The Step-by-Step Brand Building Process

Strong brands require careful thought and planning, extensive research, specific definition, test-driving, and maintenance. We'll help you accomplish all of these these steps to ensure the success of your brand effort.

Step 1. Strategic Marketing Audit

We've developed a comprehensive questionnaire designed to help you determine how best to communicate what you're about to your customers and to deepen their relationship with you. It includes:

Your mission, vision, goals and objectives
What you do
Why it matters emotionally to your customers
What motivates your customers
What your competition is doing
What the marketing environment is like
If your brand were a person, how would you like customers to describe that person?
Sum up what you want to stand for in just one word
How do you want customers to feel when they encounter your brand?
What marketing and branding you've done so far, if any; what's worked, and what hasn't?

We’ll guide you through the process until we reach the epiphany we're looking for — what will allow you to occupy that unique place in the hearts of your customers.

Step 2. Key Message Statements

These three to six statements constitute the most concise way to convey everything a customer or member of the press must know about you. Nothing more, and nothing less. We'll get to the essential definition of who you are, what you stand for, and why people will care. This will become the foundation for all of your marketing communications as well as face-to-face contact at all touch points.

Step 3. Creating your visual identity

Now it’s time to translate who you are into an image that speaks louder than words — that makes customers intuitively feel how you want them to feel whenever they encounter your brand, and helps inspire them to build an emotional bond with your company. This includes your logo, color palette and all universal graphic design guidelines. This step can also include creating your stationery system, storefront signage, and other visual components of your corporate identity system.

Step 4. Developing your marketing communication plan

At this step we’ll decide what all the right touch points are, and what to give your customers at those touch points: collateral, advertising, promotional giveaways, public relations activity, events and trade shows. We'll shape the plan that best fits your budget while delivering the highest possible impact.

Step 5. Putting the plan into action

This is your launch phase: creating all the required marketing communications defined above and getting them to their touch points. We’ll conceive, write, design and produce everything you'll need to start courting your customers and creating a consistent brand experience.

Step 6. Maintenance & Refinement

After being launched, your brand and marketing communications must be continually monitored to ensure the brand you intended to convey is the one that customers are receiving, and that this brand resonates with them the way you want it to. You also have to make sure the brand is portrayed exactly as planned across all touch points so that customers can have a consistent experience and build trust in you. We'll help you monitor, refine and maintain your brand for the most consistent, most positive connection with your customers.