redesign process. We uncover nuances, insights emerge, and it becomes clear that aspects of the brand need to change to meet company goals and shifting consumer behavior.  So we make recommendations to address deficiencies and implement them with you as we re-launch the website.

Here are 5 essentials to becoming a healthy brand.

    1. Unify your key messages
    2. Establish a brand voice
    3. Use one logo across all mediums
    4. Have a brand style guide– and enforce it
    5. Adjust to the shift of your target audience

Let’s dive in!

1.  Unify your key messages.

Throughout all touch-points (social, digital, print, paid media) your message must be precise, memorable, and advantageous for your customers. Through a strategy called Message-Based Design, we help our clients create a story about their brands that customers want to connect with.

Gorilla Glue website

Gorilla Glue has a strong key message. You know exactly what they do, the products they offer, and how they can help. Does your message need a boost?

2.  Establish a brand voice.

What is your voice? It can be funny, playful, professional or even crude, but you must decide on it, own it, and spread it across all channels. A distinguishable voice strengthens your position. If you don’t know your brand voice, it’s time to figure it out. If words aren’t your thing, consider hiring an experienced copywriter to help.

Kandoo’s brand voice capitalizes on “potty humor” and it works great for potty training products. Does your brand voice need a boost?

3.  Use one logo across all mediums.

Your brand logo should be designed to work across social media, websites, ads, and print—without reworking or resizing it. If you’ve gone through a rebrand but alternate versions (old color, logo, tagline, etc.) are still floating around, it’s time to eliminate them.

Rumpke had multiple logos for different services offered. This confused their customers. Do your logo standards need a boost?

4.  Have a brand style guide—and enforce it.

Do you have a brand “bible”? This is the single source for vendors and team members to learn about your brand. It defines your logo, fonts, colors, photography and video style, tone, and voice. A great brand is similar to a great character in a film. When fully developed, you’re able to like them and root for them and know how they would respond in different scenarios. (Or in the business world, buy from them.)

Anyone who creates anything for your brand should have a copy of the style guide—and apply it vigilantly. Be a steward of uniformity. The uniformity lets people get to know you and what to expect from you.

Rachel Pauls Food’s style guide contains all the important information that a vendor needs to understand their brand. Do your brand standards need a boost?

5.  Adjust to the shift in your target audience.

Customers phase out and new ones discover you every day. By leveraging analytics, you can find out where to target new consumers. From there you can use digital marketing to reach people in your target market and monitor engagement to see where you can get the best ROI. This approach is the future of commerce and it’s vital to the success of your organization. We use analytics, A/B testing, surveys, and more to decide how to write marketing content and digital ads.

Google has very helpful tools that give you a better understanding of who your visitors are and how you can reach them. Does your marketing analysis and testing need a boost?

The Brand Boost: Before & After

Dozens of companies have experienced a Brand Boost, and are seeing great results. Here is one recent example.

Denham Blythe brand before boost

Denham Blythe before and after images.

Denham Blythe really needed a Brand Boost. They had an outdated website and a tired brand.

Denham Blythe brand after boost

Style guidelines

Look at them now! A clear clean message, new engaging website and a brand built for the future. Does your brand need a boost?

Wondering if your brand is healthy?

Let’s talk. We offer a free website assessment to help you determine whether you’re doing just fine–or could use a boost in some aspect of your digital marketing.  

Stay tuned for Part 2: A guide to boosting your brand.

 

 

John Rice Image Alt

By: John Rice

John is an Interactive Designer at USDP.
He makes a really good lasagna.