5 Things You Should Do To Build a Successful Brand

Creating a new brand means strategic thinking, an outstanding product, and a reason to exist. Today we share 5 key steps on brand building.

Creative professionals and business entrepreneurs use branding tools as an essential step to develop an original brand from scratch with a real business strategy in the long term. Some of them, adventure in providing well-thought solutions for the market, or into fixing a client’s needs. Others focus on creativity, developing a real aesthetic difference in their venture with outstanding communication skills. 

Here is some advice and useful steps to take when thinking about launching your own personal project. 

1. What is your idea? Can we brand it?

Not all ideas are meant to be business ideas, that is the truth. However, this is the first thing you must acknowledge and analyse in detail in order to create and develop a real brand opportunity. 

Is it just a fad? Is it really an original idea? Is the market ready? How can this brand idea change and defy the previous business structures? Am I repeating someone else’s success?   

You need to face the tough questions, because you should deliver something valuable to the user, either in the form of a solution to problems, a tangible benefit in their daily basis, or as a distinguished product creation by style or an unique material. 

For example, Jenna Lyons, former Creative Director of J.Crew created LoveSeen a line of faux lashes for everyday wear, because she observed there was nothing to market in between full glamour and natural products, so she decided to marry the two of them. 

With a patented tool, the brand aims to make the application process simpler and cleaner, and Lyons can personally relate to it. She suffers, incontinentia pigmenti, a genetic disorder which affects skin, teeth and causes losing hair (including eyelashes). In this sense, she made her problem, her own business solution. 

Creating a business idea is not meant to be solved in a day, you will need to think it through, refine it, observe the market, predict the outcomes. If you believe this idea is worth the risk, then shoot it, but it is time to get serious.

2. Planning is the foundation of your brand strategy, but do not plan forever, you must test it

If the idea is good, the common mistake is immediately put into practice without overlooking and analysing all probable outcomes or needs the venture will require. So do not rush it, but think strategically in order to create MVP (Minimum Viable Product).

A business plan can be extensive and take time, but a lack of sharp planning can be the real headache in real life. You can use management tools to bring together the most important aspects of the brand, such as client, needs, market research, global patterns, technology and innovation. 

You can create your own Business Model Canvas, think of the resources, the channels, the revenues and scale business formulas. You could try Design Thinking methodologies, conduct interviews and surveys with the target audience, to name a few steps. Test the product and learn from the information discovered to reshape the model, upgrade the model or change the model completely. 

3. Focus: What are you selling? Who else is at the party? 

According to Karen Tiber in “The Brand Mapping Strategy”, every executive, startup founder or small business owner needs to define exactly what the brand sells and what the brand does, in a pitch mode, a very focused statement so everybody can understand your brand’s point of view from the start.  

Certain degrees of differentiation is a key to stand out competitors. You would have to map the attributes, analise what they do best and worst, to obtain insights. You have to understand what makes you different from them and discover in which territory will you be developing your marketing tactics. This part is essential in creating a brand, as well as following how this market space is performing in order to have profitability. 

But what the brand does is intrinsically related to what it is, which leads us to the creative part.  

4. Branding purpose: The brand as a whole concept

A brand is a round circle construction, partly intangible, partly physical, both unreplaceable. What the brand is, has to do with identity, what the brand does has to do with action, the actual service or the line development. 

Brands with purpose are beyond the product, although if it is well created, the product shall be brand dependent as well as positioning, distribution and the communication strategy. A purpose is aligned with brand values, a unique way of doing things, with a certain personality and a defined brand tone for the expression of that purpose. 

For instance, Hungarian fashion brand @Nanushka, created by Sandra Sandor and Peter Baldaszti, defines itself as “the modern bohemian”. A clear and concise statement, it tells us about its way of seeing life, but also the category and even revels in some ways the style of the garments, “the brand draws inspiration from the spiritual journey through cultures and time, effortlessly combining function with flair”. 

More than a simple brand claim, they have a purpose “Nanushka delivers a modern, versatile, day to night wardrobe for the modern human with the aim of creating a new informal form of beauty”. The brand has a stand-alone concept flagship in Budapest with also premium stock-lists like Selfridges, Liberty, Browns, NAP and MyTheresa.

5. Have a communication strategy in tune with your brand’s personality and tone

Being innovative in communication formats is the number one goal in order to attract potential customers, but the communication platform has to serve the brand and the purpose. Coherence between the values and all forms of expression are mandatory. 

You would need to create a certain energy around your brand, expressed by image or written text with proper tone, a singular syllabus and visual differentiation trademark. 

French fashion designer, Marine Serre, has created around her brand a recognizable aesthetic, from its signature half-moon pattern, overlapping garments and upcycling techniques. For her new collection, she created a website called marineserrecore.com, a video interactive campaign site, where, through films, we can discover her creative universe, the collection looks and the brand’s attitude. An original, fresh and simple communication tool for social distancing fashion weeks. 

The core of a brand must evolve with time, it needs to be in sync with the social and consumer behaviour changes. However, it must be loyal to its original purpose, having a focus beyond trends and hype, and keeping innovation,  flexibility and human communications, as top aspects in a successful brand building.