Branding

A company’s brand is its promise to its customers – what customers can expect, and how your brand is different from competitors.

The goal in creating a brand identity is to distinguish your organization, business, product, or service from your competitors. Branding is communicated through several elements of corporate identity. Your logo design, identity design, and branding all have different roles, that together, form a complete image – pulling it all together

Corporate Identity

Corporate identity has many elements including a firm’s logo, its tagline, its social media presence, the stationary it uses, and the website it presents to the buying public. Like marketing communications, everything connected to a brand should be integrated. Branding includes phone etiquette, how your salespeople dress, your e-mail signature, the “voice” of your company (friendly, conversational, formal, informal, etc.) – even invoices.

Branding Strategy

Branding begins with your marketing strategy—what customer needs and wants will you seek to serve? What value proposition will you create? What conveniences will you develop and commit to long term? How can you best engage with customers to communicate your value proposition and how you deliver it? Your branding strategy answers the who, what, when, where, and how of your marketing messages.

Developing your Corporate Branding and Corporate Identity

As skilled problem solvers, CATMEDIA consults with you to gain clarity on the corporate branding you seek and how your systems, products, and services can deliver on the brand promise. There are no shortcuts for this work. This is difficult, time-consuming and sometimes uncomfortable work. You can’t rely on what you think your customers’ needs, habits, and wants are. You must know what your customers think about their needs, habits, and wants in relation to your products and services. This requires research, possibly secondary research of existing data, and possibly primary research concerning your current and prospective customers.

Value Proposition

Perhaps the most important element of any corporate branding strategy is a clear statement of the company’s value proposition. A value proposition answers the question of why a prospect should buy from you. The value proposition explains how your product or service solves a problem or improves a situation, how the product or service delivers benefits, and how your product or service is different from the competition. The value proposition is not a slogan, or a catch phrase, or a positioning statement. CATMEDIA can assist you in creating a clear value proposition consisting of:
  • A headline which grabs attention and communicates the end-benefit to the customer
  • A sub-headline explaining the what you offer, for whom you serve, and why your offering is useful and relevant
  • Key benefits or features in three bullet points
  • A compelling visual reinforcing your main message

Integrating Elements of Corporate Branding and Corporate Identity

After drafting the corporate branding strategy, conducting stakeholder reviews, and gaining approval to move forward, we proceed to the implementation phase. In the implementation phase, CATMEDIA carefully project manages all findings of the work completed during the research phase. The creative team integrates all elements of the corporate branding strategy to present a consistent, coherent corporate identity communicating the key points of the corporate branding. We oversee the delivery of messages, track results, and report metrics. The feedback becomes data in the continuous improvement process as the project moves forward.

Tell us more about your branding needs