Step 3: Implementation

Now that we have your base, let’s expand!

If you are opening this series for the first time, or you missed last week’s Designing a Visual Identity, go back to check out the first parts of the series.

The first two steps of brand design are all about building your foundation. And while a strong foundation is important, it does not create a home. Similarly, data and a logo do not create a brand.

So let’s build some walls.

Brand Design for Bold Businesses: Implementing the Research and Visual Identity.

Now that we have an understanding of your market opportunity, have a direction for your brand positioning, have created the base of your look and feel, and a general sense of overall direction, the next step is implementing everything.

The key with strong branding is consistency. This means intentionally crafting an experience at every customer touchpoint.

Consistency is important for two key reasons:

1. Consistency means that your customers recognize you when they see you in various environments.

2. Consistency breeds trust. As a business, one of the hardest things you will have to do is get new customers to trust you and have your existing customers continue to trust you as you grow.

This is why the first two steps are so important. Because they create the framework for everything you are building. And making large updates to your branding involves updating a lot. So you want to make large overhauls as infrequently as you have to.

Implementing your brand is more than just making sure you are using the right fonts, colors, and photography style. It is ensuring the user experience from start to finish creates a cohesive story.

The beginning sets the expectation. These are your paid ads, your social media, your PR. You are creating a narrative about what it’s going to be like to use your service, what it’s going to feel like to hold your product. It gets customers excited to purchase from you.

The middle should reinforce that excitement. This is your website, your onboarding process, your purchasing experience. They haven’t technically used your product yet but they are intended buyers.

The ending is why we’re all here, they are officially customers. This includes your packaging, your customer experience, the product or service itself. Does it live up to the expectations that YOU have created leading up to it? Does your storytelling accurately reflect what you’re building? We’ve all watched a movie that doesn’t live up to the trailer.

Brand design helps to ensure that from the very beginning to very ending, you are telling the same story. A bold business ensures they are living up to that story.

What goes into consistency?

• Color pairings

• Font usage

• Word choice

• Content formatting

• Website layout

• Product & service messaging

• Product & service reliability

• Customer service

• Physical spaces mirroring digital experiences

Story Time from TLC CEO, Olivia Wisden

Let’s talk about a time when brand experience did NOT live up to expectation.

I am not shy about my love for a theme. And so for my 30th birthday, I knew I wanted to go all out. The theme was on brand for me: Wilde Wisden — a celebration of the art of John Wilde. A simpler explanation was bold, colorful, surrealism.

After months of searching I finally figured out my outfit inspired by John Wilde’s self portrait Wildeworld, 1953-1955. The clothes were by a small, woman owned brand that I had been following for a while, I just needed the perfect reason to take the leap. They were cool and fun and followed a lot of the accounts that I enjoyed and they had the perfect matching set. Sold.

Unfortunately, this is a cautionary tale.

I knew I was cutting my time close with two weeks before my party but the shipping on their website said I should have it with 5 days to spare. As the expected delivery date came and went without any shipping update, I was concerned.

I reached out to customer service looking for some help. I filled them in on my excitement for shopping with them and the reason for my concern — my 30th was quickly approaching. They offered no solutions, just the explanation that shipping all around was delayed due to moving warehouses. I went back and checked, there were no warnings on their site or social media about delayed deliveries. Just continued promotions for “BUY NOW!”

I asked if I could expedite my shipping or cancel due to needing to buy something else. By the time customer service got back to me they informed me that they couldn’t cancel my order because it had finally been shipped… 2 days before I needed it.

The rest of the story short.

I ended up buying a backup outfit the morning of at Nordstrom because I knew of their generous return policy, just in case by some miracle my outfit was delivered in time… The package was delivered the day after my party. Even more fun? The quality of the garment was underwhelming at best. Safe to say all of the ads they spent getting me to be a customer were sorely wasted. The matching set was returned and the warning is now in my newsletter (albeit without a name drop —that wouldn’t be very on brand for TLC).

TLC Brand Bites: Strong brand implementation is better than a strong logo.

• Customers remember how they feel about your brand, not your logo.

• We call logos great after the brand as been executed well.

• Your brand should inform how the experience should go and how you respond when they don’t go as planned.

• Be human first. Often customers just want their inconvenience to be recognized.

• If things go wrong, be as generous as is reasonable. It’s much more expensive to gain a new customer than keep an existing.

• Good design still matters. You need invest in both your visual identity AND the implementation.

Final Tips

How would we have advised the brand from the negative story above?

• First we would tell them that they should apologize for a delay, especially when it’s for a special occasion and be sure to offer to expedite the package.

• We would have suggested having warning on their website and social media for any long-term delayed shipping — put the responsibility on the customer.

• And finally, if customer service is warning of shipping delays for more than a week, we would have suggested pausing their paid ads encouraging more sales when their warehouse wasn’t keeping up.

— — — —

Next week we have the last step in brand design for bold businesses and the final part of our Deep Dive series: How Branding Should Impact Your Operations.

As we’ve previewed this week, how people feel about your brand is much more than just your look and feel.