Brand and Butter
Always straight-talking (occasionally in-your-face), Brand and Butter is the no-BS branding podcast for modern marketers and business owners. Packed with clear-cut advice on the influence and power of branding - and how pairing associations, consumer behaviour, and design thinking can impact how we see, think, feel, and even taste.
Brand and Butter serves up refreshingly honest and never-dull conversations with some of today’s boldest brand strategists and architects. Sometimes funny, sometimes vulnerable (and often unapologetically blunt), this is the podcast that you wish you’d listened to before launch.
Tara Ladd is the Founder and Brand Strategist at Your One and Only, a brand and design studio here for brands who refuse to settle. Evolving brand identities to stay relevant fusing psychology, strategy, and design.
Brand and Butter
Nailing a Strong First Impression in a Crowded Market
Have you ever wondered why some brands stick in your mind while others don't? In this episode, I'm talking about the power of first impressions made through brand and visual identities. We'll explore how visual elements, the universal language of semiotics, can instantly communicate messages, and how a strong brand identity intertwined with your mission, values, and purpose can resonate deeply with your customers and your internal team.
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you're listening to Brandon butter a straight-talking occasionally in your face no BS branding podcast for modern marketers and business owners. Here for those who want to understand the influence and power of branding and how pairing associations, consumer behavior and design thinking can impact what people see, think and feel. I'm your host, tara Ladd, the sometimes funny, sometimes vulnerable and often unapologetically blunt founder and creative director of Brand and Design Agency. Your one and only. Hey, hey, and welcome to this week's episode of Brand and Butter. Hey, hey, and welcome to this week's episode of Brand and Butter.
Speaker 1:Now I want to talk about the importance of visuals, but mainly the differences between brand identity and visual identity and knowing how the two work together but are not the same thing but mainly how designing a brand identity can help you to convert. Now, we always hear about you know books don't judge books by covers but when it really comes to that first impression, visuals are really the first thing that you see to make said impression. Now, of course, there are many other ways that you can have a first impression. For instance, if you eat at a restaurant, it might be that you have shitty food, or you are speaking to someone on the phone, or whatever that may be and generally you know that's part of customer service, also part of brand culture, also part of internal branding. The list goes on. And so when we speak to the first impression in terms of visuals, most of the time nine times out of 10, it's someone seeing your brand from a visual perspective. And now we always say that in terms of, I guess, understanding the way that we take in information, is that it's 50% visual, 30% what you say and 20% how you say. I think that that's the way it is, or it might be around the other way. Regardless, it's words and visuals 101.
Speaker 1:But when we talk about the visual identity being the brand's first impression, like, think about what it is when you're in a foreign country and you're trying to find somewhere to eat and you can't read or understand the language, chances are you're looking for visual cues that will lead you in the right direction. And hell, it doesn't even have to be food. It could be a toilet. I know that sounds so weird. Everyone says that Australians say toilet and I now I say that I'm like it does sound pretty gross. Totally, I digress. But going back to Europe for a second, I remember being in Europe and saying I need to find a bathroom and WC was everywhere. So I knew that I needed to look for oh, is that wash closet, whatever it's called water closet? And I knew that I needed to look for that symbol to find the toilet. And so this is a classic case of semiotics, which is symbolism.
Speaker 1:And when we're looking at visuals, even words, they are part of a visual system's, a visual language. So take words, for instance. Words are deeply important, but when it comes to interpreting information, words essentially are a subset of a graphic, because if you come from another culture or another language, you can't understand English, being that obviously I'm referring to English being us and anyway, totally off context, when you go to China, for instance, and as a westerner, and you can't understand Chinese, you have no idea what that says, so that means absolutely nothing to you. So the next best thing is for you to look for things that make sense to you and we have a universal language through symbols. You know the walking man and danger signs and all of these things that symbolize meaning, and that's why a visual identity is so crucial in a brand identity.
