‘Branding in Five And a Half Steps’ by Michael Johnson.

STEP 1 INVESTIGATE:
Where are you now?
Where could you be?
Can you get there?

Audit the visual, verbal, behavioural, competition and peer elements of your market. Identify past, present and wished for future perceptions. Explore the market and identify potential gaps.

History can provide inspiration, eg Mini, Beetle, Fiat 500.

Work out whether to follow sector norms, or to stand out from the crowd.

STEP 2 – STRATEGY & NARRATIVE:
Define your brand with six questions and one statement:

  • Why are we here?
  • What do we do and how do we do it?
  • What makes us different?
  • Who are we here for?
  • What do we value the most?
  • What’s our personality?
    Our ambition – the long-term aim.

If you can’t sum up your ‘reason to be’ in a few words, why should anyone listen to you or work for you?

“Strategy and brand are umbilically linked.”

STEP 2.5 – BRIDGING THE GAP
Don’t completely lockdown the narrative stage as you enter the design phase. Leave the final, final sign-off until a little later, just in case. Design discoveries can affect narrative.

STEP 3 – DESIGN
The Brief:

  • WHAT key business challenge does the brand face?
  • WHO are we trying to engage and what competes for their attention?
  • WHAT’S the role of communication?
  • WHERE and WHEN will communication have most power?
  • HOW does the category engage creatively and how can we challenge this?

The key ideas are the really disruptive ones that cut through, question convention and change all our perceptions of what brands can do.

STEP 4 – IMPLEMENT
A good implementation plan is vital. Ideas can be introduced too fast.

A good brand manual should inspire its user to create good things, not lower their head in boredom and/or despair.

Consistency doesn’t mean doing everything the same way. Rather it means being recognisably the same, while retaining flexibility.

It can take two to three years for new brand identities to become recognised by key audiences.

STEP 5 – ENGAGE OR REVIVE
Make the participants part of the process.

Messaging: Propositions, Proof Points, Personal Stories.

Establish an authentic voice that customers believe and that can be maintained.

Innocent’s brand comes down to three things: natural, honest and engaging.

Even the grooviest and most alluring brand identity can’t paper over the cracks of a product that has no clear sense of why it should be here.

‘Brand thinking’ took Target from being just another discount retailer and moved it steadily upmarket to become a successful ‘cheap-chic’ player.

While a tractor and a pair of boots are completely different products, the ‘ready for anything’ idea, projected by Caterpillar, is elastic enough to imbue countless products with its ethos.

Branding alone cannot revive an undesirable product.

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