Transcripts
1. Introduction: Solid branding is considered a crucial component
for business success. However, many professionals, they have no idea
what is branding, and what are the core components and essentials that ensure branding success for business or forever application
that you have in hand. However, in this current course, we're going to be tackling this in which we are
going to be learning about the branding fundamentals
and branding essentials. That way, you have a clear idea how to build solid brands. And not just that,
you'll be getting some exclusive resources
that you could use to help build up brands, draw
some inspiration, get innovative with
your own ventures and journey as an entrepreneur, a marketer, a business owner, an executive, whatever
it is that you're doing. This is very important to learn in which we
are going to tackle branding fundamentals
and essentials to help you acquire essential knowledge
and practical skills, which will surely influence your branding
initiatives and efforts.
2. Your Project : Your project for the class
revolves around applying the key lessons taught in
order to develop a brand, full on branding management branding
strategy application, whether for your own project that you're working
on right now, where you're going to be
applying what we have covered in this current class and share the results with the rest of
the community for feedback. Or you're going to have a hypothetical
application or project. Feel free to get
creative and innovative, where you're going
to be coming up with the business name, a logo, a statement,
typography, color palettes, and the list goes
on, incorporating the core elements taught
in this current class, after which you're
going to be sharing your project with the rest of
the community for feedback.
3. What is Branding?: And welcome back. Now, the
first thing that we need to understand is
what is branding? Now, often when you go
about the term branding, and the first thing that comes
to mind is a logo, right? This is what possibly
you know about branding. However, by definition, branding involves a
lot of components, even it's a process by
itself to create a brand. So, by definition, branding is the process of
creating a unique name, image, and presence in
the consumer's mind. This is the whole
concept of branding. You're not just simply creating a static image or a static name. It's a full on perception of a business where you
design certain elements, and these elements are
understood and viewed in a certain way by your potential
customers and consumers. Now, I would like
you to think about this from your own
personal experience. What are the key brands
that first pop to mind? And what do you
associate them with? Some of them they are bubbly. Some of them, they're
more professional. Some of them they're luxury. Some of them they're convenient. How do you form your
perception of such a brand? You do have a lot of elements, and the entire integration
of these elements is basically is revolving around
the identity of the brand. So branding mainly is about
the identity of the business. You as an individual, you
got your own identity, you got your own name, you got your own personality,
and the list goes on. All of them together, they
create your own identity. In other words, your own
brand, sort of speak. From a business point of view, you do have a lot of elements
that come into play. You create the brand, right, which is the
identity of a business. And often there's
a confusion where it comes to differentiating
between branding, marketing and communications
or messaging. Within the umbrella
of a business, within the umbrella of
marketing, branding is there. However, the goals
are different. Branding is about creating
the identity of the business. How is it viewed by the potential customers
and the market? However, marketing is taking this identity and passing
it on to the market, passing it on to your consumers, to your ideal clients, the individuals who
are going to be interacting with your
business, right? So branding, you create the image of a business.
What do you do? What is the name?
What is the logo? What are the
features, the colors? What is the tone of the brand? Is it a professional, bubbly? What kind of individuals
are you addressing? Who are your potential clients? Once you develop this,
now it's time to take this identity and
pass it on to the market, and this is where
marketing happens. You conduct social
media posts, ads, fliers, whatever sort of
mechanism online and offline, as we're going to be seeing
in this current course, which helps you take
this identity and pass it on to the
potential clients, which leads us to the concept of advertising or
communications. So advertising mainly revolves
around communication. So how do you market something? You cannot just simply take
a brand or an image or a product and throw
it into the market. You need to speak
to your audience. You need to speak to
your potential clients, and this is where
advertising comes into play. You notice all of them, we're familiar with them as
marketing in general. But if you dive into marketing, there are sub domains, and every single one
of those sub domains requires its own unique
goal and application. So marketing is like
the big umbrella. We're trying to promote a brand. However, branding is actually
creating the identity. And as we try to
promote the brand, and as we try to
market the brand, we need to communicate
to the customers. And this is advertising. What kind of methodology
are we going to follow? Online, offline,
using a certain tone, certain colors, certain
graphics, and the list goes on. So now, at this current stage, I truly hope they
understand that branding is not just
simply creating a logo, but it's a full on
identity of a business. And at this current stage, I would like you to ask yourself, what are some of the key
elements which would make up the identity
of a business? Feel free to wonder. What are the key
elements that you have actually experienced
dealing with businesses, when you want to go
grocery shopping, when you want to go
buy a certain product what first got your
attention the name, the packaging, the logo, the colors, and
the list goes on. Every single one of those
elements has been designed. It's not just simply a matter of coming up with a logo and a
name and you're good to go. Even the style of the
fonts has been selected to complement the full on branding identity as
we are going to see. So at this current stage, I truly hope they understand that branding is a full on
list of activities. It's a process of creating
an identity of a business, and there are various
elements which come into play in terms of creating such an identity for a business.
