Let’s begin with an imaginary conversation:
Person 1: “Question: what is brand development?”
Person 2: “I’m gonna guess that it’s what I did when I made my logo on Canva and had ChatGPT make me a tagline and put both of those on my Shopify so I could start selling things?”
Person 1: “That was a very long and oddly specific guess but…no.”
Person 2: “So then what is brand development?”
It’s far from a set-it-and-forget-it part of your business. If you’re new to building your brand, you’ll discover that brand development is the ongoing process of defining what your brand is, articulating what it means to you and your audiences, deciding how to tell that story to the world…and then evaluating and updating all of that as your consumers and your industry change over time.
We joked about logos up top, but they are part of the brand development process. Others include:
And whether you’re going through this process yourself, or working with brand management agencies, your overall work on brand development should always begin with one question.
Back in 2010, Simon Sinek gave his TED Talk, “How Great Leaders Inspire Action”. There, he answered “What is brand development?” with an exercise that can help brands like yours reach profound truths.
Sinek introduced his audience to “The Golden Circle,” a chart of three concentric circles which each correspond with one of three questions:
His thinking is that companies know what they provide, and they may have a very good idea of how they do it (like a proprietary service or technology), but very few businesses know the underlying motivation for why a team gets up in the morning to do what they do for consumers. Completing the Golden Circle exercise and answering those three questions in order helps you reach the heart of your brand step by step.
And once you know the answer to that all-important “Why?”, all your branding efforts can be more effective.
Here’s how:
Pretend you’re a luxury travel brand. You’ve figured out why you’re offering an exclusive adventure travel experience: to create one-of-a-kind travel experiences that help true explorers connect more deeply with the world.
With that info in hand, you have a decision to make—which part of that “why” is most important to you? The idea that you’re a gateway to the world? The exclusivity that gives your offering a luxury feel? And once you decide what your brand will lean into, you’ll have other questions to answer:
This is brand positioning: using your reason for doing business as a starting point to create the best image for your brand. The best brand positioning differentiates your brand from others in the same space. When done effectively, it also clearly defines both target audiences and competitors. You may have a team to help you collect this data, but support is great, too. Don’t be afraid to reach out to brand management agencies for help with these efforts, too.
But what is brand development when you already have an established identity?
In that case, it might be time for a rebrand—if you have a good reason for it. Rebranding is the process of revisiting your brand positioning, for the purpose of changing your company’s identity or perception in your industry.
You’ll know that you need a solid rebranding strategy when:
Once you know the time for a rebranding strategy has come, approach it like you did with your initial brand positioning exercises: you perform audience research, make creative choices that fit with your “why”, implement your decisions, and communicate your changes to your customers and team. The results of this work could be small, subtle updates to design, like what Moro olive oil did with its first rebrand in 26 years. It could be as wide-reaching and dramatic as Burger King’s 2021 rebrand that impacted everything from its social media to employee uniforms.
But developing and executing a great rebranding strategy can be daunting regardless. If that’s the case for you, brand management agencies could be the perfect solution.
To be honest, “brand management agencies” is often used interchangeably with “marketing agencies,” and for good reason. A strong marketing agency should know how to combine data-driven advertising tactics with evocative storytelling. That will help your brand shine through in everything you publish.
We use the separate term, however, to emphasize the importance of finding an agency with branding expertise. At Mascola Group, we have a long history of building brands with our proprietary Core User Study to unearth the consumer motivations that attract them to your business.
When clients ask, “What is brand development?”, we also like to point to our decades of work. We’ve applied our research to creative that’s increased luxury apartment occupancy by 70%. We’ve also increased leads for elite luxury travel brands by 20%, and awareness for one of America’s major transportation hubs by 125%.
Essentially, when you’re looking for a marketing partner to help build, maintain, or refresh your brand with a rebranding strategy, it’s essential that you look for an agency that can successfully show you its brand work in action.
If that sounds like the kind of agency you’re looking for to help with your brand, contact the experts at Mascola Group.