In the course of mapping out an effective public relations campaign, Pierson Grant is often called upon to create or overhaul corporate or individual product branding, meaning that we help to craft a distinctive look and feel that both represents an organization and encourages its customers to recognize and affiliate it positively with the company’s quality products or services.
With the proliferation of desktop graphic design, it’s true that almost anyone can create an attractive logo, but are you sure it will really represent your business?
A brand is much more than a name or logo. It is the essence of everything that distinguishes your product or service from your competitors in the eyes of your consumers. It conveys personality and identity, quality and the overall values and philosophy of your business.
An established brand also represents a literal financial investment in every single impression it’s gained over any particular time. The longer your brand has been visible and successful, the more valuable it becomes.
For a moment, imagine if McDonald’s were to change the trademark yellow color or the font shape of its “Golden Arches,” effectively rendering it unfamiliar and thus unrecognizable. For most established logos, a big change or even haphazard communication of a small change can have real and measurable impact on its product visibility and perception.
Indeed, McDonald’s slogans and store interiors have changed over the years, but the company’s iconic Golden Arches have remained the same.
Successfully achieving a delicate visual balance and positive end-user affiliation with your product or service is why all branding must be handled professionally using a skilled assessment of research, collaboration and creativity.
Because public perception of a company is implicit in all messaging, Pierson Grant has been trusted by all types of clients to create a uniquely recognizable identity that ultimately accompanies their communications, public relations and marketing. In the process, we lead clients through the exercise of defining their mission, values and key benefits, identifying their audience, determining their business or product “voice,” creating their visual, marketing and communications assets, and then helping them market their brand.
We begin the branding process by creating a recognizable logo, creative image and brand messaging. We then work with you to communicate these qualities with publicity, public relations, social media and a fully integrated marketing and communication action plan. Importantly, for those with an established logo, we evaluate whether a logo change is needed at all.
Your brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room. – Jeff Bezos
Pierson Grant assists in the complex process of translating and applying those features to all aspects of an organization’s entity, from its website, to brochures, and even employee clothing, promotional items, fleet vehicles, email signatures and other myriad marketing assets.
Whether our client is rebranding, creating a new brand or making a brand update, Pierson Grant also helps to communicate the reasons and philosophies behind that change to their customers, employees and the general public—all different target audiences that require separate, thoughtfully prepared communications and marketing tools that reinforce the brand by explaining its history and purpose, and responding to questions and concerns from those audiences about how the brand affects the company’s future.
Paramount among those audiences is the often-overlooked factor of internal communications. Whether you’re creating a new brand, or re-evaluating an old one, your executives and employees are your primary brand ambassadors. Often, our clients have done such a good job in prior branding, and are so attached to that work, that their current brand is deeply established and entrenched in their internal culture, making it difficult to get buy-in and advocacy from the people closest to you.
Pierson Grant is experienced in helping to present and introduce branding concepts to your internal customers, creating a pathway for them to become your best branding cheerleaders.
Writing an Effective Tagline
In today’s overcrowded media landscape, merely having even a well-crafted logo isn’t enough.
With short audience attention spans constantly bombarded with other brands competing for your customers’ attention, even a making a substantial marketing investment in gaining reach and frequency through marketing still typically yields only a few fleeting moments to convey your message effectively.
For taglines, the gold standard of advertising is to state your product and key benefit in five to seven words or less. But too often, attempts to write a tagline result in a vague statement that made sense only to the people who thought it was clever at the time.
Pierson Grant can help write a tagline that will both position your product or service, convey your values and explain succinctly to your audience exactly what you do and how it sets you apart from your competition.
We’ll also help show you how to apply both your new brand and logo to your marketing plan to your creative assets, as well as coordinate these changes with your internal and external audiences so they’re received smoothly and willingly accepted.
Like McDonald’s golden arches, or the bold forward arrow embedded in the award-winning Fedex logo, branding’s ultimate goal is to create a viewer’s immediate association among the logo image, product or service and its key benefits, and an implicit understanding of the company’s values.
Pierson Grant can help you achieve it!
