26 Branding

Once the creative brief is completed, the next step is Branding!

So What is a Brand Strategy?

Branding strategies help you define what you and your business stand for. This is the main contender that defines your business from your competitors. Making smart branding decisions up-front is crucial since it will be on all visual aspects of your business everywhere.

Branding Elements

Brand Image

When people can recognize a nonprofit through visual signifiers like logos, slogans, and colours, this is when you know that you have successfully made your brand easily identifiable. The outward expression of am organization, including its name, trademark and visual appearance, is the identity.

This is in contrast to the brand image, a customer’s mental picture of a brand. Brand Image includes:

“What is the impression we give to our supporters?”

• What is the brand essence of your new nonprofit organization?
• The brand essence is the foundation of your NPO’s true identity and the brand essence typically stays the same over time.

“Does the visual identity represent the brand character?”

• The consumer perception of brands is brand knowledge: brand awareness, recognition and recall, and brand image denote how consumers perceive a brand based on quality and attitudes towards it and what stays in their memory.

Throughout the next few chapters you will find more information on what makes up a brand and how to implement it.