The Importance of Branding: Use Your Story to Establish Your Brand

When we hear the word “branding” we often only think of the design side of things which would include your logo, website, packaging, etc. Although all of these things are extremely important to your branding, as marketers we know it’s about more than that and it goes much deeper. Branding represents your business and your company’s image to the world. What story are you’re telling to your existing and potential customers? Who are you as a business and what are your values? Are you trustworthy and reliable? All of these things can be told through your company’s branding.

Branding is made up of all of the visual components, your logo, website, packaging, etc., but it also consists of your voice and customer service module. How you choose to communicate and tell your story to your audience deeply reflects on your branding. For example, SoulCycle, a high-end fitness empire, targets a community of people who all take their classes to have an experience, not just a group workout session. They sell their story, not their fitness classes. “We call it a cardio party. Our riders say it’s changing their lives. With every pedal stroke, our minds clear and we connect with our true and best selves. Through this shared SOUL experience, our riders develop an unshakeable bond with one another. Friendships are made and relationships are built. In that dark room, our riders share a Soul experience. We laugh, we cry, we grow — and we do it together, as a community.”

Another important component of establishing your brand is to research your competition. What makes your company unique? Why would someone choose you over your competition? It’s key to lay these foundations out so you can stay ahead of your competitors. Staying authentic and keeping your integrity in the competitive market goes a long way with your audience.

Which brings us to knowing your target audience. In order to gain value in the impact of your brand’s story, you have to make sure it’s positively impacting the right people. For example, you wouldn’t use a playful voice with vibrant and colorful designs for an established law firm. Knowing your audience allows you to create your narrative with intent beyond just trying to make a sale. When you are marketing to potential new customers, as you grab their attention they are choosing to give you a piece of their time and you should use it as wisely as possible.

An Overview

• Research your target audience
• Examine your competition
• Decide what separates you from the rest
• Create a narrative that exemplifies your brand, your values, your product/service, and your audience
• Visually express this narrative through your logo, website, social media, packaging etc.

How to Get Your Story Out There & Ways to Connect

• About Us page or section on your website
• Add a short section to your social media profiles
• Generate social media content that speaks to your audience
• Stay ahead of your competition
• Be accessible to your customers

Sources: Forbes.com, CreativeBloq.com, MarketingInsiderGroup.com, HubSpot.com

The Latest Updates & Features on Instagram

It seems like every day there’s a new feature or update being announced by our favorite social media platforms. Instagram is one that has been constantly rolling out new features and updates. You may have heard about some of the new features to come at Facebook’s F8, but what about all of the fun stuff that’s happening right now? Have you caught them all? If you didn’t, that’s ok because we’ve got them all broken down for you right here.

What’s New

1. Polling on Instagram Stories with the Emoji Slider Sticker

Instagram had introduced its poll feature to Stories last October, but now they are taking things a step further. Instead of posting a poll that asks your followers to choose between two answers, you can now ask them to rate on a scale with an emoji. For example, you can ask “How much do you love this dress?” with a smiley face emoji and your followers can slide the emoji left or right to cast their vote to mimic a scale of 1-10 but without the numbers.

Photo source: Instagram

2. Share a Song from Spotify on Your Instagram Stories

Have a song you’re totally vibing to right now that you want to share? Or a special #ThrowbackThursday tune that’s too good to keep to yourself? Now you can share what you’re listening to on Spotify to your Instagram Stories and your followers can listen too!

Photo source: Instagram

3. Updates to DM for Business Accounts

Up until this point, messages between a user and a business account worked exactly like messages between users and other users. Meaning, if a user sent your business account a direct message but your business account did not follow that user, the business account would receive the message in a ‘pending’ folder instead of your regular direct messages folder until the communication had been approved. Now, they’ve made things much easier! Every time a user sends a message to a business account, the business account will receive an alert and the message in their direct messages folder.

Photo source: Social Media Today

4. Quick Reply Messages

Ever have frequent questions that you answer with the same type of responses? Now you can create Quick Reply messages that answer all of your commonly received messages and make it easy to respond in seconds!

