DOES IDENTITY MATTER?

PAGE 1 OF 11

Does
identity
matter?
DOES IDENTITY MATTER? PAGE 2 OF 11

Does identity matter? Everyone is scrutinising

their marketing budgets very carefully these
days and projects that were recently considered
essential are now being marked for
mothballing. So what about branding? What
importance does upgrading a tired identity
carry now if you can just make do with what
you’ve got and put your money into direct
sales? But if you do hold off, what longer term
damage will it do? This paper will look at the
issues surrounding branding, what it can do for
your product or business and what you need
to get right when you do brand.
 DOES IDENTITY MATTER? PAGE 3 OF 11
WHAT IS A BRAND?
Branding companies often wax lyrical about what a
brand is, creating a mystique around identity
creation by using the vernacular jargonese of the
industry. But quite simply, it is the face and
personality of an organisation or product. The face
of the Levi Strauss brand is a red tab on the back
pocket of a pair of Levi’s denim jeans and this
simple device is known the world over. The Levi’s
brand personality, however, is young, street level
rebellion, often represented by cool icons of the age
like Nick Kamen and James Dean.
DOES IT MATTER?
Yes, hugely. A strong brand can in itself literally add
value to a product or business. For example the
Hilton brand adds about £30 per night to an
average room over competitive hotel chains.
Corporate identity strength underlying all tactical
and strategic activity is profoundly influential for
most organisations and no serious players in any
sector ever underestimate its power.
 DOES IDENTITY MATTER? PAGE 4 OF 11
WHY IS IT SO IMPORTANT - AND TO WHOM?
First, there’s you. A unique brand will provide your
business with a banner for your people to rally
under, giving life and tangibility to what you’re
offering, whether in a first time launch or a
revitalising relaunch. This precipitator of staff ‘buy-
in’ is often an overlooked aspect of identity, but be
assured, it really works.
Then there are your stakeholders. It won’t be the
first time a ‘big company’ identity has been
produced to convince the bank that financing a
new venture is a good idea. Similarly, a strong brand
will lend weight to an organisation that is
negotiating acquisition or merger. And you know
when a television advertiser feels the need to assert
some of that company strength alongside its product
sell when the corner of the screen peels to reveal
the corporate brand.
Last, but definitely not least, there are your
customers. In any one encounter with your visual
image, a customer (or potential customer) may
make a judgement - whether based on sound
reasoning or simply subconscious instinct - as to the
nature and value of your organisation or your
offering: you look expensive; you look traditional;
you look exclusive; you look (with a fair wind) like
someone to do business with... and so on. And their
next judgement may to either buy or reject what
you have to sell; sometimes successful marketing
may be as simple as that.Your brand must project
and position your product or business clearly and
strongly in those circumstances. That’s why brand
identity is possibly the most fundamentally
important marketing process any business will
undertake.
 DOES IDENTITY MATTER? PAGE 5 OF 11
APPEALING TO THE SUBCONSCIOUS
Most people assimilate thousands of images every
day. In a market-led society like ours, the average
consumer or b2b purchaser will be bombarded with
visual clutter and sales messages in almost every
environment, from the high street to the internet.
The brain will filter these images according to level
of concentration, so that it may register only basic
reactions, for instance recognition, reassurance - or
perhaps colour; it’s not by accident that the mobile
phone business Orange is called Orange. But make
no mistake, brand recognition plays a vital part at
this level, impregnating and enhancing awareness. In
a more defined situation, for example where the
customer has identified his specific need, the brain
will process far clearer reactions from seeing a
brand, including a feeling of reassurance - or
making value judgements on suitability, cost or
reliability.
BRAND SAVVY
Almost everyone is conscious of brands to some
degree, but over the past two decades the logo
within some sectors has taken on a status beyond
anyone’s imagination, especially in markets aimed at
young people, who have become far more brand-
savvy. This obviously causes pain as well as pleasure
for businesses who need to stay ahead of the game
in an ephemeral market that could see their brand
make a journey from a perception of tired and old
fashioned, to one of resurgent retro-chic, only to fall
again from favour as trends move quickly on. The
trick is, of course, to always know the real market
perception of your image and how it is evolving -
you might call it active participation in the
