The team who brought you the Woman-Owned Woman-Operated (WOWO) Podcast worked with students in Emmanuel College’s Digital Culture and Social Media course to create the Marketing Culture Collaborative Podcast. In each episode, students explore a topic related to the ever-evolving culture of digital media and marketing.
In this episode, hosts Sydney Voss-Kernan & Anya Peterson interview Andrea Gavin and Amy Flanagan of Amy and Andrea to give insight on the ins and outs of branding.
More about this episode:
Before becoming partners, Amy was a copywriter for Arnold Worldwide Advertising here in Boston and Andrea was the senior art director for Digitas North America Advertising and Marketing. Together they have worked on branding projects for companies like Volkswagen and Madewell.
SO WHAT IS BRANDING? AND WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?
Branding is the identity of your product, service or business. It encompasses everything that your business stands for. It includes your relationships with customers and employees, your look, feel and ultimately your story. The Journal of Design, Business & Society states that branding has the ability to differentiate products, services and people by using visual and verbal elements that express the entity and sets them apart from their competition.
WHAT IS YOUR BRAND’S IDENTITY?
In order to establish your brand you first have to find out what makes you different from competitors. Once, you are able to find what makes your business different you are then able to start building upon your brand’s identity and create your brand strategy to define what your business stands for. This is an integral part of your brands success, it is your guideline that conveys your business’s personality in an everyday marketplace to your consumers and competitors.
THE ESSENCE OF DESIGN
Design is a key element to creating your brand’s identity. A logo, color scheme, slogan, tone of voice, etc. are all ways you can help make your brand’s identity consistent through various digital media platforms. Which is why it is important to make a brand guideline. A place in which you define your mission and place your logo, colors, fonts and taglines in one place so you can refer to them when making marketing material. This will insure that everything you put out there will reflect your brands identity! According to The Journal of Design, Business & Society, if social media content matches the design of the packaging, advertising, and marketing material of the brand then the visual and verbal elements on social media accounts will allow for customers and social media viewers to understand the brands identity. An article called The Importance of Graphic Design in Social Media Marketing states that all content on social media including both visual and verbal should reflect the brand identity to create an instantly recognizable image and an intriguing first impression because brands that have a distinct design and “footprint” on social media gather followers, likes and comments because they actively engage the audience.