Photo source: Social Media Today

5. Action Buttons

Just like Facebook, a business account can now include an Action Button to their profile such as “Reserve Now”, “Contact Us”, “Buy Tickets”, etc.

Photo source: Social Media Today

What’s to Come

• Topic Channels: The Discover tab is changing. Mark Zuckerberg is introducing Topic Channels that will allow users to browse content by topics related to their interests as opposed to the current compilation of images you may or may not be interested in.
• Video Chat: Users will soon be able to video chat with one another or with a group! The best part is, you can minimize your chat and continue to scroll through your news feed and browse Instagram.
• AR Camera Effects: Although first introduced for Facebook at F8 in 2017, these new effects are being brought to Instagram. 

Sources: Fast Company, Social Media Today, Instagram

Happy Birthday, Jenn!

It’s Jenn’s birthday this weekend! As a Senior Account Executive at Vision, Jenn thrives on developing strong client relationships by providing outstanding creative that is on strategy, on time and within budget. She loves her Dunkin’ and has over 20 years of experience studying dance as well as being an award-winning choreographer and dancer. Get to know Jenn and what inspires her:

HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN WITH VISION & WHAT’S YOUR ROLE?

12 years with the company and Senior Account Executive.

WHAT DO YOU LOVE TO DO OUTSIDE OF WORK?

I love being the coolest soccer mom around. Ryan is a player for Wizards Sports Club, an elite soccer club team, and even though it seems we are always headed to practice or a game, I love it! There’s no better feeling than when he scores and finds me on the sideline, and I’ve made some truly amazing soccer mom friends!

IF YOU COULD DESCRIBE YOUR EXTENSIVE SHOE COLLECTION IN ONE WORD, WHAT WOULD IT BE?

Enviable.

WHAT IS YOUR GO-TO COFFEE ORDER?

French Vanilla, Light & Sweet.

WHAT ARE YOU MOST EXCITED ABOUT FOR THE YEAR TO COME, BOTH WORK AND PERSONALLY?

I’m excited to see Vision continue to grow and expand our capabilities for our Clients. Outside of work, I’m not sure what this year will bring, but I’m excited to find out! One thing is for sure…you can bet there will be new shoes!

Teacher Appreciation Week

When you’ve had a great teacher who you truly enjoyed learning from, they leave a life-long impression on you. Through guidance, inspiration, and support, from a young age and throughout college, our teachers have had such an incredible impact on all of our lives. This week is #TeacherAppreciationWeek and we wanted to take a moment to reflect on all of the teachers who have impacted us, inspired us, and helped guide us over the years.

So many teachers meant so much to me as I struggled to become an adult. However, it was a group of college teachers whose influence I still have, a diverse group: Mac Davis (a tough-minded literary brawler from Chicago) at UC Santa Barbara who taught me the difference between thinking and having an opinion; Rhagavan Iyer (brilliant double PhD from Oxford), also at UCSB, who simply demonstrated in every lecture what it was to think and create; Kathleen Fraser at San Francisco State University, who introduced me to the greatest classroom I have ever experienced — the remarkable and unfathomable literary community that is San Francisco. These people and places informed me then and continue to today. – Larry

I appreciate every art teacher and professor that I have had for all the guidance and encouragement throughout my school years – Michael

I was most inspired by the entire graphic design faculty from college. To this day, I am grateful for the skills and sensibilities that they imparted. They unselfishly shared knowledge which has been passed down through the generations of teachers before them. – John

Although I have always admired all teachers and think every one of them deserve recognition for what they do, I particularly was inspired by my high school math teacher. Going into high school I struggled to catch up with the level students coming in from other schools were at, but this teacher wouldn’t let me give up. He had a way of making me understand and accelerate in learning. I remember feeling defeated at times and he would somehow be able to push me ahead. His style of teaching was amazing and he made learning math fun and rewarding. Math actually became my best and favorite subject in high school. I actually considered being a math teacher because of him. – Lori

