Just close your
eyes and try to recollect people you know, from your close circle, from
extended circle or even strangers. Your mind is now overflowing with people’s
list. But while doing this how many people did you recollected by their name?
May be a few in your close circle; rest all by their faces. Isn’t it? It’s
interesting to know that there might have been many whose names you don’t even
know or remember but still you can recollect them by their faces or work they
do or their peculiar characteristic. More than just names, it’s easy to
identify people by their faces or by their actions. Girl with sparkling eyes,
boy with naughty smile, uncle who is always singing to himself, old lady
carrying knitting kit everywhere, the laundry boy…. So what’s the point I am
trying to make here? It’s easy to remember face or characteristic than the
names. Visuals and associations work better in identification. You may not
remember name of a person who served you food in restaurant but you cannot
forget the service he offered to you and because of that may be his face too.
This same logic
works in case of Brand identity. The visual of any brand i.e. it’s logo,
colours, tagline helps in making association with the brand name and makes the
product stand out from other competitive products and communicate with
consumer. The service that a brand offers makes it’s identity even stronger in
consumer’s mind. For authentic herbal products people trust ‘Patanjali’, if you
want best quality creative building blocks toy, you go for ‘Lego’, for fast and reliable courier people trust 'FedEx'. These
are few examples for brand identity.
Some brands go
beyond this and become synonymous with the product of service they offer. Eg.
Google for search engine, Xerox for photocopy.
Clear and crisp
communication lays a strong foundation for any relationship and builds ‘trust’.
This relationship could be personal, professional or with consumers. ‘Brand’ is
nothing but people’s perception about that organisation or a company and
‘Branding’ is a process of shaping these perceptions that consumers have about
a company. Having said this point to be noted here is that in any communication
we do not believe each and every word being said by anyone. Based on our past
experiences, body language of the communicator; our mind processes the information
and forms its own opinion about received information.
Communication
design experts in ‘Brand Identity and Strategy design’ help in making a
deliberate and cohesive strategy that guides branding decisions of that
company. Design team studies the target audience and come up with a collection
of tangible expressions, logo, text etc as branding Identity for that company.
They work out effective channels like print, social media, digital campaigns
etc to communicate with target users. This strategy results in ‘guided
perceptions’ that company wants the ‘consumers’ to make about their ‘Brand’.
Based on these actions consumers build their awareness and reputation about the
company. Simple logo makes it easy to remember and identify. The tagline gives a crisp vision of that company.
I hope with this I
am able to make a clear communication about ‘what brand identity is’ and ‘what
is the role of Design team’ in the same. So next time when you shop be aware
about what the ‘Brand’ is communicating with you!
Some useful links
Note:
The writer has no
rights on the images used in this article.
