SWIFT MUGSY

Content is king: Why branding is more than a logo

How well do the pieces of your brand fit together?

You have a great business, you have a brilliant idea, and now you’ve picked out a name.  You have a logo, you have a domain, you have everything to you need to get wildly successful, right?  Not so fast there, chief.  If you don’t have solid – and consistent – content, you just have a shell of a thing, what we call around here a hollow brand.

What’s a Brand, really?

Your identity as a business must have a number of key ingredients in order to occur to your audience as a viable solution for whatever problem or pain you’re looking to solve.  In order for you to have a complete brand, you must have:

• A face:  Your logo, mascot, or other visual icon is the first representation of your business.  Make sure that this matches thematically with what you do.
• A purpose:  Make a clear message about what you what to deliver and how.
• A design:  Keep your font, layout, and imagery consistent between your online and offline world.  Having a fantastic blue color theme to your website is going to cause confusion when your customer walks into a subdued pink shop.
• A voice:  Finally, all of your words must have a consistent voice, a definable characterization.  A tattoo shop is not going to use the same kind of verbiage as, say, an investment firm.

This is where content becomes the driving force of your brand.  Your content in every channel is going to bring together and define your  message to the world.  You could have a so-so logo or maybe a slightly inconsistent design, but if you content is strong, you’ll still be doing pretty okay.

Beyond the logo

Your content is the foundation and pillars of your business, no matter what kind of product or service you’re selling.  Content includes things like your marketing and advertising images, your social media images (which are totally different from marketing and advertising!), your short advert copy, your long advert copy, your website copy, your blog posts, your tweets, your public customer services responses…

All of these things create the fabric of your content.  If you’re hostile and defensive in one place, but you’re silly and tongue-in-cheek in another, your audience is going to have a harder time visualizing your business as an entity.  You’re going to lose trust equity because your customers aren’t going to know which one is the “real you”.

Before you commit a single pixel to a live launch, draft up an avatar of what your company’s personality looks like.  To put it a different way, what would your company look like, act like, and sound like if it was a human (or at least a speaking sentient being)?  How old is this person?  What gender?  How does he/she/it dress?  What are his/her/its hobbies?  What kind of language do they use?  What do they find interesting about the company they represent?  Who are their favorite people, favorite musicians, favorite movies?

Are you going to talk about Mr. Avatar’s deep and abiding love for “the Goonies”?  No, probably not, but Mr. Avatar might have bit of an adventurous streak, might like to try new things, might like to dig deeper into mysteries – and that could reflect in his language.  It will certainly make his Facebook posts a lot more interesting.

Want to create an avatar for your business?  Send us a message, and we’ll help you out.