relationship between your brand and its audiences.
Whist it is a mistake to allow your brand to be
adapted, tweaked or bastardised on an ad hoc basis,
it is also wrong to assume your brand is static and
non-negotiable forever... that giant of cutout
characters whose first name was Ronald famously
outstayed his welcome on the high street and now
lends his orange haired joviality only to a charitable
foundation.
 DOES IDENTITY MATTER? PAGE 6 OF 11
THE GAME OF THE NAME
Just getting the name right can give a big branding
advantage to any business. Having a memorable
brand name that affords easy connection between
the sound and vision of your identity, which then
makes the correct link to the nature of the business
is invaluable. O2 as a brand is simple and strong,
carrying, as it did, the opportunity to effortlessly
establish the visual brand in the psyche of the public
with the rising air bubbles brand imagery. This
allowed people to make the link with satellite
transmission through air, setting the foundations for
the mobile phone company to prosper. All this is
made possible by the brand maker’s ability to see
these connections.
KNOW YOUR PLACE
In other words, correct market positioning is
absolutely crucial.Visiting, once again, your
customer’s subconscious, it will respond to and
process correctly what you want it to - if you get
the imagery right. Correct selection and usage of
typestyle, colour and images will promote the right
connections between you and your customer. And
just because you may need to sell into a budget
market with volume sales doesn’t mean you need to
look cheap and cheerful.You clearly don’t want to
appear exclusive and upmarket, but you may well
need to be perceived as solid and reliable, which
means that the brand designer will need his wits
about him in merging potentially diverse attributes.
BEING BIG
Well up the list of merits that most business wish to
gain from their brand is credibility. That doesn’t
necessarily mean that they want to look established
- Virgin had no desire to appear as a long standing
member of the established record industry when
they started in the seventies. But alongside their goal
of positioning themselves as a revolution in music,
they also had to be seen as big, robust and
financially secure - even if at first they were
famously not.
So it is seemingly paradoxical, but true, that a well
conceived and constructed brand can visually
bestow revolution and stability on a business at the
same time. This is entirely due to the know-how of
the brand makers and designers, balancing the visual
messages that will allow the customer to respond
accordingly.
VIVE LA DIFFÉRENCE
A pre-requisite of creating an effective brand is to
sharply define your business or product against the
competition, allowing your audience to recognise
your image instantly and be able to bring it to mind
in relation to you or your offering. Of course, wide
awareness of your brand relies on long term and
consistent exposure, but high quality recall will only
be achieved where the brand image itself is strong,
clear and unique.
 DOES IDENTITY MATTER? PAGE 7 OF 11
RENEW. REFRESH. REVITALISE
As we have discussed, the performance and
suitability of your brand needs to be actively
monitored to avoid slow decline, which often
comes by looking the other way, even though you
know something is not right.
It may be that, through many possible channels of
feedback, you know your brand isn’t working as
well. Or possibly your strategic goals have simply
outgrown your current identity and you need to
refocus. In either case you are faced with change.
There are now two possible options: the first is to
start again; the second is to evolve what exists
already.
You should examine the evidence (with statistics if
they are applicable) carefully to decide if the
argument for revolution outweighs the lost
awareness of a standing brand that is abandoned.
It is not a simple decision. BP, after more than 60
years of evolution, were finally forced to choose
revolution a few years ago. Without doubt this was a
titanic boardroom moment for an industrial giant,
even though the Powerpoint presentation from the
marketing director left everyone in no doubt that
throwing out the shield was the right thing to do.
But for a business that needed to change from the
image of a monolithic, planet-busting oil company
to a new perception as a diverse, modern energy
company in a fragile environment, moving ‘beyond
petroleum’ became inevitable.
GET PRECIOUS
Having put a sturdy argument for change when
necessary to combat negative perceptions that may
begin to eat away at the effectiveness of your image,
it is now time to put the argument for not changing
a single thing about your brand. It’s essential that
the integrity of a well-performing brand is
maintained and this is not an easy task in the face of
a potentially wide variation of suppliers handling
and applying your image. It means you will need to