4. The Power of a Strong Brand: Come back. So what
creates a strong brand? You do have different
brands in the market. Every single day, you do have new brands popping
up here and there. And most probably either you as a professional or content
creator or entrepreneur, you're contemplating
about creating your own business brand
or your personal brand. But what makes a strong,
successful brand? Because, frantically
speaking, there are a lot of failures out there in terms of
creating brands. It's not that difficult, but there are certain
key milestones or goals that you
need to achieve. If you miss this, you jeopardize the risk jeopardize actually the
creation of a brand, and you increase the
risk of actually having a poor brand image. So first of all, the power of a strong brand develops or
creates customer loyalty. Think about this by yourself. People return to brands they
trust and feel connected to. What kind of a toothpaste
brand that you use? How about food, cereal,
certain products. Most probably you have
your own selection of these products,
and by default, whenever you step foot into the grocery store or the
market, you go to them. You just simply
filter everything out and you just simply
navigate to that product. It could be more expensive. It could be of a poorer quality, but you're not going to
spend time comparing, it's not a good thing
to do, by the way. But as you engage
with these products, you become loyal
to these brands. What kind of coffee
you're getting, what kind of burger
that you're getting, what kind of soap that you're getting, toothpaste
that you're getting. If it fulfills your
own requirement, periodically, and you keep going for it over
and over again. Then you become a
loyal customer. That's the power of branding. Often you tend to
find luxury products. They do not have
such a good quality. But once you stick a logo
on them, what happens? All of a sudden,
you perceive them as luxurious and they must have. Why? Because that's the power
of a strong brand, right? So we need to keep this
in mind as you build up a then standing out, your brand should be unique. It should have a certain tone, a certain image, a certain logo to make it easily recognizable. Think about a supermarket. I love a supermarket example because often when
you buy products, you walk into a grocery store or a supermarket,
what do you find? Endless brands, endless
boxes, endless packages. And I conduct this
experiment myself. Like, I conduct this activity
myself as an entrepreneur. I walk into a market,
a supermarket. And I just simply take a look
at some of the products. What first got my attention? What kind of colors,
the packaging, the logos, the graphics used. That's part of standing out. And often when a
product stands out, you're more likely to pick it up from the shelf and
take a look at it, and then to decide if you're
going to go for it or not. So it's very important to
keep that in mind as well. In addition to increasing
the perceived value, strong branding can
justify premium pricing. This is a protop and
often it's overlooked. If you do have a strong brand, which is associated with
luxury, for example, the pricing could be quite higher compared to a brand which offers even
better quality, but it's perceived as mediocre. Think about it this way,
has been an experiment. There has been experiments being conducted where they've gotten actually two different
polar shirts, literally just polar shirts, short sleeve polo shirts. One of them had no logo,
and the other one, they picked up a logo
from a luxurious brand, and they just simply stamped
the logo on the shirt. And they went into the market, out of the streets and just
simply contacted people. Which one are you more
willing to buy and how are you or how much are
you willing to pay for it? And guess what? Both of them they were made
from the same material. The only difference is one
of them had a logo on it. The other one did not
have a logo on it. And potential customers,
they ended up paying almost ten X for the
one with the logo, compared to the one
without a logo. Why? Because of the increase
in the perceived value. They thought that this
product is a premium. We need to get it based
on the actual brand, not on the actual
quality of the product. By learning these things
I'm teaching you right now, it makes you a smart customer. You're able to actually
select a product that meets your requirement by filtering out these things. At the same time, it makes
you a smart business owner or personal brand creator or business branding
creator, whatever it is, by understanding the
