Branding is an investment, not a cost. That’s what you’ll hear from our team, and from any brand who’s taken that advice seriously and experienced success through strategic positioning. And with any investment, you should be clear about what you want in return before signing on the dotted line.
Your WordPress website, business cards, signage, etc., are, no doubt, important pieces of your organization’s “calling card”. But they’re also an expense, and only at their best when specific goals are attached to each one. Goals don’t necessarily have to mean getting “X” number of hits on “X” page of your site. Maybe you’d like to increase site opt-ins by 50%. Maybe you’d like to establish consistent messaging so that everyone from the CEO to the customer service rep presents the same, clear picture to potential customers. Goals don’t have to be micro-detailed. They just need to be specific, realistic, and top of mind from the beginning of the brainstorming process to execution, and beyond.
The destination dictates the path.
When clients attend our Understand Your Brand workshops (UYB), one of the first things they/we do is establish goals. This helps them focus on why they called us in the first place, and not only envision where they want their business to go, but start to unpack the logistics of how to get there. Just like travel, a good branding experience requires some legwork. Routes are researched and well-vetted, so that the passenger — the brand — has an efficient journey to the final destination.
GEO Jobe, our client and favorite group of brilliant geospatial thinkers, came to us in need of a refreshed brand that extracted their personalities and capabilities for a niche audience. On the verge of rolling out new applications they were confident would lead the industry, and unveiling it a major conference, we pared down the vast inner-workings of their products into eye-catching, digestible collateral.
Goals help creatives deliver their best work.
With an established end result in mind, a clear understanding of the products, and details around current and potential customers, we started by stripping the brand to its base — complex but powerful GIS solutions, for an audience with plenty of options and limited attention spans. And there was our answer: powerful simplicity.
- The Tagline: “The Power of GIS, Simplified.”
- The Design: simple geometric lines and patterns
- The Messaging: confident “need/solution”-based language
With these elements used throughout their collateral, GEO Jobe stood out among their peers at the conference. Their app, Admin Tools, received the most downloads of any GIS app presented. And they’ve received more leads from their new website in the last three months than they had in the entire 2014 year.
Goals are the secret to growth.
When our designers are sketching logos, copywriters are scribbling taglines, and developers are mapping out templates, goals are in the forefront. Everything from colors to coding is connected by a brand’s aspirations and identity. It’s our job to figure out which features at which juncture in which capacity will help clients reach those goals, so they can celebrate wins, establish new visions for the future, and continue to grow with confidence.