irresistible
M A K E YO U R B R A N D
IN SEVEN SIMPLE STEPS
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J us t h ow irresis t ib l e is your brand ?
A truly powerful brand identity will attract, engage and compel your ideal customers (and prospects) to do business with you. It will differentiate you from your competitors and it’ll make you truly irresistible. We’re going to share seven simple things that you can do to make your brand style irresistible. Some of them will require the help of a professional but importantly, most of them you can do yourself. And because each one is manageable in a bite-sized chunk, we hope that you’ll be able to take just five minutes out of your day to sit with a cup of tea and reflect on how you can implement each step in your business.
The Flourish Team
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your
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sim p l e s t e p s
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focus
values
personality
colour
fonts
dimension
communicate
Give yourself just a few minutes in your day to focus, get some perspective and clear your mind.
Know what your business values are Write them down to remind yourself.
Bring out your personality on as many levels as you can. Customers will relate and engage with you.
Use colour in your visual communication to create an emotional connection. Colour is more powerful than you think.
Use appropriate fonts that add beauty and personality to your brand messages.
Use texture and pattern to add depth and dimension. It shows you care about the way you communicate.
Communicate with spirit, confidence and clarity.
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To create a thought-provoking brand identity you need to understand the messages you want to communicate to your customers, and the design will follow naturally.
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G e t F ocused
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Very simply, take some time out to think about what you want to be known for. What makes your business unique? What are you best at? What do your clients value about what you do and how what is it about your offering that’s so compelling? What’s important to you about the way you run your business? About how you interact with your customers? What values are at the heart of your brand?
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Flourish client, Alderley Pilates were clear on what made their business unique before we started their brand styling and website design. This core understanding made the finished result much more powerful.
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K now w h at your va l ues ar E
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Once you know what you want to be known for, think about your business values. What’s important to you about the way your business runs? About how you and your staff interact with your customers? Who are the people that buy from you and what motivates their purchase? Why do they choose you over the competition? And what do they love about your business?
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Make sure your brand values shine through in your branding. Your branding should evoke the right feelings at every point of communication you make. www.flourishstudios.co.uk | blog.flourishstudios.co.uk | 01483 401818
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B ring ou t your p ersona l i t y
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Chances are your favourite brands have personalities; they have quirks and confidence that you like and they stand out because of it. What’s your business personality? Creative and inspirational? Commercial and ambitious but down to earth? Think about what suits your business and make sure this comes across in how you speak, write and behave. Most importantly, know what impression you want to create about your business and make a list of those words. You’ll be using these for the next few steps so keep them handy.
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Flourish customer, Cooper Photography knew their brand needed to spark imagination in a playful yet professional manner. Understanding this from the start gave them focus and clarity.
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U se co l our to creat e an emot iona l connec t ion
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Now you’re focused, we’re going to think about how we communicate these values, focus and personality in your brand identity. Most consumers don’t buy a product or service for rational reasons: they buy with their hearts. And that’s why creating an emotional connection with your clients is so important: you’ll be one step further to making your brand utterly irresistible. At Flourish we do this through using colour, type, pattern and texture. And today we’re going to focus on colour.
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Colour is incredibly powerful: it works at both an emotional and subconscious level and is one of the most effective tools you have in your brand identity. Once you know what you want to communicate about your brand, it becomes much easier to use colour to communicate powerfully. So have your list of brand values to hand and let’s start to think about which colours will work best for your brand. When we create a brand identity we start by working out which season best complements your business personality; Spring, Summer Autumn or Winter.
7 Each season has different attributes and will lend itself to different businesses. This season defines the tone and texture that we use, and it’s important that you keep your colours within that season. Each colour has positive and negative attributes, and as long as you combine colours from the same season you’ll communicate the positive attributes. For example, blues communicate logic, efficiency, professionalism and clarity. Browns are grounded, authentic, substantial and earthy; but combine them with the wrong tones and you’ll make your brand feel boring, unreliable and heavy. You’ll find lots more in depth information about colour psychology on our blog – take a look and see which colours suit your business best.
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Colour, pattern, texture, gorgeous fonts and creative use of design all add up to a contemporary yet Asian influenced brand identity for gift, toy and homeware company, Quirky Rose Harissa.
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U se beau t ifu l fon t s to add f l air & p ersona l i t y
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Just as colour can positively influence how your customers respond to your brand, so can type. Fonts add personality and individuality to your brand and are an essential way of getting your clients to engage with your business. With recent developments in web fonts and technologies there really is no good reason why your website and printed communications need to use boring fonts!
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The only place we’ll let you off with using boring fonts is in your email communications where you really do need to put function before typographical form. There are thousands of fonts out there that when used with flair and creativity will differentiate your business from the crowd and add irresistibility factor to your brand. Take stock of your “house fonts” - do they inspire you and give you confidence that you’re communicating powerfully?
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Make a splash with fonts that complement the rest of your branding. Get these right and you’ll have a look that matches your beautiful brand voice.
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U se t e x t ure and pat t ern to add dimension
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We use a lot of texture and pattern in our brand identities at Flourish because we know that it adds another level of character and irresistibility to our clients’ brands. Where relevant, pattern in particular can be used to add another dimension to your online and offline communications. It’s another way of getting your brand noticed without relying on your logo, and it’s another aspect of your identity that customers can enagae with.
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At Flourish we focus on giving your brand personality to make you stand head and shoulders above the rest and make your brand irresistible to the people that matter. Create something that truly showcases your passion and it will resonate with your customers.
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Mirror the passion that drives you and your business through your branding. It will resonate with the right people and encourage them to invest.
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Communicate wi th flair
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We hope that these tips have opened your eyes to the exciting world of branding and the possibilities you have within your business to create something truly remarkable. Getting focused and creating a powerful brand identity is just the start of creating an irresistible brand. What then matters is that your communications are even more inspirational, engaging and compelling than the sum of your logo, house fonts and colours. It’s this attention to detail, flair and style that’s going to lift your brand out of the ordinary.
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So having gone through all the effort of creating a remarkable brand identity, don’t cop out and shove your logo on a standard website template and be done with it. Think creatively about how you blow your clients away with your communications: invest in printed brochures, welcome packs and pieces that will move your customers further up the relationship ladder. Work with a creative agency who understand how to create the right impression with your clients and who recognise the value in creating a brand identity for your business that blows your competitors out of the water.
7 This isn’t about creating something smart, this is about creating an online and offline visual communication that engages your visitors, takes them on a journey and gets them to do what you want them to do. Exciting stuff!
W E ’ D L O V E TO W O R K W I TH Y O U We hope that this guide has inspired you to think about the potential of your brand that’s locked away within your business. At Flourish we listen, challenge, inspire and capture the essence of your business and use our expertise to style your brand in a way that blows you and your clients away. We create brand identities, logos, websites, brochures and other gorgeous communications that help you set your business apart from the rest, attract the right sorts of clients and help you get to where you want to be, faster. If that sounds exciting then we’d love to talk about working with you. Book your branding consultation by emailing
[email protected] or calling us on 01483 401 818
www.flourishstudios.co.uk | blog.flourishstudios.co.uk | 01483 401818
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[email protected] 5 Millmead, Guildford GU2 4BE @flourishstudio /FlourishCreativeStudios blog.flourishstudios.co.uk flourishstudios.co.uk
