Discover the power of strong branding to stand out, build trust, foster loyalty, and drive marketing success. Learn about our unique rebranding process.
The importance of strong branding
Brand recognition, differentiation, and awareness
Building trust and credibility
Customer loyalty through emotional connection
Making every marketing effort count
What's unique about our branding process
Your brand is far more than just a logo or a color scheme— it is the heart and soul of your business. It embodies the entire identity and personality of your business and how people perceive it both internally and externally. A strong brand helps you stand out amongst your competitors, express your organization’s personality, and communicate what makes your business or organization unique.
In today’s market, consumers are bombarded with choices. But strong brand recognition cuts through the noise, allowing your company to stand out and connect with customers at first sight and on a deeper level.
Fifty percent of consumers are more likely to buy from a company whose logo they easily recognize. Established branding helps customers easily identify and remember your brand, helping them make purchase decisions out in the wild. In today’s oversaturated market, recognizable branding allows your business or organization to stand out and induce familiarity with consumers.
Branding plays into the power of native ads and product placement. Shoppers may not consciously know why they recognize a brand, but seeing it 20 times in their favorite TV show made them more used to seeing its logo, colors, and theme.
Think of it this way: you’re going to your local department store to try out a new shampoo. You’re stuck between two options. They have all the same ingredients and effects, but one has a gorgeous logo and packaging that you feel you’ve seen before, and the other is unrecognizable. Which one would you choose? A familiar, visually-appealing aesthetic is more likely to attract consumers.
But great branding isn’t all about visuals. A consumer might choose one product over another because of a slogan or jingle. Take Burger King, for example. The iconic “Have It Your Way” slogan has stuck with the company for over 50 years, and it still holds up; the brand transformed the slogan into a jingle that takes hours to get out of your head once you hear it.
Strong brand recognition creates top-of-mind awareness so when customers need what a company offers, that brand is the first one they think of.
When people think of branding, they often think of a business or organization's logo, but it’s so much more than that. Branding includes your business or organization’s mission, values, messaging, voice, tone, colors, fonts, and more.
Consistent branding shows professionalism and reliability, sparking trust in consumers.
Fostering an emotional connection is one of the most powerful aspects of strong branding. Using key elements of your business or organization's branding, like your mission and values, to tap into someone’s emotions, passions, and personal values encourages them to align with your business or organization philosophically, and therefore, invest in it financially. Great products and services are just one piece of the puzzle; inspiring people to love the brand itself is how you connect the pieces together to create the full picture.
Think about Disney's magic touch. Remember how just seeing that swirly font or hearing those first notes of "When You Wish Upon a Star" can send you straight back to being a kid? That's not by accident. Disney nailed the art of tugging at our heartstrings.
Before you know it, you're planning a trip to Disney World or taking your kids to the latest Disney flick, all because that warm fuzzy feeling got you. It's like they've woven their brand into the fabric of our happiest memories.
Now, imagine if your brand could do that. Creating an emotional connection isn't just nice—it's golden. When people feel something real for your brand, they're not just customers anymore. They become loyal fans, spreading the word and sticking with you through thick and thin.
It's about building something that goes beyond just selling stuff. You're creating a relationship, a shared story. And let's face it, in today's world, that kind of genuine connection is priceless.
Ever notice how the best brands feel the same everywhere you see them? That's no accident. When your brand looks and sounds the same across the board— from your website to your Instagram, even on good old-fashioned paper — people start to recognize you without even thinking about it.
It's like your brand becomes that familiar face in a crowd. Use the same colors, fonts, and way of talking everywhere, and boom— you're not just another business, you're a brand people remember.
Keeping your brand's vibe consistent is like always showing up as your authentic self. It builds trust and makes people feel like they really know you. And in the world of business, that's gold.
When it comes to initiating a rebrand, we create a game plan to determine what’s right for your business or organization. We'll figure out what works best for you, keeping the good stuff that makes your brand, your brand, while ensuring the changes align with your goals.
The word “rebrand” doesn’t just mean you need a new logo. At LONDONmiddlebury, a rebrand can mean:
- Redesigning your logo
- Changing your name
- Redefining your mission, vision, and/or values
- Adjusting your color palette
- Evolving your fonts
- Modifying packaging
- Updating print collateral
- Adapting voice and tone
- Reconsidering your target audience
- And more!
