What It Takes To Create Brand Identity

Whether you choose to hire a PR firm or to do it yourself, creating your company’s brand identity is important. Brand identity is when specific attributes are associated with your company to help consumer easily recognize it. Whether you use a specific color like “Tiffany blue” or a graphic like the Nike Swoosh, brand identity can be seen as an essential key to growing your company’s brand.

Keep in mind that if you are not minding your brand that it can be hijacked such as the case of Exxon on Twitter. In 2008, someone posed as a representative from Exxon and began answering question Twitter. At first is seemed as though it really was a good thing for the company and then it turned into bad publicity when this person started sharing negative information about Exxon. Too late, the damage was done on Twitter and has become known as a key example of what can happen if you don’t manage your brand.

When you create your brand, there are specific things that you need to keep in mind such as the colors you use or the graphics that are included with your brand. Make sure that you do your research because you don’t want to create a brand identity that is…

• Closely associated with a competitor
• Similar to Fortune 500 companies and could be confusing
• Not easily translated to another language or negative connotations when translated to a different language (i.e., Chevy Nova translates to “it won’t go”)

Recently, I found a CBS show from 2006 where the Sunday morning Money show was asking its audience to help them determine their logo which would help brand their show. Even though this is an old show, the content shared in the video below is still relevant to creating a good brand identity.