MILTON AND CROSSCONSULTING

Suite J179, Ikota Shopping Complex, Adjacent Victoria Garden City, Lekki, LagosTel:+2348036258312; Email:miltoncrosslexng@gmail.com

Web: www.miltoncrosslexng.com

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STARTUP BRANDING TOOLKIT

HELLO _________________________________________

Customers face an abundance of choices in the modern marketplace and brand distinctiveness is more important now than it has ever been.

Distinction is vital for business success, and the object of this toolkit is to help you make informed and inspired decisions for the creation of your brand. It addresses strategic and creative challenges you may come across during the early stages of your venture. In addition, branding plays a significant internal role, because it clarifies and sharpens the idea, identity and value of your organization.

You will find this toolkit helpful in building your brand and your business. However it is important to note that a brand is not built overnight; success is often measured in decades, not years.

A Brand is a Mental Concept2

This is supposed to be an interactive document, so feel free to print it out and write anywhere on the document

The goal of branding is the creation of a distinct and attractive mental representation of a product, service or organization. Branding focuses relevant information about the product or service being offered, helping the prospective consumer to recognize and select the branded product from the multitude of alternatives available in the marketplace.

A strong brand is generally one that people can easily recognize and recall, and for which the hold strong, favourable and unique associations.

Branding Is VITAL!People build perceptions of your brand every time they have an experience with your organization. Your brand develops a meaning with your audience, which is strengthened by every additional encounter they have with the brand. It is consequently up to you to shape these perceptions or face the consequences of the wrong perceptions being developed.

By defining and transmitting a set of clear and consistent signals each time your audience encounters your organization, you can transform a vague idea into a stable understanding of what you do and why it should matter to them that the product or service they desire to purchase is provided by you.

How do Brands come to life?

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Find relevant aspect of your brand that are attractive to your target audience, true to offer and distinct from your competitors

Focus the relevant aspects into a crystal clear brand idea (brand values)

e.g Apple’s brand idea is “innovation, design, simplicity”

Consistently deliver that Brand Idea!!!

The ToolkitEstablishing and maintaining a relationship with customers today has become difficult. A multitude of offers compete for the attention of customers who are more media savvy and economically literate than at any point in human history.

This toolkit, if used properly, should enable you create customer experiences that serve needs, and are immensely pleasant to users of your product or service whilst promoting brand encounters that consistently deliver your brand idea.

TOOLKIT OVERVIEW:

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NamingBriefing Tone of Voice PersonalityBrand ValuesBrand Positioning

1. Brand Positioning: How to formulate your brand positioning statement for the market?

2. Brand values: What promises are you communicating to your customers?

3. Brand Personality: How should your brand look and feel?

4. Tone of Voice: How does your brand reflect in your communications?

5. Briefing Designers: How do you work with external designers to project your brand?

6. Naming: How do you select a business name that adequately communicates your brand?

BRAND POSITIONING

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We live in a culture which is overwhelmed by too many choices, a well-positioned brand helps your audience understand what services you provide and why they

should choose you.

A well-positioned brand is visually appealing and memorable, communicates essential messages clearly and consistently and focuses on value and benefits to

the target audience.

Your brand positioning should be articulated in your Brand Positioning Statement (BPS). From your BPS you can derive other decisions about your brand, such as

your brand values and personality.

BRAND POSITIONING STATEMENT WORKSHEET

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You can cut out this worksheet and paste it on a wall for easy reference

FOR:

Our Target consumer: Our Brand name

VISUALISING YOUR BRAND POSITIONVisualizing your competitive position in your target market is useful in giving your team a solid understanding of your organisation’s uniqueness and relevance, relative to the competition.

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,Our Product or service type/category

WHICH GIVESIS THE

Our brand Promise/ Consumer Benefit

BECAUSE

Reason to Believe our promise

General ideas for labeling your positioning axis include:High Quality Low Quality

Prestige Budget

Broad Choice Narrow Choice

Stylish Functional

Modern Traditional

Innovative Conservative

Exciting Modest

Luxury Basic

Complex Simple

Fun Serious

Specialist General

Steps to visualizing your positionStep 1: Identify the attributes your target consumers use to understand the differences between competing brands in your current or target market. The attributes should be structured as opposing pairs (e.g. ‘High Quality’ and ‘Low quality’).Step 2: Add the pairs of attributes as labels to the horizontal and vertical axis of the template graph below.Step 3: Score your organization and your competitors on each attribute axis by using a scale from 1 to 9 (1=very complex, 9=very simple). Place your organization on the graph using markers.

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BRAND VALUESYour brand values are the pillars of your organization and the substance of your promise to

consumers. They outline what is most important to you in doing what you and things that you will never compromise on.