power of these elements, which takes us to often
overlooked aspect, it's easier to market a cohesive brand through social media, ads,
fliers, posters. If the brand is clear,
what is the logo? What are the graphics, the
color palettes, the fonts, the tone, the style, if you have a marketing team, you're not going to
struggle by trying to identify what should we create for the next social
media post, for example? What colors we need to use? What kind of images
we need to use? It becomes easier to market because your brand
identity is quite clear and you do have all of the elements of a
strong brand in place. As I'm going to
show you, there are various elements which help up the process of building
a strong brand such, for example, you're
most probably familiar with logos, right? You create logos, for example. That's part of a but there are other elements which make up
a powerful brand as well. So these are key important
notes to keep in mind what makes a brand powerful and the powers of
a strong brand. By default, you increase
your customer's base, you stand out in the market. You increase the perceived
value of the brand. You're able to charge
for premium pricing, but keep in mind, at one point in time, if
the quality of the product is poor, you destroy the brand. Keep that in mind.
It's very important. There's a certain limit
to how much you market, how much you create a brand from a perception
point of view, that it's very powerful,
it's very strong. But if you have a
poor quality product, it's a matter of time before your brand gets associated
with that poor product, compared to being associated
with a strong product. And finally, it makes it easier to market
for you if you're creating your own
personal brand or a business brand for
your own business, it's easier to market once
you have a clear brand. What do we do? What is the
logo? What colors do you use? The topography, What is the style of the
communication, for example? Then market is about
promoting this, as we have learned
to the market that you're addressing in order to communicate your brand identity.
5. Brand Identity: So we have used the
term brand identity, but if we dig deeper, what is a brand identity? What are the key
components or let's say, what is the definition
for a brand identity? I've learned that
branding is the process of creating an identity, but what is an
identity for a brand? By definition, it defines how a brand visually communicates.
This is very important. Take a look at these images over here before we
get into the details. You do have the logo. You got the company name. You got the typography,
the color palettes, some business cards,
the color palette visually presented, some fliers. And if we take a
look at the website, the color palettes
on the website, the styles for the logo, the fonts, the typography. So all of these
elements or components, they combined together
to pass on or communicate visually what
your brand is all about. So this includes logo design, color palettes, and typography, and you could include any other element
that you think of, which is part of the
process of building a business It maintains consistency across digital
and physical media. This is very, very important. I've seen businesses
where if you go online, they look a certain way,
and if you go to the store, they look completely
different way. Different colors,
different logos, different even company names. So it gets confusing for
you to figure out it. This is the same business
we're talking about. So it's very important
to keep this in mind. Branding, the brand
identity is consistent. Think about it as
you as a person. You got your own name, you
got your own personality. You cannot just simply
have two different names and two different
personalities, right? You have a conflicting
identity in that case, and the same logic
applies to a business. Now, shapes the
audience perception and builds recognition. This is the goal of a brand. How would you like your brand or your business
to be perceived? Think about it this
way. You do have, for example, content creators. They're building their
own personal brand. How would you like to be perceived from a
branding point of view? Are you a go to specialist? Are you more of a supportive
business or more of an authoritarian
business or more of a consulting business or basically an entertainment business, and the list goes on. So how would you like the brand, whether a business brand
or a personal brand, regardless, let's
keep them under the same umbrella of
a business brand. How would you like
it to be perceived by your potential customers? Let me give you an example.