Your brand should be a genuine reflection of what your business or organization wants to present to the world. It's your public face, your values, and your promise all rolled into one.
Don't think of rebranding as fixing something that was wrong. Instead, see it as an evolution. As your business grows and changes, it's natural for your branding needs to shift too. Maybe you expanded your services, reached new markets, or refined your mission. Your brand should keep pace with these changes.
Rebranding is about aligning your visual identity and messaging with who you've become. It's taking the essence of what made you successful and updating it to reflect your current reality and future aspirations. This process ensures that your brand continues to resonate with your audience and accurately represents your business as it stands today.
Remember, good branding grows with you. It's not about discarding your history, but about building on it to create something that fits who you are now and where you're headed.
It’s important to recognize the challenges when they appear. Here are some reasons you might consider a rebrand:
- Your audience’s perception of your organization is different from your team’s intentions.
- Your branding feels out-of-date and stuck to a certain time period.
- Your branding doesn’t align with your marketing strategy.
- Your organization’s purpose is changing and your branding no longer accurately represents it.
- Your branding is difficult to differentiate from competitors’.
- Your organization is expanding into a new market.
- Your organization is expanding to new locations and your current branding is too specific to one location.
- You no longer resonate with your current branding and want something that’s more appealing.
We have a solution for all these branding challenges. Our rebranding process is designed to address your specific needs and create an identity you'll be proud of. We work closely with you, using a proven approach to uncover the right solutions and develop branding that truly resonates with your vision and values.
Research
Before we dive into your organization’s rebrand, we’ll do some digging and crunch the numbers to get the real scoop on how your brand stacks up in the market.
Depending on your specific goals, we create internal and external surveys distributed to employees, board members, customers, and community members at large, to align core messaging, goals, and perceptions. From there, we initiate workshops to define your organization’s desired state and brand story.
It might seem like we’re giving away our “secret sauce,” but we often find that you need a third, party, experienced brander to present these questions and pull at threads to truly extract the organization’s gems. Many times, organizations come to us after trying to go through this process themselves but got stuck and looked for outside support.
Current State
In this portion of the workshop, we focus on where your business or organization is now. What problem are we attempting to solve? Does the current branding tell the wrong story? Has our target audience profile changed? At this time, we want to know if the goal of the rebrand is evolutionary or revolutionary— is it a slight alteration of your current branding, or does your brand need a complete overhaul?
Answering these questions allows us to have a solid understanding of what to avoid when it comes to the rebrand, from colors that are out of the question to visuals that just don’t make sense for your brand anymore.
Desired State
One important facet of your rebrand is longevity. We want to deliver a brand package that sticks with your business or organization while accurately reflecting your mission and goals and attracting your target audience. In this section of the workshop, we discuss the desired state of your brand. This isn’t just what you want it to look like in one year. We’ll ask you to dream big and look for answers as to what your brand should look like in one, five, and even 10 years down the road. It’s important to look at both the near and long-term future to create branding that will stand the test of time.
Defining the Brand Story
You can’t accurately define a brand story in one word, but a list of words will put you in the right direction. The following questions are meant to help team members spark ideas for the rebrand.
Culture: What unique characteristics would our community use to define us?
Audience: Who is our primary audience, and how do we perceive them?
Voice: What are the distinctive characteristics of our communication style?
Benefit: What emotional response does our organization evoke?
X-Factor: What sets our organization apart?
Each question defines a specific area of your business or organization, letting them come together into one final product.
Brand Refinement
At LONDONmiddlebury, we're dedicated to creating a brand you'll love. We don't just deliver a product and call it a day. Instead, we work closely with you, refining and adjusting until we get it just right.
Our process is collaborative and flexible. We'll present various options, listen carefully to your feedback, and keep fine-tuning until everything aligns perfectly with your vision. Our goal isn't simply to meet your expectations, but to exceed them.
Final Product
When we're done, you'll have a brand that feels just right— like it was always meant to be yours. It's not just about looking good today; it's about setting you up for where you're heading tomorrow. We don't just hand over a logo and wave goodbye. You'll get a full brand guide that breaks down every detail, so your whole team can keep things consistent and sharp. And when it's time to show off your new look to the world? We've got your back with rollout strategies to help your audience fall in love with it too. From the first sketch to the big reveal, we're in this together, creating something you'll be proud to put your name on.