You have already heard of them: branding agencies such as Reverse Innovation are made up of image and brand identity professionals. But what does it mean in short?
What companies like Reverse Innovation do is take on the project of an entrepreneur or a freelancer and give it, to all intents and purposes, an identity.
What does brand identity mean?
Did you have a brilliant idea to solve a common problem? Do you manufacture a very high quality product? Are you the very best at your job? None of this matters, if you don’t have a brand identity. This can be defined as the set of values, emotions and the impact your brand has on existing and potential customers.
Try to think of some of the most famous brands in the world, in the most diverse sectors. You will find that they all have one thing in common: a strong brand identity. This means that everything, from their logo to their naming, from the advertising campaigns to the company website, has a homogeneous appearance and is a piece of the same narrative.
There is no branding without storytelling, without a structured narration of who you are, what you do and how you do it. But a collection of objective data is not enough. If you think back to those famous brands all over the world, you will undoubtedly not remember their sales volume or the number of employees of the company. You will remember a story.
Do you need a branding agency?
Yes, you probably do. Creating a precise identity that stands out from competitors, which brings together your products and services, your own personality and all the members of your staff, is not as easy as it seems. The right agency will start from the core of each company: the founding values.
Why did you create your brand? Who or what did you think you could help with your products and services? What emotion do you want to arouse in those who choose you? What emotion do you put into your work, every day? The answer to these and a thousand other questions is the roadmap to give your brand an identity.
The right branding agency will help you find:
- a logo, a name and two or three dominant colours for your business;
- a tone of voice that addresses your target customers directly;
- a communication strategy that tells your story, your product, your brand;
- communication and advertising campaigns consistent with everything else;
- an online presence that reflects the real values of your brand.
To do all this, the branding agency operates at different levels of design, communication and planning. Every detail counts, from the packaging of your product to the use of inclusive language in each text of your e-commerce website. It matters as much for start-ups as it does for industrial giants.
What matters, above all, is innovation. Your brand identity, the values that are at the heart of your work, will probably remain the same for years. Or you will discover new ones that are equally important to you. But what will surely change over time is the strategy for communicating these values to your customers. And this is where branding agencies come into play.