Your brand is so much more than your logo, design choices and the words you use. It’s about every decision that you make and the narrative that drives your marketing together. From your UX, team, history and product, these all need to cumulatively work together to drive new meaning and create a new reality. But how do you create meaning where there wasn’t any before?

Every brand decision you make sets to further assert your market positioning and define your company ethos and values. Even the smallest choices can make the biggest impact, as your customers understand your brand through the decisions you make.

The gateway brand  

Does your brand act as a gateway for change in your target demographic? Most products and/or services are intended to improve how something works, making it better or simpler. If you make your brand a gateway, you are suggesting to your customer that by investing in your service they will see an element of transformation within themselves or their business. Maybe the product you sell would typically appeal to children, but by taking steps to tap into an adult’s psyche as part of your branding, this would widen your audience exponentially.

Take Lego for example. By including hidden jokes for adults in their movies and printing ads which appeal to both the young and old, they are alluding to the fact that it is ok for the older generation to play with their product. This is giving adults the unspoken nod they need to act ‘like children’ again – giving them the gateway to be someone different. By showing adults what their experience could be ‘on the other side’ Lego have created new meaning with their product.

Everything comes from something

There is no such thing as something which is completely new, everything is borne of something else; whether that be another brand or concept which is already in existence. However, that doesn’t mean to say that if the idea behind your brand was inspired by something else, that it can’t take your consumers somewhere entirely different.

Vitamix perfected this strategy by taking the idea of a blender and turning it into something new. They redefined their blender as a luxury product which played on the idea of wellness and power to sell a product for a premium much higher than the standard market price. Through their efforts, their blenders are being used throughout all Starbucks chains and are revered by many across the world.

Solve multiple problems

Instead of implementing multiple measures to solve the same amount of problems, consider how your brand can solve multiple problems with one solution. If your brand positions itself in the right way, you will have enough authority and trust within the market to overcome what otherwise could have been considered a major block in your business journey.

Take Costco for example. Their store layouts are unfinished, unattractive and very much ‘what you see is what you get’. They often require long journeys to get to and they don’t invest a lot of money or time into marketing. To solve these issues, they have positioned their brand as a pillar of honesty. This means that the unrefined surroundings and inconvenience incurred is offset by the promise of an honest experience and low-price mark-up.

Does your brand create new meaning? For support with your branding, including design and strategy, get in touch with Skein.

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Photo by Olav Ahrens Røtne on Unsplash