Speaker 1:Now, to rewind it back a little bit, a brand identity, put simply, is your brand's essence, it's the DNA, it is literally the being of your brand and why your business exists. It's, you know, separate to the business strategy. You have a brand strategy and that is who you are, what you do, what you're about, who you're here for, and then how you're going to communicate that to the market is through your marketing, brand marketing being the brand story and the brand messaging, and then, obviously, tactical marketing selling brand story and the brand messaging, and then, obviously, tactical marketing selling the product and the service, storytelling, and you know all that stuff. And so when we come back to understanding how the two coincide, when you've got a business brand, you're essentially creating it for your people. It's not for you. A A personal brand, on the other hand, is absolutely for you. It is a symbolism of you, it is a representation of you. Therefore, it has to show everything about you.
Speaker 1:However, when you have a business brand and there are people underneath that umbrella, you are then representing a group of people and, I guess, a mission or a cause of what that business stands for. And so this is why it's so important to understand the nuances of brand, because when we're communicating to a wider market, even including internal culture, so if you're making a hire, people are looking now to whether they want to align to that business because it will become such a deep reflection of who they are as a person. You know, some people don't take where they work that seriously, but when you're looking into things like toxic cultures and incentives and benefits, all of that come into brand and how you look after your people. We always saw those really cool tech companies where people will be riding scooters indoors and everyone was like hell yeah, want to go work there. It's because it looks like somewhere called work. Therefore, it is a representation of the type of person you are or what you want to do, and it becomes a whole thing. It's a whole narrative and therefore you're joining the force of what that brand stands for and is well, I guess, trying achieve.
Speaker 1:And not everyone has this big grand mission or purpose, but everyone has a business that they've started for a reason and having that play out is really important. So your brand identity essentially is the being and that lives rent-free inside of your consumer's head, and this is the cool thing. It's different for everyone and so experiences shape different, you know, perceptions, and the visual identity shapes a different perception, and so if you are a really cool, funky, urban type of brand, you want to make sure that your visual identity is so aligned to that that it gives that message. The same goes with your words. You know, if you're meant to be this really cool urban brand and you're speaking like proper English, it's going to sound so weird, and so that's when it's really important to know the whole. Well, holistic I guess I was going to say the whole thing, but you know, holistic is way better, the holistic approach to the brand.
Speaker 1:So, so, the personality, why you're in business, the positioning of that. So, if you are an urban brand, where are you positioned? How are you talking to certain people? Where are your people hanging out and how are you getting in front of them? If you are a really cool and urban brand and you have a younger market, is LinkedIn the place for you to be? Probably not. You're probably going to be hanging out in more places like Pinterest, or probably not. You're probably going to be hanging out in more places like pinterest or um, not pinterest, uh, tiktok or instagram or one of the cooler versions. Uh. Using influencer marketing, uh, doing like cool, like channel activations, um, where you've got like events on with cool people at it, like it's under. You know who do this really well? Actually, lskd do this really really well and they've managed to get some great influences that are like everyday people.
Speaker 1:I'm watching this brand really closely because I'm just loving what they're doing and they're building this really solid community and it's just ricocheting throughout everything. Everything and even their store fit out is just so cool. So it's like knowing the gym culture and the types of people in the segments in that gym culture, because gym culture is quite wide. It's. They've got markets for, you know, runners and lifters and people that do yoga, or you know there's a whole crossfitters. There's a whole range of segmentation that they've. You know that they've got at play and so they're really channeling that narrative to specifically target and personalize their messaging to cater to those people and it's really done like so brilliantly.
Speaker 1:Um, and then we look at. So, if we come back to how they've done it well, we look at the psychology of color and typography and imagery and how that aligns. So we've got this black and white LSK Day really slick brand and then if you were to see something in a completely different tone or color, it would just throw out that whole look and feel. For instance, if you were and I did this at a recent speaking gig and I find it hilarious because just watching their faces I wish I had a camera on them but I said, imagine if you were to go into a dental surgery and you walked inside and their branding was yellow and black and everyone smushed up their faces with like disgust and I was like, exactly, because what do the colors yellow and black signify in correlation to a dental surgery? Now, yellow and black can mean something completely different when we're putting it in different contexts, but when we're talking about a dental surgery, black and yellow are probably not the colors that you're wanting to see there, and so color choice plays a huge role.
