The Full Noise

Blenhiem Graphic Design and Website Designers

brand framework

When it comes to advertising

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It is helpful if your company has a strategy regarding advertising for the year, which relates to your company’s broader brand framework.

Regardless of whether you’re that organised, booking an ad last minute and giving your designer half a day to ‘come up with something’ is a waste of resources.  Even worse if it’s not your designer but someone else’s! My apologies if you’ve ever been forced to do this, but let me explain…

It goes back to the necessity of writing a brief and treating each ad as an investment which must bring back some ‘bikkies’ in return.  If an ad doesn’t do it’s job then it can be a glorious waste of money.

Last minute advertising opportunities are always out there.  Perhaps you have an ad you can rerun, which can fit the space, and you know gets you results.  Great!  But be wary of making a booking and handing your logo over to a publication which can ‘rustle’ something up.  This can weaken your brand and render the ad ineffective.

When it comes to advertising…  Have a plan.  Have an advertisment or better, an ad campaign ready to take advantage of advertising deals when they come up. 

Your brand is more than just a name and logo

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Your brand is the sum of every interaction and communication your customers have with your business.

Too often I see people who name their business, get a logo and a business card, thinking they have a brand.  When really all they have is a name, logo and a business card. Obviously these are the important visual elements in a brand. However they need to fit into a broader framework of communication with your target audience.

When you need to buy business shoes, which shop do you go to first?  Why do you think of these shops?  Do they have the cheapest shoes, or the best quality?  Are the salespeople friendly, professional, knowledgeable?  Do they run a loyalty scheme?  Have you heard good things about them from others?  Maybe a store is running a sale?

All of the above factors, along with many more, are aspects of the shoe stores’ brand.  Often, as customers we are not even aware of these individual factors and we instead assimilate them into a single view of the business.  We then subconsciously use this view to make our shopping and buying decisions.

When branding our own business, we need to ensure how all of these factors express our brand.