Brand

Why good branding means good business

Creating a brand identity in isolation or as a pure creative exercise will deliver a beautiful visual output but won’t necessarily translate into a successful business outcome. That’s why good branding is the bridge between value and stakeholders.

We’ve been around the branding block, so to speak. Along the way we’ve observed how many missed opportunities there have been to harness the value a brand can deliver to a business.  

That’s why we approach new projects with the same objective; to help businesses communicate value to those who matter most.  

Quite often brand is seen as the sexy part where visuals are thrown around and designs drawn up. Yes, we eat with our eyes but it must taste good too. Let’s unpack that.

Creating a brand identity in isolation or as a pure creative exercise will deliver a beautiful visual output but won’t necessarily translate into a successful business outcome. That’s why good branding is the bridge between value and stakeholders.  

Building on that, a good brand, one that engages well, is good for business because customers will be compelled to buy from you, employees will stay with you and investors will, well, invest.

At Bright Space we call it “The Three Rs”; Revenue, Retention, and Realisation of capital. The Three Rs should be the product of good branding, and good branding should be the result of a clearly understood value.

We honed in on this with our client DuPont Mobility & Materials recently. We took this notion of where they create value, working to understand their customer base and marrying the two to create a strong union in the form of brand engagement.

B2C’s often dance this tango with more zest and precision than B2Bs. While one can argue branding for B2Bs is a different dance entirely, one can still learn from B2C's performance.  

Business-to-consumer work hard to understand what their audience want and need, then use their brand in an engaging way to achieve it. Nike for instance has mastered this art form.

Business-to-business can get bogged down with reciting product lists and corporate KPIs, forgetting their stakeholders have needs and personalities by homogenising them.  

So much so, new research by Brand Finance found the top 100 B2B brands globally have an estimated £795-billion worth of untapped business value in their brands.

Good B2C branding works for the right reasons. Good corporate brands also work for those same reasons. Both understand their stakeholders, they understand the value they create, and they then use brand to do it in an engaging way.

We'll leave you with this thought from Bright Space Principal, Ian Firth: "Staying grounded in business is how we are able to approach our brand work pragmatically. While visual design is an important expression, it is just one variable that makes a corporate brand deliver successful business outcomes."

If your brand needs to learn to dance the tango, reach out, and we’ll help you find value in the moves you already have. Let’s dance or letstalk@brightspacecomms.co.uk.

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