Congratulations! After all the testing we’ve done, it turns out your brand is 23% confused startup, 31% corporate buzzword soup, 18% “my cousin’s friend drew that in MS Paint,” and a whoppin’ 28% “uh, we have a brand?”
And in case this comes frighteningly close, just don’t panic. You’re not the only one. Millions of businesses around the world are wandering around with garbled brand DNA trying to figure out why customers continue to confuse them with the competition or, worse, forget they exist as soon as they leave their website.
The good news? Unlike your actual DNA (which you’re pretty much stuck with, unless science fiction becomes reality), your brand DNA is completely fixable. No genetic modification required—just some strategic thinking and professional help.
The Great Brand Identity Mix-Up
Let’s talk about what brand identity actually means, because apparently, there’s been some confusion. Your brand identity isn’t just your logo, despite what that one blog post from 2003 might have told you. It’s more of an embodiment of the personality of your whole business blown down into a display and a language that somehow must fit together and not go into a nervous breakdown.
It can be thought of as an outfit to a T, a communication persona, and an embodiment of a personal philosophy all in one wholly integrated package. When you do it properly, it can be just like having your own immaculately-categorized Instagram feed on your entire business. When done incorrectly, it’s like attending a black-tie event dressed in a costume and talking completely in movie quotes from the ’90s.
When Brand Identity Goes Wrong (A Comedy of Errors)
We’ve all done business with brands who have multiple personality disorder. Their logo shouts “reputable financial institution”, their website wails “bourgeois coffeehouse”, their social media voices sound like they were written by a manic teenager, and their email newsletters sound like they were written by a very stern Victorian house butler.
Such companies are the walking oxymorons. They’re attempting to be everything to everyone and becoming nothing to none. It feels a bit like speaking to a person who’s constantly alternating between different accents throughout the conversation – in principle: quite possible, but very discomforting.
The result? Customers are confused, employees are directionless, and the business owner is hitting the sheets at night wondering why their so-called great product or service isn’t taking off as desired.
The DNA of Successful Branding
What most people don’t know about brand identity is that it’s not just about being pretty (although that’s not bad either). It’s about establishing a consistent experience that gives people trust, recognition, and ultimately, loyalty.
Having a professional brand identity design is as close as getting a very good matchmaker in terms of your business and your dream customers. It captures all the fantastic distinct attributes that make your business special and converts it to a language that makes your target audience understand immediately.
This extends to how you’ve chosen your colors (yes, your colors have psychology – who knew red could be so manipulative?) to the fine message in your typography (apparently, Comic Sans has trust issues).
The Science of Visual Communication
Human brains are essentially very sophisticated pattern-recognition machines that happen to have strong opinions about fonts. We process visual information roughly 60,000 times faster than text, which means your brand identity gets about 0.05 seconds to make a good first impression before potential customers decide whether you’re worth their time.
No pressure, right?
This is also why professional brand identity design is so important. It’s not about the latest design trends or making things look cool (though cool is always an added plus). It’s about learning how the psychology of human mind, visual communication and business strategies all come together to form something that works.
The Professional Advantage (Or: Why DIY Branding is Like Surgery)
Sure, you could try to design your own brand identity. You have a strong opinion on colors, after all you downloaded that free design software and you watched three YouTube tutorials. What could possibly go wrong?
Well, actually a lot. Good brand identity design as a profession needs more than an understanding of what’s aesthetically pleasing, but of what works. It’s about using a font that suggests credibility, using color combinations that evoke the correct emotional appeal and making it all integrate across platforms without breaking apart.
It’s similar to following a recipe and being a chef. Combining components is easy enough, but coming up with something that would taste good needs you to be skilled and experienced, as well as somebody with a good sense of how flavors interact.
The Identity Crisis Solution
There is relief in that should your brand be in its identity crisis mode, take heart. All major change narratives begin with a confession that something’s broken. The initial solution is admitting the fact that the brand identity you currently have may be sending the wrong message, or giving your customers a confusing signal, or just not make your business look as awesome as it really is.
The second step is getting professional help. A great brand identity designer is someone who does more than just make things pretty: they develop a visual and verbal voice that communicates your story in a compelling and clear way, establishes trust in a flash and makes your business memorable, all in the best possible way.
Ready to give your brand the identity makeover it deserves? Check out Workvix.com and discover what happens when your brand finally gets its DNA sorted out. Your business (and your sanity) will thank you.