If you're creating, for example, a toy store, right? For children, a toy store, so how would you like that
toy store to be perceived? It should be fun, should be welcoming to the kids
and their parents. It should have some
bright colors by default, which helps the children and the parents perceive this as
a welcoming place, right? Compared to having a dark, neutral colors shop with a really ambiguous
name and logo, which kind of does not align with what the kids or
the parents are expecting. So this is basically
the perception of the brand. So
keep this in mind. So a brand identity just simply revolves around
how you visually communicate what
your business is all about, through
logos, typography, online, offline fonts, the color palettes,
the color grades, the different variations
of the messaging, the tone that you
use on your website. Is it bubbly? Is
it professional? Is it serious, whatever it is? That's a component of the
overall brand identity. So at this current stage, if you're thinking about
building a certain brand for your business or just
simply learning about this, grab a piece of paper
and try to first of all, come up with a
name of a company, try to visualize what would you like the company
to be perceived as, for example, is it
something professional, entertainment, education,
whatever it is, then take it one level further. Are you able to visualize the logo? How would
it look like? Even sketch it out? What is
the font that you could use? A certain approach to follow
or the color palettes? Or if you are professional
web designer, how would your
website look like? Try to sketch it on
a piece of paper. And then you will figure out that as you go
through the process, your brain will
start to just simply generate various elements
which could help you as well. Take your brand identity
and make it uniquely yours such that you uniquely
stand out in the market.
6. Core Elements of a Successful Brand: And welcome back. Now,
what are some key elements that every single business
brand should have? First of all, we're
going to kick things off with the obvious,
which is the brand name. What is your company name?
What is your product name? What are you trying
to basically achieve? And then you try to create
a name that actually people could recognize and associate
with your business. As an activity, think about
the brands that you engage. For whatever product that you use. What is the brand name? And once you read
this brand name, how do you make the
connection in your mind, yeah, this is the brand name.
They sell that product. So that's part of the identity
that you need to build. The key elements which are going to be part
of that identity. It is the brand. Then
you do have the logo. The logo, it's a visual
representation or symbol, which represents your brand. And often you tend to find
it to have some sort of variation of the
actual brand name, including the combination of graphic design elements
to have some sort of a pendant or an emblem or a sort of think about it like a badge. That's a logo, where you identify and summarize
your entire brand and the company as
a whole through a graphically designed step, sort of speak, which includes the brand name and certain
graphics or designs. Which reflect what are you
trying to do as a business? Then you do have a tag line, which you tend to find
that many brands, they tend to miss this
or they get it wrong, and you have to be
careful with this. It's a short message or phrase that conveys your brand
message as a whole. What are you trying to do?
Think about popular brands. Often, you tend to
find certain footwear. They have a certain
tagline, right? It summarizes what their vision is for their brand
and their business. Let me give you an
example. Let's say you're opening a
flower store, right? You could have a tag line, for example, fresh flowers like nowhere else, one tagline. So this conveys the
message that you simply sell freshly harvested flowers. They are about to expire. It includes a fresh
breeze, fresh ambience. Like nowhere else, most probably your flower shop
stands out in terms of the unique blend of flowers and their unique scents and the quality that they
actually portray as flowers, which could be not provided
by other flower stores. Basic tagline, says a lot
in a couple of words. Then you do have the colors
and the topography, right? What colors are
you going to use? What are the fonts that you're going to use which visually communicate the brand,
tone, and personality? Different colors,
different fonts, they are understood differently. And there have been a lot of
experiments which actually conducted to help you associate how you view a certain color, how you view a certain font with a certain
personality perception. Is it serious? Is it fun? Is it mundane? Is it boring? So all of these
perceptions are tested, and then you're able
to come up with whatever combination the best
matches for your business. Let me give you a brief practical example
that you could do. Think about gray and black colors when it
comes to business. First thing that comes to mind. Most probably, it's
a serious business. It's a professional business. But on the other
hand, if you go for, let's say, light yellow, light, blue, light green, it's more fresh and bubbly. Yet, all of them are colors, but you perceive
them differently. That's the whole goal as you
build up the color scheme, and the color palettes and the topography of your business. So these are key elements,
like I mentioned, every single component
that you could use to help pass on or complement your brand identity in the
way that you intend to, it's a branding element. But there are key elements that every single branch should
have the brand name, the logo, the tagline, the colors and topography. These serve as basically
the foundation. It helps tie
everything together. And once you take it
one level further, anything that you add is
basically complimentary. But if you don't have a
brand name or a logo, you're missing one
of the key elements. So you're jeopardizing
the risk or jeopardizing the
brand and increasing the risk of failing
from the get go. So make sure that you have a
brand name. You got a logo. You got a tag line, you figure out the colors and
the topography. This is the foundational stone. And then you take your one
level further to identify how your branding is communicated online and offline, as
we are going to see. And like I mentioned, feel free to pause the
current lesson. Try to conduct such an activity by yourself or you come
up with a brand name, try to sketch a certain logo, try to come up with a tagline. What are the colors
and the topography? And you will notice that you're able to form a complete
branding package. And as you complete
this activity, you would realize that you have now the ability to fuse
additional elements. Your brain just simply keep
on releasing these ideas. What about online branding?