Formulating your brand values helps to ensure that your team members share a solid understanding as to the core of what you are trying to achieve with your product or service. These defined values become more important once you hire new colleagues, expand your

business, or work with external contractors.

As your organization grows, brand values provide a basis for deciding whether a new product, service, advert, or any other action will suit your brand.

There are two categories of brand values you should define for your organization, points of parity (POP’s) and Points of Difference (POD’s). Your POP’s are values you must possess to be considered by consumers of your product or service. Without these qualities, your product or

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service will not succeed in the market, no matter how compelling your POD may be. In contrast, your POD’s are your organisation’s attributes or benefits relevant to consumers,

which they cannot find to the same extent with a competing brand or product.

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CONSUMER RELEVANCE

POINTS OF PARITY

POINTS OF DIFFERENCE

BRAND PERSONALITYYour Brand personality defines the way you project the substance of the values of your

organization. It is beneficial to develop a consistent brand personality, which your target consumers can recognize and relate to as congruent with their own personalities.

Your brand personality may be defined using visuals, because the human brain processes more information when contained in pictures than when contained in text.

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USING VISUALSSTEP 1: A projective and enabling technique for finding your brand personality attributes is to

compare your organization with famous personalities. If your brand were to come alive as a person, who would it be and why? Think of how that person behaves, how they dress, how they live, and how they achieve their objectives. In doing this, keep in mind your target consumers point of view and how they relate to that person.

STEP 2: Compare your organization with other categories such as drinks (coffee, champagne, whisky?), animals (lion/monkey/dog), sport activities (Martial arts/football/Tennis), Architecture (Skyscraper/Terrace/Bungalow?), fashion items (Suit/sneakers/white tie?)

STEP 3: Cut out the pictures you think best reflects your organization and write down three adjectives which best summarise each image you have chosen.

STEP 4: Compare, explain and discuss the attributes you have collected with your team. Some attributes may be similar and some may be more relevant to your business and target consumers than others. Try to narrow them down to a list of three to five words.

STEP 5: Think about how you can translate your chosen attributes into your visual and verbal communication. for instance, if your brand personality is energetic and refreshing you may want to use saturated, bright colours and short, active sentence structures. On the other hand, a personality that is more gentle or traditional can be portrayed through eloquent language and more subtle colours.

COLOURS AND THEIR MEANINGSRed

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Red is the color of fire and blood, so it is associated with energy, war, danger, strength, power, determination as well as passion, desire, and love. Use it as an accent color to stimulate people to make quick decisions; it is a perfect color for 'Buy Now' or 'Click Here' buttons on Internet banners and websites. This color is also commonly associated with energy, so you can use it when promoting energy drinks, games, cars, items related to sports and high physical activity.Orange Orange represents enthusiasm, fascination, happiness, creativity, determination, attraction, success, encouragement, and stimulation. Orange is very effective for promoting food products and toys.YELLOWYellow is the color of sunshine. It's associated with joy, happiness, intellect, and energy. Use yellow to evoke pleasant, cheerful feelings. You can choose yellow to promote children's products and items related to leisure. Men usually perceive yellow as a very lighthearted, 'childish' color, so it is not recommended to use yellow when selling prestigious, expensive products to men.GreenGreen is the color of nature. It symbolizes growth, harmony, freshness, and fertility. Green has strong emotional correspondence with safety. Dark green is also commonly associated with money. Use green to indicate safety when advertising drugs and medical products. Green is directly related to nature, so you can use it to promote 'green' products. Dull, darker green is commonly associated with money, the financial world and banking.BLUEBlue is the color of the sky and sea. It is often associated with depth and stability. It symbolizes trust, loyalty, wisdom, confidence, intelligence, faith, truth, and heaven. You can use blue to promote products and services related to cleanliness (water purification filters, cleaning liquids, vodka), air and sky (airlines, airports, air conditioners), water and sea (sea voyages, mineral water). Blue is linked to consciousness and intellect. Use blue to suggest precision when promoting high-tech products.

PURPLE13

Purple combines the stability of blue and the energy of red. Purple is associated with royalty. It symbolizes power, nobility, luxury, and ambition. Light purple is a good choice for a feminine design. You can use bright purple when promoting children's products.

WHITEWhite is associated with light, goodness, innocence, purity, and virginity. It is considered to be the color of perfection. You can use white to suggest simplicity in high-tech products. White is an appropriate color for charitable organization. White is often associated with low weight, low-fat food, and dairy products.

BLACKBlack is associated with power, elegance, formality, death, evil, and mystery. When designing for a gallery of art or photography, you can use a black or gray background to make the other colors stand out.

