What is branding for you? If you think it’s just about the logo, colors, or a brand book that’s forgotten a few months after implementing a new identity, it’s time to refresh your perspective. Nowadays, good branding plays a crucial business role – it helps create and maintain a strong market position. It sparks discussions, evokes emotions, and allows you to consistently convey your company’s essence across many touchpoints, both online and offline. In the first part of our series, you'll learn about the first three benefits of good branding for your brand.
1. Recognition
Long-term relationships with customers are often the result of the consistency of visual elements, language, and tone of voice associated with the brand. The more consistent the message, the easier it will be for customers to build a lasting relationship with your company. That’s why consistent and attractive branding increases recognition. Every touchpoint with customers builds the desired emotional connection and strengthens your brand’s position in their minds.
An example of a company that successfully implemented this strategy is Glossier. The cosmetics brand gained immense popularity due to its consistent branding, which closely aligned with the values and needs of its customers. Glossier focused on creating a cohesive aesthetic for its products, packaging, and communication with customers.
The brand stood out with minimalist, contemporary design that attracted Millennials interested in natural, high-quality, innovative cosmetics. It focused on communication based on the values and needs of its customers and emphasized the idea of natural beauty. It also created excitement at every touchpoint with the brand. The millennial pink color became its hallmark, and the iconic bubble-shaped packaging was beloved by consumers and even used as cosmetic bags. Their physical stores elevated the retail experience to a whole new level.
Glossier’s branding is consistent, well thought out, and executed across many touchpoints. The benefits of good branding are that the brand is easily recognizable and stays in memory for longer. Glossier’s differentiators also included personalization and customer engagement in the product development process. They actively listened to feedback by conducting surveys and discussions. This allowed them to introduce products that addressed the real needs of their customers. Thanks to this, Glossier was able to build a strong emotional bond with its community, while becoming an increasingly recognizable brand and solidifying its market position. At fellowheads, we understand how powerful brands are when they consciously and consistently build their branding. That’s why from the very start of the journey, we think about every touchpoint between your brand and your customer. This enables us to create moments that leave a lasting impression on your audience.
2. Stand out or...
Branding helps your brand stand out from the competition, making a lasting impression. In today's fiercely competitive market for consumer attention, brands must be bold, break old rules, and surprise their audiences. Regardless of your e-commerce industry, don’t be afraid to step away from the beaten path and challenge the status quo. If you don't get noticed, you won't sell.
A great example of a brand that stood out in the seemingly mundane bottled water market is Liquid Death Mountain Water. Drawing inspiration from the heavy metal culture, this brand grabs attention with its bold packaging design (cans, in this case) and provocative messaging, completely breaking away from the traditional, calm, "blue" image of competing brands.
The success of this brand demonstrates how crucial it is to understand your competition's audience and the unexpected benefits of good branding. Sometimes, it’s precisely breaking old design rules with intention that allows you to stand out, reach your audience, and spark conversation. What’s unexpected and surprising makes a brand stay in the memory for the long run.
3. Credibility
At first glance, everything might seem fine with your brand’s visual identity. However, it’s still worth asking yourself: Does the way my company communicates visually inspire trust among its audience?
In today’s world, a lack of professional branding can raise doubts among customers. The visual language of your brand conveys its values and shows that it is trustworthy. It also sets the level of quality for your products or services and positions it within the market space. A consistent, content-cohesive message—both visually and textually—makes the brand appear as credible and reliable.
Trust in a brand is likely the most valuable intangible asset a company can have. It’s defined by consumer expectations and measured by how well a brand delivers on the promises made in its products and services.
To succeed in the long term, companies must understand the importance of building trust through branding. They should focus on building trust just as much as they focus on launching new product lines and services. With easy access to information, today’s customers are not willing to buy empty promises and can easily verify a brand.
The Ordinary, a cosmetics brand owned by Canadian company DECIEM, serves as an excellent example of branding that builds trust and suggests high-quality products. Their logo is minimalist, with black text on a white background, showing the brand’s name and product names in simple, readable sans-serif fonts. Their visual language focuses on simplicity, transparency, and emphasis on ingredients. The product packaging is clean, white labels with milky, transparent bottles that allow customers to see the contents. The consistent and cohesive visual language of The Ordinary reflects the brand’s philosophy. It communicates its values and honesty toward consumers. This, in turn, helps build credibility among those looking for effective, science-based skincare solutions.