What about offline? What about we add a
certain feature on the website or we add a certain aspect on the brand
messaging or the fliers, which are uniquely present in our brand only and
the list goes on. But you need to have this
foundation in place in order to build up upon and reach a
successful business brand.
7. Brand Strategy Basics: And welcome back. So as we have learned about the
key elements of a brand, we need to address
brand strategy, fundamentals, and basics. You cannot just
simply sit down and start creating brands
here and there. You need to build it
one level at a time, in order to make sure by the time you have
a complete brand, it actually fits
into the market. So what are some of the
brand strategy fundamentals and basics that we need to have in place in
order to increase the chances of launching
a successful brand. First of all, you need to understand your target audience. What does your business do? What kind of product
do you sell? What kind of service do you provide and who do
you provide it to? So in order to understand who
your brand is speaking to, because we said the brand
is an identity, right? And then you got
marketing is about promotion and advertising
is about communication. So if you have a certain client and you're not able to
speak their language, you're not going to pass
on your brand identity. That's the whole
purpose of this. So you understand your target audience. Who are they? What do they do? What are they interested
at? What is the age group? Are they let's say, a university student or are
they elderly individuals, are they males, females,
whatever it is? In order to help you
understand how to start building your brand by selecting
the logos, the colors, the color palettes,
the topography, in order to increase
the passage of communication between
your business and the potential
customers, right? Then you define your
brand mission and values. What does your company or
your business stand for? This clarifies your brand's
purpose and core beliefs. Most probably whenever you
go to a company's website, they do have about
us page, right? Do this exercise, and take a
look at their About us page. Our mission, our values. Because if you have a full on
company as part of a brand, every single employee or
professional in the company, they are operating to
reach the company goal, the company mission, and they comply with the company values. So you as a potential customer, once you take a
look at a company, they have certain values, they have certain core beliefs, and they're trying to do a
certain act in the world, which is the purpose,
delivering a certain product, providing a great service
in a certain way. You're able to understand
what drives the business, and this creates a connection
between you and the brand. If you actually resonate with their mission
and their values. Right. Then you craft a positioning statement which shows how your brand
fits into the market. You could duplicate certain
businesses or brands, and I've seen this a lot, for example, and most
probably, you did. You do have a burger joint which opens somewhere in
your neighborhood, and then fast forward
three months later, you do have five to
six burger joints. Often they sell the same thing. They open next to each other. This is weak positioning
because you are simply trying to replicate
someone's brand, which lacks authenticity,
sort of speak. And once customers, they are
associated with a brand, the original brand,
like we have said, they become loyal customers. So you are setting yourself
up for failure by copying the brand of someone
else or trying to replicate exactly
what they're doing, which is a very weak
starting point. And by the time you
launch your brand, your brand will be viewed as a copycat of an original brand. You don't want
this. However, you can get inspired
from other brands, and then you could add your own unique twist
to your business, which makes it uniquely
yours, definitely. But you need to make sure
that you position it properly in the market as
it's a unique product, as it's a unique
service like no other. That's a positioning statement, and you often pass this on in terms of the
marketing, the advertising, or the website or the flyers to help differentiate your business compared to other businesses. Let me give you an
example. Let's say, you do have two grocery stores
right next to each other. And typically, every
