Branding

What is branding?

Branding is the process of capturing all the identifying components of a company and translating them into a complex set of visual and textual elements.

Why is it so important?

Because a brand’s identity visually expresses a company’s values.

How To Create (excellent) Brand Identity

Analysis

Boring as that may seem it all begins with data analytics – we define analytical metrics to identify and measure those features that make a company and its products/services unique.

Data analytics clarify, both to us and to the company itself, what products, markets and core values relate to the brand identity. The main goal of this analysis is defining a specific strategic framework which we can use for the creative process.

Research Areas

• Target: the socio-demographic characteristics of the company’s target audience. Understanding the needs, and dreams, of the company’s target audience is the key to design effectual identity and communication style.
• Product/Service:what are the specific needs the company’s product meets? To answer this question we need to understand all the features that qualify the service provided. Both in objective terms and in subjective terms, by checking the perception of the target customer.
• Target Market and Competitor Analysis: each sector and each market convey and showcase the visual and content features shared by the players who operate in it. Observing these and seeing how they impact customers helps us define each specific markets’ communication practices: being aware of the values its audience shares allows the company to establish a sincere relationship. By studying the market and competitors we lay the foundations for the brand’s future success.
• Company Background: every company has a historical, cultural or emotional background, a DNA unique to it. At Gruppo CO. we listen to our clients, hear their story, share their past experiences, and identify their one-of-a-kind features together with them. Taking all elements into account, from company vision to the founder’s ethics and values to the brand history we ensure a company’s brand identity is not only an expression of its future, but a respectful representation of its heritage.
• Media analysis (executive brand positioning): brand positioning involves seeking its portrayal on the company’s media. Product positioning or service provision often dictate non-negotiable conditions that must be kept well in mind during the creative process.

Strategic and Creative Process

• Brand Promise: the first step of the creative process. We use what we have learned in the data analytics phase to build a simple, yet powerful, key element: the brand promise. The clearer and more comprehensible the brand promise is, the more its visual declinations will meet its target needs, and reach brand recognition.
• Naming: naming is a process where the creative component weighs no less than the technical and analytical component. A name must be the expression of the brand promise, as well as comply with formal, legal, cultural and application requirements. Our team offers an integrated methodology by carrying out legal (copyright, similar brands, existing domains, etc.) and ascertain formal requirements (cultural and linguistic impact) are complied with.
• Logo e visual identity: where aesthetics begin to materialize. Once we’re done with the analysis we start working on brand aesthetics, refining them to outline the leading traits. Visual identity begins to emerge, yielding the logo, the colours, the shapes, the decorative elements and so on.
• Verbal identity: while identifying the aesthetic identity we also work on defining the brand’s verbal identity. This process involves copywriting. All starts with drawing up the rules of the Tone of Voice (TOV), and continues with the creation of payoffs, slogans and claims.

Output

• The Brand Book is the first “real-to-life” operational support. The brand book comes straight from the branding process, it is the document that summarises the rules of brand aesthetics and their use: the brand guidelines.
• Corporate Identity comprises all executive media which comes from what has been created.