5 pillars.
I have been digging into branding books and coaching groups to find the best blend of knowledge out there for serving my clients. It turns out, everyone has an opinion on how branding works or should work. Moreover, everyone is right and nobody is right. The thing I have learned in learning more about branding is that eventually you just have to sell yourself, your services, and your products and those who speak that same language will find you, your methods, and your reasoning the best and most beneficial.
In my branding strategy and brand clarity work, I have found two things to be helpful when organizing information with and for my clients. One is that branding to me consists of three equal parts: verbal branding, visual branding, and brand behavior. And 5 pillars to absolutely positively touch upon when talking about branding. So let me break it down.
Verbal branding is all the words as you may have guessed, vision, mission, values, tone, and voice. Visual branding is all the pretty stuff. What you look like, feel like, the vibe, the colors, the logo family, the patterns, everything tasty for your eyeballs. Brand behavior is how all of this comes together to position you in the market, what your marketing and campaigns are doing, how you show up in the market, amidst competitors building brand loyalty and consistency.
So now you can kind of see, how the pillars will fit in here, right? In my mind it is absolutely critical that we talk about your vision (1)/mission (2) (not the same thing), then your values (3). They permeate your every decision as a company. Your tone and voice (4) are a huge middle pillar that helps shape so much of your internal and external communication, and of course, the visuals (5) cannot be forgotten. You have to spend money on that to look good. And then lastly, position yourself in the world to shine brightly without the hustle and extra tabs open. Because when you have a solid foundation when your brand pillars are established, SO.MUCH.MORE of your brand will fall in alignment and give you peace of mind.
Are you clear on these pillars for your brand? If not, let me help you sort them out. Click here.