Visual brands

I LOVE YOU! WHY YOUR BRAND IS MUCH MORE THAN A LOGO


We are assailed by brand images every day. Thousands of brands line store shelves competing for attention. Symbolic images attached to those brands trigger emotional responses that influence how consumers engage in purchase decisions. In fact, some brands are so powerful they become part of our vocabulary — when someone needs to blow their nose they’ll often ask for a “Kleenex” even though any brand of “facial tissue” will do the job. Brands with this kind of status stand out in crowded markets, and the visual identities associated with these brands stand out as well. A well designed logo that resonates with its audience is a powerful tool that builds awareness and positive associations with your company and its products or services.

But even though they are effective marketing tools, logos and taglines are not brands. They are just two “touchpoints” of a brand, two leading banners that express brand essence and personality. A company’s “brand equity” (the real dollar value linked with its brand) goes much further. Just as your face reveals certain aspects of your personality but doesn’t give a complete picture, your company’s unique story and true identity run much deeper than the logo and tagline on the surface. Your company’s brand, its true identity, is composed of the entire set of emotions and expectations and values that your customers attribute to you, and your logo is just one of the ways that you express and reinforce those things to your audience.

Visual identity of brand
Nevertheless, while a logo is not the same thing as a brand, it is a key component. A great logo need not be complicated, but it must genuinely represent your company. Many extraordinary, instantly recognizable logos are very simple but highly-effective designs.





These famous logos evoke powerful emotional and memorable messages that embody the core values and personalities of their mother corporations. They’re backed by years of strategic brand building and the rewards to their owners are the stuff of legend on Wall Street.  

A logo’s unique style must not only symbolize the values of your products and services, giving a clear picture of what you are marketing, it must also spring from your marketing strategy and translate that strategy into an effective and consistent visual identity that can be leveraged throughout all of your promotional activities.  

Being noticed in the crowded marketplace is crucial to driving customer recognition, selection, preference, and brand loyalty, and an effective logo is memorable. It is also distinctive, helping to distinguish you from your competitors through style, layout, and colour. Think of your logo as a brand banner - your country’s flag, so to speak - that creates a symbolic shortcut to help customers embrace and identify with your unique brand experience.  

But branding, or re-branding, is not a single event that starts and ends with a logo design and a clever slogan. It’s a long-term process that must be measured, assessed, and re-vitalized to align the promise that your brand makes with the value that your company actually delivers through its products, services, internal culture and customer support – through everything you do and every way in which you communicate with your audiences.

While logos are an important part of the visual identity of your brand, they are not the substance of your brand. Substance comes from within; a logo’s job is to take that substance, the essence of your company and its products and services and values, and then reflect that substance to the world in a way that is memorable and distinctive. Ultimately, a logo’s job is to make it faster and easier for your customers to find you – the beacon that draws them to experience your brand.A successful logo tells customers exactly what it means, and let’s them know exactly what they’ll find. It communicates well, and it communicates fast. And that’s why having a good one is so important.

Ready to develop your company’s visual brand? Contact us at 780-428-0411 or click here.