TONE OF VOICEImaginative or realistic, humorous or serious, chatty or reserved. What you say and how you

say it in your written or spoken content on your website in your emails, or even in your

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business plan shapes the perception of your organization and therefore your brand. A consistent language, or Tone of Voice, can make your brand recognizable and memorable.

Defining your Tone of Voice in the early stages of your organization can become helpful for ensuring cohesion and consistency once external contractors begin to create content for your organisation. You can derive your Tone of Voice from the brand personality attributes defined for the organization. The goal of your Tone of Voice should always be to portray your brand

personality.

DEFINING YOUR TONE OF VOICE

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STEP 1;List below the brand personality attributes you have identified.

STEP 2:Translate your personality attributes into a general textual style and choosing a style that best captures your personality.

STEP 3

Using your personality attributes from Step 1 and the general writing style from Step 2, think of positive examples of your Tone of Voice and a rationale that shows the tone of Voice you want to establish.

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E.g Classy FormalModestSeriousComposedComplexPassiveRealisticCalm

InformalBold HumorousEdgySimpleActiveImaginativeWacky

O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

OUR PERSONALITY IS:We write like this:

BRIEFING DESIGNERS WITH VISUALSThe briefing process is crucial in creating your brand identity: your logo, website, mobile, stationery and corporate communications. The designer is expected to

create a tangible identity from the often intangible ideas in the mind of the entrepreneur, thus a precise briefing can save you costly design revisions, speeds up the overall design process and gets you closer to your aspired brand identity.

Textual and pictorial descriptions of your defined brand personality attributes provides designers with a description of the look and feel that is sought to be

achieved. Tools like Pinterest are of great value in the production of design briefs.17

We do not write like this

Our reason for choosing this Tone of Voice

BRIEFING DESIGNERS WITH VISUALS USING PINTERESTStep 1: Create a free Pinterest account on www.pinterest.com, you can also sign in using your facebook account

Step 2: After setting up your account, go to your profile nd create a new secret board, which will enable you to pin images privately.

Step 3: Start by searching for specific design terms such as ‘colour palettes’ or ‘Typography’ and pin all pictures that you feel will be relevant to your design idea. These will give the designer a good feel for the overall tone and style you are looking for.

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Step 4: Once your board is finished you can simply save it as a screenshot or print it as a PDF document. You can also invite your designer to collaborate on your secret board by sending its URL.

NAMING YOUR ORGANISATIONThe name of your organization is probably one of the earliest elements of your

brand. Your name is often the first thing your customers come in contact with, your most used and most visible brand asset and the most distinct identifier for your

products and marketing material.

With hundreds of millions of domain names registered on the internet, your challenge is not only finding a name that fits your business, but one you can

actually use both as a domain and for potential social media profiles.

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Search IdeasBlog Design, Business Card, Colour Schemes, Branding, Brand Identity, Corporate Identity, Logo Design, Packaging Design, Typography, Website Design, App Design, Corporate Design.

FINDING A DISTINCTIVE NAME1. Brainstorm root words that represent the core of your business or its

product/service category as well the functional and emotional benefits you offer.

2. Create compound words by combining the words you have collected so far (e.g face+book=Facebook).

3. You can add to your compound words short prefixes or suffixes4. You may increase your chances of finding an unused name by misspelling

words through changing or removing letters, typically vowels where it does not affect the pronunciation of the word (e.g Flickr).

General Tips and Criteria for Choosing a Good Name

1. A good name is one that is simple and easy to pronounce. People should be able to pronounce it after seeing it in written form. Simplicity reduces your efforts in educating people on the pronunciation and spelling of your brand name.

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2. A good name should create a reasonable fit with the character of your organization and your brand personality.

3. A Good name should stand out from competition as recognition depends on consumers ability to discriminate between brands.

4. A good name should be available for all legal purposes (Website, trademarks, domain name) it should not contradict any existing names or intellectual property.

5. A good name should be tested and well received by the target group. This may be achieved either through field research, surveys, and focus groups. You can show your preliminary names to brand customers, relatives, friends and other entrepreneurs and assess how much people like it and if it elicits associations that fit the brand of your organization.

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NAME SELECTION WORKSHEET

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Misspellings (Change or remove letters):

Compound Words: Prefixes and Suffixes:

Synonyms, related emotions, objects:

Root Words:

YOUR BRAND ON A PAGE

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What Market are we in?

What attracts us to this Market?

Who are we aiming at providing services to?

What is the most Compelling thing we offer our customers?

What do we never compromise on?

What is our personality?

What is our tone of voice?