other grocery store, they have certain similarities in terms of the product, right? However, one of them, they have a clear
position statement, which is fresh
products all day long. That's it. The other one has
no positioning statement. So once you take a
look at these stores, which one of them are you likely to enter
and buy your products, even though both of them,
they sell the same thing. Most probably the one which says clearly fresh products
all day long. The other store could
still sell fresh products, but the store that we're
concerned with has positioned themselves in a way to communicate this
to your clients, to the potential
shoppers and buyers that we sell fresh products
all day long. Now, let's take it
one level further. Let's say that
store is trying to position their statement,
to position their brand. How about instead of simply saying fresh products
all day long, they can just simply say
meat shops like no other. They're focusing on
meat, literally, steak, beef, fish,
whatever it is. Even though they sell
the same products, but one of them is focusing on the fresh produce
or the products, and the other one is focusing on the fresh meat
and the fresh cuts. They could sell the
same thing, but one of them is actually focusing
on a different thing, and they're positioning their
brand in that direction. So I truly hope that
you get the idea. Definitely, it
requires practice. It requires a lot of iteration, trying to figure
out how to align and position the business
such that you're able to pass on the true identity of your business in an
authentic in a unique way. So all of these components and branding strategy is
a domain by itself. You need to dive this into with a lot more detailed
strategies and tactics, best practices as part of
the whole branding strategy, and then you build it up further by adding all of these elements. So you need to
understand who are you speaking who is your
target audience? Define the brand mission and values. What
do you stand for? Crafting a positioning
statement to simply find a space for your business or your
brand within the market, which is quite
unique and it's not comparable to something else or being shadowed by
a different brand. So these are some brand strategy
basics that you need to keep in mind as you create
or craft your own brand, and then you layer the elements that we have
talked about the logo, the topography, the colors,
and the list goes on. That way, you're
increasing the chances of success for a successful
launch from the Geo. Because if you miss
all of these steps, you'll get to a point
you're simply improvising. And let's see how that works. There's nothing wrong
with that, by the way, and there's no way you could guarantee a successful
launch from the get go. The only thing
which is within you control is trying to do the best effort to increase the chances by following
the key best practices. That way you have
done your part, and then once you
launch into the market, you're able to figure out
if it's working or not.
8. Personal Brand VS Business Brand: Now, it's important to
highlight that there are some key subtle differences between business branding
and personal branding. And often you tend to
find professionals, they tend to confuse them
or they have no idea where to draw the line
between business brand and a personal brand. In this current lecture, I'm going to show
you exactly where to use a business
brand and where to use a personal brand with some additional key insights to keep in mind to
help you decide. Are you going to pursue a
personal brand or a business? Personal branding versus
business branding, when and why to focus on each. So when you do have a business brand and
a personal brand, they achieve different goals. You use a personal brand
for individual services. If you are, for example,
you are a barber, you are a florist,
you are a doctor, and you are the business. You conduct the
service by yourself. You are the entire
business as a whole. You speak to clients, you deal with clients. You could have assistant. You could have various support
systems from assistants, co workers, whatever it is. But you are the core
of the business. If we take you out
of the picture, you don't have a business.
That's the thing. So a personal brand,
if you would like to craft a brand that revolves around you
and what you offer, that's a personal brand. But it's important to highlight. You don't have to make a choice between either one of them, and there's no way for you to cross to one another.