I was inspired by my dance teacher of over 20 years – Miss Nancy Carole.  She taught me so much more than dance.  She inspired me to have a good work ethic and to be independent, confident and resilient. She always said that “the end of one step is the beginning of another”, and that’s a piece of life advice I have carried with me. – Jenn

There have been so many teachers over the years that have made an impact on my life. One of my college drawing professors once said ‘don’t be an artisan, be an artist’ and that’s always stuck with me. My college design professor was always extremely supportive of conceptual creativity, let my senior thesis idea flourish, and always treated our small tightknit class like equals and friends. I also had another professor who taught an art history class called Seminar in Contemporary Art that was also a poet and had the best dry sense of humor. Listening to his lectures on works of art were truly one of the most entertaining and memorable things for me.  – Brianna

I think the teacher who most inspired me was my design professor in college. His good sense of humor, disposition and dedication to teaching helped and motivated me to learn more and more about design and creativity. He was not only my professor but later became my good friend and co-worker at my first job as a graphic designer. As time went on I appreciated more his love of art and experience in graphic design. – Richie

My American Cuisine professor during senior year of college. He genuinely cared about helping students grow and expanding their thinking. He enabled creativity, instilled confidence and pushed me to go beyond my comfort zone. He was invested in making sure every student got as much out of their education as they could which continued after graduation. The way he approached teaching and enabled a positive teamwork environment has been in the back of my mind at every job I’ve ever had. – Angela

My son’s teachers at his daycare are fantastic. It was hard as a first time mom to let my child spend all day, all week with someone I really didn’t know at the time. But day after day it amazed me the things they were teaching him and how fast he was learning. The very first day I dropped him off at daycare, he was 3 months old, and they had him painting! They laid him on his tummy with his chest over a pillow and gave him a paintbrush with green paint and let him explore how the paint worked. They brought him outside and let him explore what the autumn leaves felt and looked like. He even learned to wash his hands at 3 months old which allows me to do it fuss-free at home when needed.  They were teaching him and letting him explore things that I – as a new mom – just assumed he was too young, or not ready for. His teachers have taught me that he is always ready to investigate, learn and dive into things no matter how young he is! – Ashley

I had an English teacher in high school that really cared about what he taught us. He was passionate about teaching us and really pushed us to work hard. – Mark

Sure!  Mr Ryan.  He was my 5th grade teacher.  He always had a way of getting the most out of me even when I wanted to give up.  Very nurturing and caring.  I will never forget him! – Carla

The Importance of Good Design in Business

First impressions are everything. Technology has granted businesses with multiple avenues for brand exposure making the emphasis on good design more important than ever. Everything from your logo, your website, to your social media accounts, advertisements, packaging, etc.; the list goes on and on. Good design can make a difference between locking in a sale or losing a potential customer.

According to a survey by Tyton Media, 48% of people said that a company’s website design was their number one determining factor of its credibility. Let’s think about that for a moment. Almost half of your potential customers weigh your entire credibility on your company website. So why not make an impactful statement, make a good impression, and establish credibility through good design right from the very first website visit?

It’s not just about your company’s website either. During the 10 seconds it takes to form a first impression, your brand logo design is 13% more likely to grab someone’s attention and 71.6% more likely to get a positive response the more unique and memorable it is. (Source: Siegel+Gale)

Consistency is also key in maintaining successful brand design. Whether it’s across your social media accounts or package designs, it is critical to keep the look and feel of your branding consistent. Brand consistency promotes easy recognition, trustworthiness, and reliability. No one can get to know your brand when it’s visually chaotic and always telling a different story.  Good design creates a connection with your customers. When you create a visually impactful, memorable and emotional connection with your branding design, you are showing your consumers who you are as a company.

Create a style guide to determine certain rules when applying your branding to different assets. This will ensure consistency across anything and everything you apply your branding to. This also makes things easier when you have multiple designers handling different promotional materials or marketing collateral.

Good design plays such an important role in creating strong marketing strategies. It’s the difference of taking messaging that is in the form of plain text and creating an impactful message through imagery and design. Let good design bring your brand success and start getting creative!

Sources: Tyton Media, Siegel+Gale, 360 Advertising Week