There’s a whole science to the art of creating a strong brand impact at the best of times. In a world that’s challenged by tough business conditions, if you’re trying to push out a green product or service, you need to hit the right mark the first time.
Michael Scott, director of creative and brand strategy at Velorum agency, is well aware that greenwash is just one of the challenges you need to beware of. If you’re a sustainability consultant, say, in energy efficiency or a green engineer, you’ll have completely different needs to a technology business or real estate company that wants to convey quite different emotions on their customer journey.
The look and feel of your marketing image is a powerful tool that will either draw your new customers in – or let them pass you by.
In this series of short articles, Michael explains how he approaches each client.
He starts with the visual identity that needs to match the business the client is in, as well as the typeface that aligns with that message. He discusses fonts, serif or non-serif, colours, the use of white space and even social media.
Michael explains why it’s important to have a coherent style guide that runs throughout your business, whether big or small. And even how clever people use white – empty – space to big effect.
You might think these elements form part of the mysterious alchemy of design that influences our actions. And you’d be right.
Part 1 – Start with visual brand identify
For a recent property development and sales client, Michael faced a big job.
The company had a long standing reputation in the community, and his selection of visual brand identity had to protect this legacy. Above all, it is important to convey a sense of trust and reliability, Michael says.
Because of the age of the company, its colours and logo were “pretty much set in stone,” Michael says.
“But their typography was all over the place, from all the different agencies they were using. Everyone was just doing whatever they wanted.
The company’s look – its advertising, its display suites and even its staff had started to lack consistency and strong brand messaging
But where did he start?
First thing to do was to create a brand identity that would link the many elements of the company and its face to the world together, then choose a “family” of fonts.
You need to separate brand from content creation, he says.
Branding sounds easy, but it’s not.
“The word gets used incorrectly,” Michael says.
“Branding is a form of advertising. It’s when Nike puts up a huge billboard, and says, ‘Just do it’.”
“But it’s also the identity of the visuals – the style guides, the colours, the typography, the way the social media templates are created, the way the website’s built, how a customer sees the buttons, the formatting, the space in every that’s brand identity.”
If you’re looking to give your company an extra boost or gain that initial traction, keeping consistency across all platforms can make all the difference, he says.
“I built a style guide for them and set the typography rules in place and then gave the style guide to any external agencies they used, including PR companies who needed to use those new typographies.”
The guide had to work across all mediums, from billboards to way finding to the website and social media channels. Even internal corporate communications and external suppliers needed to see the same clear messaging.
The company was big. It had about 200 staff in house plus around 1000 builders and contractors that worked with the company and supplied things like appliances to display suites. So, external suppliers numbered in the thousands.
Creating a clear uniform style to this level of stakeholders can also create a powerful unspoken message about structure, discipline and trust of the company, Michael explains.
Michael even changed up the huge lifestyle images on the sales centres, carefully choosing photographs of people that suited the typical clientele.
How did he decide what images worked?
“It depended on where we were because there were different geographical and demographic concerns, so we carefully chose the imagery to suit. Sometimes, it was young families with a small child. Other times it was older families with young adults ready to go to university.”
Michael noticed that customers were coming to the display suite and wandering around without proper follow up.
So, he designed a brand guide for the customer experience. But how?
“To be honest, it’s common sense and courtesy. You know, if someone’s looking to buy a million dollar house, treat them with respect straight away, right?”
Michael builds websites from $3,500+GST
You can see his work here.