On the contrary. I'm going to show you
that. You're able to jump from a personal brand to a business brand and
from a business brand to a personal brand and vice versa, but you have to be strategic. But as you're launching
this from the get go, you need to distinguish
what is a personal brand? What is a business brand, and what am I trying to achieve? So we're going to use a personal brand for
an individual service. However, business
branding for companies. Typically companies which offer different products,
different services. They do have different
number of professionals, and if a CEO or the
person in charge or the actual business
operator is not present, the business still could
run and it's not just simply associated with
that single person, right? So this is generic. Typically, most of the
businesses that you have seen, they go for business branding for coffee shops,
grocery stores. They go for business branding
because why you don't have a single person selling shoes or a single person
selling grocery, right? It's a full on business. You do have staff, you
got to have employees, and then they operate under the umbrella of a
business brand. However, for personal brand,
think about it this way. You're familiar with
a certain doctor they got their own practice. You take an appointment
with them, a lawyer, for example, a consultant,
a single person. They could have their assistant. They could have their
administrative support, whatever it is. But once they take a vacation, for example, the office shuts
down. You get the idea. So when you're operating from a place of trying to build
a brand, think about this. Would you like to
go for a personal brand or a business brand? But like I've mentioned,
they can work together, which is an area
often overlooked. A strong personal brand can enhance a business
This is where you do have the idea of influencers and whatever it is
on the social media where you do have
a certain company, and then they give their
product to the influencer. They got a certain
social media following, and then they talk
about their product. That influencer, they
got a personal brand. That business, they
got a business brand. So that business brand approached that
personal brand to help them increase the perceived
value of their brand. So they can work together. On the other hand,
a personal brand could help a business grow, and a business could help
a personal brand grow. For example, you take
a popular business, and then they take on
a certain person or individual and they showcase
how they have helped that person and that person grew to become their
own personal brand, for example, that personal brand is helping that business
and vice versa. It's important to see how they help and support each other. For example, personal brand. Your strong authentic
personal brand builds the brand of
your organization. You as an employee, by the
way, think about it this way. You work at a certain company. You are the personal brand in which you communicate
with clients. They know about you, they
understand about you. They like you as an individual
who is professional and they provide great quality
products and services, even though you are an
employee in a company, right? So you are the personal brand. And that personal brand is
reflecting on your company, which is the business
brand, right? So the business brand, your
accelerated business brand boosts your personal brand. Now, let's take it the other way around to get the analogy. For example, you're
a recent graduate, and then you got a
job offer from one of the top 500 companies
in the world, right? And you put this on
your CV or your resume. All of a sudden,
your personal brand is viewed by other companies and potential recruiters as
something great, sort of speak. So a personal brand
affects a business brand, and a business brand
affects a personal. Vice versa. So
keep this in mind. It's important to think
about this because you have the choice either to go if you're
creating a business, for example, to go full on personal brand or full
on business brand. But at one point in time, you do have the
flexibility in order to jump between personal
brand and business brand. Let's say you start
as a certain doctor. You do have your own practice. You're building your
personal brand, and as you grow, you
open a hospital, and your personal brand is
helping that hospital grow. On the other hand, if you are a new recent graduate
doctor and you work with a recognized
business brand, which is a luxury hospital,
premium hospital, once you joined them and you
put this on your resume, that business brand helped increase your own
personal brand. And most probably you haven't
heard about this before, but it's very important
to understand this. These are some important
crucial details and expertise that
I'm sharing with you, which will help you understand
the depth of the process. It's not just simply a matter of creating a logo and
you're good to go. On the contrary. So I truly hope by the end of these lessons, you have a clear idea how to navigate the process
of establishing a certain brand in the best way possible
adopting the best practices. So to wrap this lesson up, you do have the
option of a personal brand and a business brand. A personal brand revolves around a service offered
by single person. Typically, a business brand, you do have a full on operation, various products and services operating under an umbrella. However, have the ability to reinforce a business brand by getting strong
personal brands, or you're able to create a
personal brand or increase the status of a
personal brand by associating it with a
strong business brand. And as you can see, it's a
cycle that feeds itself. Strong personal
brand associations, they help pick up
business brands and strong business
brands associations, they help pick up personal
brands, and the list goes on.