Speaker 1:It is part of the way we think. Our brains have shortcuts, associations are those shortcuts, and so what we see based on these colors will create a perception of how we, I guess, interpret that brand to be. And if you've done that wrong or misguided the people somehow by choosing the wrong color set or the wrong typography, which also has a huge part in tone and articulation of what the message is that you're trying to say, then you're going to confuse the audience and the message isn't going to be driven home because there's a distrust in that. And these are the tiny little things that people don't understand about. The psychology of a visual identity is that it's not just about choosing some colors that you like and a really cool font and going hell yeah, I'm in business now. It's about really understanding your audience, what they're in business like, what they're looking for your business to provide them Like.
Speaker 1:What solution are you solving and what industry are you in and what stereotypes are surrounded by you know, or what stereotypes are in your industry, for instance, you know, if we're going to like corporate bank, it would be really jarring to see a bank. That would be hot pink. Would it be wrong? No, but could it challenge people's perceptions? Yes. And this is where we kind of dive into territories where you don't want to overstep too much so that it completely destroys, I guess, the idea of what people think about that brand and where it's meant to be in terms of alignment. But you also want to toe the line to make sure that you're kind of disrupting and standing out.
Speaker 1:Who gives a crap? Did this brilliantly with uh, you know, separating themselves in their category, um, from all of the other toilet paper brands by creating something that was really out there humorous, fun and injected personality. Now, I'm sure they did lots of research in this space, but if you know the founders and what they do and you know what they're all about, then that makes total sense as to why they did that. And who's to say? A toilet paper brand can't be funny Really going into toilets today, aren't I? Anyway? So when we're talking about understanding how brand identity helps to convert, this is what we mean. So who gives the crapper? A great example of this as well, by using tone and you know the right type of graphics and the communication channels to communicate with their audiences on a more authentic level. And we see them doing some really cool things on Instagram and the conversations that they're having.
Speaker 1:But wider to that is the social movement that they've got behind, what they do and how they push that out. But it's more or less about giving their brand a humanized persona that people can actually gravitate and connect with. They can see themselves connecting with the brand as a friend, and this is where brand identity is so important. So when someone is thinking about a brand or thinking about buying something and they're in the consideration set how you're shaped in their mind in terms of your identity and perception, is what you're going to be able to do is based on the information that you've put out for them to get, and also external, so you know, other people talking, word of mouth, all of these kinds of PR areas that you know you can essentially get hold of, and this is why people invest big money into advertising and marketing, and you know this is why brands like Coke and huge brands like Apple will continuously advertise their products, because they know that the minute that you leave someone's mind, you are forgotten, even big brands like this. So they have huge marketing budgets. Obviously, the more brains they want to get inside of, the more money you spend.
Speaker 1:But there's ways that you can be really disruptive and do some really cool things from grassroots level, and that's why it's so important to understand what the strategy is, how you're going to approach it and what you're going to do to stand out or differentiate yourself from people within your space, but also to create a bit of buzz about your brand so that people talk about it. That is like gold. So that's today's episode. I'm going to be diving into this one a little bit more as we go on. But if you want to download our free brand action plan, it gives you a step-by-step of the things that you can include in a brand strategy and I think it's really helpful.
Speaker 1:So if you have any questions, please feel free to always slip into our DMs and we'll have a chat. Otherwise, I'll chat to you next week. Did you like that episode? I hope so, cause if you did, why don't you head over to whatever platform you listen on and rate and review? It's much appreciated and helps others know what we're about. If you want to follow us, you can find us at youwantanonly underscore au on Instagram.
