Skip to main content

What to expect when you’re expecting a brand


Because your brand is your baby
TL;DR a timeless brand.
However, this piece is more than that. Just like branding delivers more than tangible outputs.
Hey, you will not find a tactile checklist that you can hold your brand partners accountable for, but you need not be a headless chicken while your branding partners take complete charge of how your brand will form.
Why ask?
The branding industry is at its all-time peak with people realizing its importance in the success of their business. This has also resulted in a professional approach where people go to universities and B-schools where they are taught industry jargon and branding processes.
This has resulted in a divide between business owners and branding experts who fail to communicate with these business owners with their language full of slang. A common practice that has emerged out of such miscommunications is that business owners, instead of partnering with a branding agency to translate their idea into a brand, they outsource the idea to the branding service provider.
This is not an ideal scenario. What you, as a business owner, have in your mind might not be reflective of the brand created by the studio who reduced the vastness of your idea to a questionnaire. This ten-page inventory is not a base strong enough to mirror your concept in the brand.
What then?
Branding is anything but a one-size-fits-all or a one-process-suits-all service. In fact, it brings your idea out of one such saturated rut so that your audience can notice you, right at the top.
This means, you will never get a universal brand deliverables checklist applicable to your business, your industry, your brand scope of work, the process of your branding partner, you get where is this going, right?
A common misconception is that a branding agency that uses dense language, sentences full of industry terminology, textbook processes and classic brand use cases must be trustworthy, they know their service in and out, where you can put your money. However, such entities strategically use jargon to sell you their service.
It’s like calling ice-cream, milk infused sorbet and selling it as gourmet at high prices.
These are the agencies that will give you a logo under the garb of a brand identity system and mind you, it is so much more than a logo.
a fake bill showing branding deliverables
So next time in conversation with a branding agency, ask for the meaning of one deliverable, they are promising that you don’t understand. If they use more jargon to explain the branding process, instead of a non-MBA language, you know which agency to cross off from the list of your considerations.
Let’s end beating around the bush. What do you get for what you pay for the branding process? (still not a checklist.)

Ideally,

You get what you ask for. The branding process is a list of many services that together, form a brand. We have separate techniques to prepare different ingredients of the same recipe, which become a dish at the end of the whole procedure.
So, when you are looking for a list of deliverables, you ask your branding agency about the branding process deliverables that are custom to your needs.
You know that gut feeling that makes you choose something over a million other options? That is a deliverable.
Generally, business owners assume that the only outputs are the ones that are tangible. They wonder,

Am I buying a strategy?

Am I paying for identity?

Or, will they give me a visual branding guide?

The right question is, what are my branding needs.


This doesn’t mean

That you come with the knowledge of branding 101. It’s a myth that when you approach a branding agency, you need to know precisely what you are looking for.

No.

If every entrepreneur knew what they wanted, the branding industry would cease to exist. Our job is to help you find answers to how you can translate your idea into a brand that not only fills a gap in the society but also resonates with the audience you are planning to cater to and beyond. You are paying for the service provider’s experience, expertise, perspectives, and the profiles working in their team that will be collaborating with you to help you shape your brand.


Phasic provisions

Branding process deliverables do have some provisions that you can expect. Every branding agency or a studio has its way of branding. There are many textbook procedures published thoroughly, but they are open source materials, open to interpretation and customization as per client or the service provider’s philosophy.
As far as the Slangbusters branding process is concerned, the deliverables for each phase are well defined.
The Knowledge phase delivers intangible insights that form a strong base for the brand. Collecting information and conducting audits so that the entrepreneur and the branding studio are on the same page before beginning the branding process.
The foundation is underground in a building and hence seems nonexistent. But, it remains the most significant part of the building since it determines the timelessness of the building constructed above.
The Understanding phase is all about research and other intangible deliverables like strategy. This phase includes more material deliverables like the brand brief that give further shape to the brand.
The second phase creates the wireframe of the building above the foundation. More visible than the first phase, this is where the brand starts forming.
The Action phase is where the brand breathes its first and comes to life through design processes and visible components like the visual brand identity system, brand architecture and the most apparent of them all, the logo and name of the brand.
In this phase, you see the building ready to move into. Further tangibles like beautification and accessorization of the building happen in the last phase, where the brand unfolds.

Although,

The most valuable branding process deliverable remains cognizance. The knowledge about the mental mechanics of how branding works for your brand and how something that feels magical is, in reality, something that even your idea can cater to.


903, Signature-1,
S.G.Highway,
Makarba,
Ahmedabad-380051,
India.
+91-982-5038-818
hello@slangbusters.com
Labels:
Location: 903, Signature 1, Sarkhej - Gandhinagar Hwy, Makarba, Ahmedabad, Gujarat 380051, India

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dealing with complexity bias in a world full of jargon

  Let’s face it. We all are a cocktail of biases. In the world of business, there is no room for some. As I write this,    at a local Starbucks, I have a corporate meeting going on at the next table. Two men in suits, sipping their mocha lattes are discussing and I couldn’t help but eavesdrop. The meeting seemed to have gone successful, indicated by the firm handshake before they left. Only that I did not understand a word of what they were talking about, apart from something about quarterly goals. I heard words like disruption and outbound strategies. It seemed like they were from an advertising conglomerate. They used the word branding so many times out of context, I almost wanted to intervene. Although, why did I fail to understand what the meeting was about? Why did it seem successful, even with the use of heavy jargon? Before we talk about complexity bias, I would definitely acknowledge that I am not a marketing executive or an owner of any marketing jargon dictionar...
Post a Comment
Read more

Branding is more primal than you think.

No, apes (as a species) did not ask for a bigger logo. Although, they did exhibit traits that substantiate the concept of branding.   Years of corporate culture and its most significant element- the jargon has resulted in this perception about branding which is nowhere near what it truly is. For some, branding is the logo, For some, it is the product. For some, branding is marketing, But, for a small chunk, it is actually that intangible feeling that drives us beings. You don’t have to think twice before recognizing which one of the above is eligible to build brands. The idea of ‘a brand’ has been around for about 5000 years. Primates arose 55 million years ago. It is not important to know when and why we started branding, as much as knowing how we did. The aim of this piece is to realize the essence of branding as a concept, as a philosophy. Let’s get back to primates again. We evolved from mammals. What makes us the alleged ‘superior’ species or a species that is different from a...
Post a Comment
Read more

The importance of culture building in branding

Investing in culture is a brand strategy FTW.   If you are looking for building company culture inside the boundaries of the corporate setting, t he keyword gods have defied you and this is where you should stop reading and probably close the tab. If you are looking for some insight about incorporating culture into your brand, read on. For starters, company culture inside the headquarters or any place with employees working for the brand is also important for the cultural implications outside. If you are an ice-cream brand that has tapped into the culture of a family enjoying ice-cream after dinner, you cannot be a company that forces their employees to work overtime and refrain them from the happiness of sharing the ice-cream with their families. These brands would suffer in how they are perceived by the consumer, no matter how aggressive the marketing is. (Culture > Propaganda) Branding is not what it was a  decade  ago. Earlier, companies would introspect and identi...
Post a Comment
Read more