9. Online VS Offline Branding: And welcome back. Now,
in this current lesson, we're going to
distinguish between the various options that you have when it
comes to branding. Nowadays, you do have
online elements, compared to olden times where everything
was mainly offline. You got fliers,
you get signages, you got advertising billboards. That was offline. However,
in this current age, in this current era, we do
have two different approaches. We got the online branding. Now when it comes
to online branding, the first thing that comes
to mind is a website, so you do have a website which reflects the brand identity clearly and professionally based on the elements that
we have discussed, the brand messaging,
the positioning, the logos, the topography, the tone, and the list goes out. Then you do have the
social media consistency. This is very important. What do we mean by consistency? Not consistency in
terms of posting, consistency in terms of
the voice and the visuals. When you are sharing
something, for example, on Instagram, Facebook,
Tik Tok, YouTube, your brand should be
easily recognizable, not completely different where
you do have, for example, on Instagram, a certain logo, and then on TikTok, it's a
completely different logo. These variations at
the core elements really project a different
business entity completely. So keep this in mind. You
do have an online presence. You do have a
website. You do have a social media
presence, consistency. All of them, they should
speak to each other. Similar colors, similar logos, similar tones, similar style. That's very important.
And then you do have email communication
and content branding, which you have to make
sure that follows a certain tone and certain
alignment with the brand. Whenever you send email
communications to your clients for
updates, whatever it is, you need to make
sure that the way you're talking to them is aligned with the
business branding as a whole, using certain fonts, using the logos,
the company name, it's recognizable because once that email lands in their inbox, they should be able
to identify that, uh huh, this is the business
that we're talking about. Content branding, whenever
you're trying to release any piece of content and just
simply being consistent, the actual content itself
should align with your brand. What are you trying to do with the mission and the core
values that you have? Which takes us to the
other end of the spectrum, which is the offline branding, which is the typical old
school sort of speak branding. You do have a packaging
that's very important. And nowadays, you tend to find almost every single
brand the focus on this. Website, social media,
email and content. Well, that's an important
element and part, but keep in mind, old is gold. So offline branding
could be powerful or even more powerful to online
branding at certain cases. So packaging reflects the
brand quality and style. The product itself
speaks about the brand, and the actual way you package the product also says
volumes about the brand, how much care and
attention you give to the product and the brand and to the service of your
clients and customers. Then you do have business cards, which is one of the most often overlooked branding
and marketing tool. Small but powerful
branding tools. Whenever you go to a
certain occasions, you pass on your business card, the style, the format, the way it's designed, says
a lot about your business, and definitely it should be consistent with your business. Then you do have the office
or store environment. Take a look at the
signage over here. Literally, when you
walk into a store, you see the signage,
the banners, the billboards, even the layout of the place, the staff uniform. Every single element
that you see offline is considered as part of the
branding image or identity, which helps you echo
the brand experience. Are you walking into
a professional store? Are you walking into
a convenience store? Are you walking into a
showroom, for example? Every single one of those scenes requires
different office arrangement. So it's important to understand when you are building a brand, you do have the option of online branding and offline branding. And it's important
to focus on both. Instead of just simply nowadays, everyone is focusing on
online, online, online. And then you walk
into that store, it's a horrible experience. What you see online
is completely different than what
you see offline, which is something which is a catastrophic mistake
to have in terms of the brand image and the brand identity and
the customer loyalty. On the other hand, if
your online presence matches your offline presence
in every single way, the packaging, the
website, the social media, the business cards, the
email and the content, the office and the
story environment, you have created what we call as a cohesive brand where everything complements
one another. That should be your angle.
10. Wrapping Up: So what do you think? I truly hope that you found
the class helpful if it helped me develop
that insight into branding, which goes beyond
the surface level that many are familiar with. It's a job well done. And I look forward to receiving
your feedback on the current class and
make sure that you follow my profile for the latest
releases and updates, and I'll see you
in the next class.
Engr. Hussein Attié, Entrepreneur I Engineer I Educator
