Whether you are running a small retail outlet or presiding over a Fortune 500 company, establishing an effective brand identity is key to differentiation. Your brand’s identity helps establish trust, confidence, and loyalty.
In this blog post, we explore why branding is important: the science behind successful brands, and how to make your mark with consistency across every customer touchpoint.
Investing in a strong brand strategy is one of the wisest investments you can make in your business. With a clear strategy in place that everyone can understand and follow, plus a broad toolkit of brand components and format directions, your creative teams can deliver consistently and rapidly at scale. This agility in execution, combined with the impact of brand loyalty, delivers value to the business through both top-line and bottom-line impact.
Why Is Brand Identity Important?
Differentiation
The proliferation of online brands has created intense competition for attention, elevating differentiation to the top of the priority list for new brands. The more unique your personality and voice, the more likely you are to be recognized. Today, authenticity is the most sought-after differentiator, but it must align with and reflect your business values.
Trust and Credibility
Brands that people trust are the ones they do more business with, but trust is hard to build and easy to lose. Trust can be established through transparency, authenticity, social proof, and high-value content, but consistency in messaging and branding is equally vital to presenting a cohesive identity across all platforms. Without a well-thought-through and executed brand strategy, you’ll always face an uphill battle to secure trust.
Perception
Research indicates that our brains naturally gravitate toward familiar things. Brands that are easily recognizable and have become part of our day-to-day lives are often preferred, a phenomenon known as ‘cognitive ease.’ Consequently, establishing brand recognition (and brand awareness) correlates strongly with influencing customer preference.
Humans also tend to be social animals. Often, we consult others before arriving at our own decisions, and effective brands capitalize on this through testimonials, reviews, and endorsements.
Brands that successfully leverage social proof and influencer advocacy can realize an outsized impact on customer perceptions.
Emotional Connection
A strong brand identity stirs emotions and builds a connection with your audience, turning consumers into loyal customers and brand advocates. It’s not just about selling a product; it’s about selling an experience. Emotions play a crucial role in consumer behavior, and brands that evoke positive feelings leave stronger, lasting impressions. This emotional resonance fuels consumer loyalty and preference.
Using brand archetypes effectively connects with your audience, serving as a powerful storytelling tool. When faced with several options, people usually pick the brand that resonates with them the most.
At Base5, we discovered through our rebranding process that we embody the Hero archetype. This means we are adventurous and purposeful, constantly pursuing improvement and striving to uplift others. Our focus and determination drive us to conquer challenges, and together, we aim to make a positive difference.
By being the best version of ourselves, we aspire to make the world a bit better, embodying the true spirit of the Hero.”
Conveniently Developing a Brand Identity Using Figma Integrated with Web Design Workflows
Maintaining consistency of brand standards and identity across distributed remote teams is a perennial challenge. After completing our rebrand strategy and archetype foundations, Base5 turned to Figma to collaboratively develop and organize our new brand guidelines. Figma is a powerful collaborative design platform that includes a range of tools and features to help you craft a centralized, cohesive brand identity for all use cases and touchpoints.
If you’re not familiar with using Figma to organize design systems, we recommend the following tutorial by Anthony Dispezio and Rogie King at Figma: ‘Building Style Guides.’
The fundamentals of a comprehensive brand identity include various standardized components such as the logo, color palette, typography, icons, illustrations, imagery, social formats, charts, presentations, and web development components. Beyond the graphical elements, the identity should also encompass the company mission, vision, and tone of voice. Together, these form a unified system that any creative working with your brand can easily apply, boosting brand recognition and fostering trust.
Compiling all elements of your brand identity into a shareable Figma file, including usage rules for all assets, serves as a go-to reference for anyone working with your brand. Another great advantage of using Figma is the ability to easily convert and publish the brand identity as HTML on your site for even broader accessibility.
Brands in the Wild
Base5’s Figma brand guide example is free to download and reuse, making it a great resource for getting started with your brand identity planning!
Klarna‘s web brand identity showcases a unified visual and experiential design that embodies the company’s values and mission, with all brand elements working beautifully together to craft a distinctive and captivating online presence.
Similarly, Mozilla‘s online brand guidelines offer comprehensive instructions and resources to ensure the consistency and integrity of the Mozilla brand. These guidelines emphasize the company’s commitment to community and innovation, providing a thorough reference for maintaining the brand’s cohesive look and feel.
Let’s talk about how Base5 can help you design and execute an epic brand guide strategy to support your growth ambitions.