get precious. Put your foot down firmly when it
comes to sticking to the rules about your identity -
and stamp your foot when the rules are broken or
bent. It’s only by ensuring that your brand appears
exactly the same, time after time and everywhere,
that you will achieve a positive and penetrating
awareness in your audiences.
 DOES IDENTITY MATTER? PAGE 8 OF 11
HIGH PERFORMANCE MEANS GETTING THE MECHANICS RIGHT
Part and parcel of creating and running a successful
identity - and allowing that consistency we’ve just
discussed - is making sure that the fundamental
mechanics work properly in practice. If your only
marketing platform is a hot air balloon printed with
your logo, you can afford to concentrate on a type
of image that will work best with screen printing.
For most brands however, especially those with a
logo at its heart, there is a need for the format to
perform to maximum effect across many different
platforms, including:
• stationery
• printed materials
• on the internet
• on-screen presentations
• exhibitions
...and possibly hot air balloons.
Although it is possible to create and police a specific
background on which your logo stands, in reality it
is far more practical and beneficial to design your
brand to be universally applicable to as many
environments as possible. There are no hard and fast
rules, but for example a brand should be able to
achieve the following:
• reproduce in full colour formats ie tonally in
CMYK for printing and in RGB hues on screen
• it may need to ‘reverse out’ successfully, in other
words to appear as a white image on a dark
background or from a photograph.
• it will normally be required to print in ‘spot
colours’, for instance using a colour swatch system,
most often the Pantone Matching System (PMS
colours).
Larger organisations often employ a brand manager
to strictly maintain the sanctity of the brand and
ensure that it is consistently applied in every
circumstance. However for SMEs, this is a rare
luxury and the hard working marketing manager
will be able to police an identity far more
successfully if good mechanics have been
incorporated into the design at conception and
there is less room for error.
 DOES IDENTITY MATTER? PAGE 9 OF 11
THE DIGITAL AGE
To pick up on the importance of screen usage as a
mechanical requirement, there is a further serious
consideration that must be given to the suitability of
a brand used on websites and other on-screen
formats. What looks strong on paper can die the
death of a thousand page impressions on a laptop.
And vice versa, of course.
The knowledge and skill of the brand creator will
bridge the divide between print and screen, and
where emphasis needs to be lent to one platform or
the other, this must be taken into account at the
design stage.
DESIGN GUIDES AND BRANDING MANUALS
These are generally a must for larger businesses and
often become impressively voluminous documents,
especially where they need to cover a branding
strategy for multiple group companies or a portfolio
of product brands.
It will also convey the wider usage of the brand,
including fonts, subsidiary brands and corporate or
branding colours.
A good manual will be simple and practical,
applying enough control to ensure the integrity of
the brand when in the hands of, say, less sympathetic
suppliers, but allowing freedom for it to successfully
underpin and enhance the creativity of marketing
applications in the hands of trained and skillful
exponents.
Nowadays, design guides are generally published in
pdf format and made available on websites.
 DOES IDENTITY MATTER? PAGE 10 OF 11

OK, SO WE DO DO BRANDING None of the examples of brands given in this

This document is a designed to inform and help document are our own. Lighthouse are keen
you make choices about branding, whether you’re a observers and enthusiasts of the branding industry
Lighthouse customer or not. in general and know a good brand when we see

We have been successfully branding products, one, whoever the creator.

services and organisations since 1996, and our
expertise and advice has created the brand strategy,
and put the face to many market leading products
and businesses. We do this in a practical, no
nonsense manner, analysing the environment in
which an identity has to thrive, researching and
creating brand names, then applying unique, well
designed and crafted creative visual solutions.
Of course, we believe our own samples also
demonstrate the art of good identity and we would
be glad to share them with you.
01743 360 604
lighthouseuk.net

If you are asking questions about your brand or

about to embark on a new project and feel you’d
benefit from some commitment-free,
straightforward and logical advice about your
options, we’d be happy to help.
 DOES IDENTITY MATTER? THE LAST PAGE OF 11

The Old Grammar School House

School Gardens
Shrewsbury
Shropshire
SY1 2AJ

01743 360 604

info@lighthouseuk.net
lighthouseuk.net