What Your Brand Should Say About Your Company

Your company’s brand is made up of a lot of different elements, but it basically boils down to this: what do people think of it? If people think negatively, you have a bad brand. If they think positively, you have a good brand.

Of course, creating a good brand isn’t as simple as all that. To help you achieve that goal, here’s a guide to six different branding elements; create a positive impression from each, and you’ll have a positive brand. Let’s take a look at what you can do.

Your logo

Colours are an important part of any logo. The most used colours among the world’s top 100 brands are red (29%), blue (33%), black or greyscale (28%) and yellow or gold (13%). This is because these colours stand out most (yes, black stands out if it’s stuck against a white background) and because of the emotions these colours are believed in the business world to evoke.

Red evokes passion and energy – which is why Nike ‘go for it’.

Blue gives a sense of trust and ‘depend-worthiness’ (that may not be a real word, but hey, invention is a good thing right?) hello to HP, for instance.

Yellow offers positivity and warmth, which is why McDonald’s are loving it.

Black evokes sophistication; lots of companies have a black and white version of their logo to use. Most brands want to appear sophisticated at times. Although the Hilton’s logo is usually blue, you’ll see their black version all over the place if you take a look around.

Rainbow-coloured?

Very few companies go for multiple colours in one logo, it’s viewed by some as confusing, that it muddles the message. Although one of the businesses that does have multiple colours in its logo is Google, and it seems to be doing OK … also, anyone remember the Apple logo of old?

You’ll also need to decide if your logo will be text-only, like Kellogg’s, for example, or if you’re going for the ‘image only’ logo of something like Apple. Only really huge brands tend to go for the latter though, as they know their logo will be recognised no matter what and many smaller businesses take a while to get to that stage.

Your font

Then you have to think about what your font says. That’s important, because it’s going to appear on all your promotional and corporate literature so you need to pick something that’s easy to read yet doesn’t look childish (hello Comic Sans!). You also need to use fonts consistently and if you do use more than one, they need to complement each other, there’s nothing worse than terrible typography. As with colours, consistency is vital to ensuring your brand succeeds.

Take a look at this guide to the psychology of fonts to see what might best suit your brand’s message. It’s all got to shout ‘this is us’ when it comes to branding, even with fonts, for a more detailed guide to fonts, head over to this article, which goes into it in some depth.

Voice, tone and style

The tone of voice you use in your ads is also part of your brand and very much influences how people think of you.  These days, a corporate tone is used less than in the past as consumers prefer to be addressed in a more social manner. They want a company to be approachable and friendly and this must come across in your ‘voice’. People may not remember words, but they remember voice.

It really isn’t just about what you say, but the way you say it. Above all, sound human. No-one likes being talked to officiously or robotically.

Your staff

If you have staff, don’t make the mistake of thinking they aren’t part of your brand. If they deal with customers, clients or the public in any way, they represent your brand.

So, make sure they know what your brand is all about, what it represents, what its values are and be sure to train them up in communicating those values to your customers and clients at all times.

Let your brand speak

Your brand should say everything about your company, because, in effect, your brand is your company. So make sure everything you do, from social comments to email marketing and your online presence, makes your brand resonate as positively as possible.