4. Engagement
A product photo on an influencer's shelf, a visit to an online store, or scrolling through a post on Instagram are just a few of the many points of interaction a consumer has with a brand. Have you ever wondered what customers are thinking about your brand right now? What feelings accompany them? Branding is often the first touchpoint with a potential customer, and it must engage. It must stir emotions and fuel the imagination. You only have one chance to make a great first impression. Regardless of whether you have an aesthetic sense or not! People will judge your brand based on your online store or social media communication. That's why it's worth creating a branding that will create that mythical “wow” effect 😉 Engagement is undeniably one of the most important benefits of branding.
Furthermore, good branding builds engagement not only among customers but also among your employees. Everyone wants to belong to something bigger and share consistent, authentic values. Engaging branding can help attract talent and increase loyalty and motivation among employees. They will be proud to work for a brand that represents values they identify with.
Patagonia is a great example of a brand whose branding influences engagement among both customers and employees. The brand's visual language ties back to nature and fully represents Patagonia's environmental values. Clearly communicating the brand's mission and its commitment to environmental and local community action makes both customers and employees feel part of a greater goal and eager to contribute to the realization of that vision.
Brands that create a community around them are the ones that achieve the greatest success. They create a platform that allows them to communicate values that their audience resonates with. At the same time, an engaging brand is one that consumers want to spend time with – and spend money on. This is why brands need to encourage discovery, sharing, and the excitement of new experiences as part of the journey of buying from that brand. We all love the thrill of excitement and novelty, as well as sharing it with our loved ones. This is especially important in a world where everything seems to be at our fingertips. True, joyful moments are especially valuable. That’s one of the reasons why Patagonia has built such a close-knit community – it offers hope and excites with the vision of a better tomorrow.
From product selection to creating new formats, brands that celebrate creativity and customer engagement, while providing convenience and inspiration, will be the thriving brands of tomorrow.
5. Strategy implementation
Świadomy branding, który ugruntowany jest w strategii, nie tylko pozwala na racjonalne kształtowanie marki, ale przede wszystkim sprawia, że idee firmy są wyjątkowe i ponadczasowe. Dobrze przemyślane działania brandingowe opierają się ulotnym trendom. Skupiają się na wartościach marki, wzmacniają jej pozytywny wizerunek i wspierają osiąganie kluczowych celów biznesowych. Zwracający uwagę i budzący emocje branding przekłada się na sprzedaż. Tym samym może zwiększać udział Twojej marki w rynku i poprawiać wyniki finansowe. To daje brandowi solidne fundamenty do dalszego wzrostu.
Conscious branding, rooted in strategy, not only allows for the rational shaping of a brand, but most importantly, makes the company’s ideas unique and timeless. Well-thought-out branding actions are not based on fleeting trends. They focus on the brand’s values, strengthen its positive image, and support the achievement of key business goals. Attention-grabbing and emotionally engaging branding translates into sales. This can increase your brand’s market share and improve financial results. This gives the brand solid foundations for further growth.
At fellowheads, we understand that strategy and design are inseparable. The branding process is a way to translate strategic points into the brand’s visual language. This allows us to base it not just on visual trends, but on the timeless vision and goals of the company – bringing them together into one cohesive whole. This directly translates into the practical benefits of branding.
A notable example of embedding a rebranding into a company’s new strategy is Morphy Richards. The market share of this British small household appliances manufacturer had started to decline. A decision was made to redefine the entire brand’s concept. It was born directly from the company’s history and the values it upholds. The brand’s founders, the engineer (Morphy) and the salesman (Richard), initiated the idea, which was then extended across all brand touchpoints: from packaging to outdoor communication.
By delving into their history, an insight was found, and the creative idea was built around the phrase "Happiness Engineered". This is a literal translation of the strategic thinking about what Morphy Richards products represent. It is a verbal representation of the balance between emotions and function, as well as an encouragement to use products that are designed in such a way that life at home is easier and happier. The new Morphy Richards branding can be described with three characteristics: timelessness, thoughtful simplicity, and durability. Additionally, fresh, distinctive illustrations were developed. All of this perfectly aligns with the product features and constitutes the brand’s new promise.
Modern, fresh branding should allow your brand unrestricted creativity. Especially, since the influence of social media is changing the forms and rules of branding creation. Brand communities expect a new type of content that facilitates a dialogue between the brand and the audience. Therefore, the fresh approach to branding is based on creating flexible visual frameworks. On the one hand, they can be easily modified and scaled, while still accommodating all the stories the brand wants to convey to its customers.
Investing in the right branding is an element of effective brand image management and the key to success in an increasingly competitive business world.
