How to find your brand’s essence
branding tips
Life is complicated. Good design shouldn’t be. Especially when your brand is driven by purpose, sustainability, and a hunger to change the world.
Weaving those elements, and your brand essence, into a visual identity is what sparks connection and elicits opportunity — and it’s essential as the trees are to the forest.
So, what does your branding need to communicate? And how do you find your brand essence? Let’s find that out together!
Brand Story
Storytelling inspires and creates emotional connections with your audience.
Storytelling is a powerful tool for your brand's communication. If you want to build meaningful relationships and create an elevated brand your people care about, you need a purposeful, authentic story to tell.
Here’s the structure for good storytelling:
01
problem:
Describe the difficulty, situation or problem that you set out to solve.
02
solution:
Describe how you solved it with your ideas and passion
03
success:
Describe how your solution is making people’s lives better
prompts
What is your brand story and what sparked its inception?
What are the key highlights?
What problems and situations were you facing?
Brand Purpose
To create a brand identity that is rooted in strategy, designed with purpose, and resonates with your ideal client, we must get into the WHY of your brand first.
Your brand purpose makes you irresistible to your target audience. It’s the foundation and the very reason your brand exists.
It goes beyond profit.
If used strategically, your why can be the driving force behind your brand’s success
prompts
Why does your brand exist?
What are you passionate about?
What difference can you make?
If your brand had to shut down today, what gap would there be?
Vision
Your brand vision states what your brand does for your audience. Think of it as the picture of where you want your brand to be in the future.
Your vision should be measurable, attainable, inspiring, unique, cultural, and straightforward.
The brands that are most capable of inspiring us and earning our trust are the ones that make us feel like we’re more than just another customer. They make us feel like we’re part of something even bigger.
prompts
What problem is your brand solving?
Who is it doing it for?
Who and what is your brand inspiring to change?
Mission
Think of your brand’s mission as the route to follow to achieve your brand’s vision.
Your brand’s mission is what your business strives to do for your audience. Think about what products and services you offer and the impact they have.
prompts
What services or products does your business offer?
How do you want to make people feel?
How do you impact their life?
Are you trying to inspire a feeling or action?
Values & Ethics
What does your brand stand for?
Values are at the core of your business. They influence how consumers perceive your brand and help them align with their own values.
Your ethics help define your purpose, personality, and visual style.
From the colours you use, your logo, your voice and customer service, everything should be meaningfully defined around your brand values.
need a little help?
Identify around 3-5 core values. using this list as inspiration.
Achievement - Adventure - Authenticity - Authority - Autonomy - Balance - Beauty - Boldness - Bravery - Compassion - Challenge - Comfort - Community - Competency - Contribution - Creativity - Curiosity - Determination - Discovery - Empathy - Empowerment - Exploration - Fairness - Faith - Fame - Fearlessness - Freedom - Fun - Giving - Growth - Gratitude - Happiness - Health - Honesty - Humor - Imagination - Influence - Inner Harmony - Innovation - Justice - Kindness - Knowledge - Leadership - Learning - Love - Loyalty - Lust - Openness - Optimism - Peace - Performance - Playfulness - Pleasure - Poise - Popularity - Productivity - Quality - Recognition - Reputation - Respect - Responsibility - Security - Service - Spirituality - Stability - Sustainability - Trustworthiness - Unity - Vitality - Wealth - Wisdom - Wonder
Promise
Your promise is how you commit to every client. It’s the way that makes your brand unique, and it’s what your target audience expects from your business.
Your promise helps you position yourself in the market, as it sets customers expectations on the brand’s quality and feel.
prompts
How is your brand unique?
What makes it stand out from the crowd?
Personality
Brand personality is a set of characteristics that your brand can purposely use to evoke the right emotional response and increase trust.
Brand personality is what humanises your brand and makes it resonate with your target audience.
Because we connect and purchase from brands we like and relate to, it’s important to define your brand personality to be engaging.
Need a little help?
Consider your brand personality, then use the table below to define the set of characteristics that make it unique.
Audience
By knowing more about who you’re serving, communicating and connecting with your target audience becomes easy as a breeze.
Who is your audience and where do they look for when they find your brand? What are they searching for?
prompts
Who does your brand talk to?
How old is your target demographic?
Where do they live?
What do they value?
How do they find and learn about your brand?
Customer Persona
Creating a customer persona allows you to understand your audience better and recognise key traits and patterns and how your brand can help.
02
research:
Research the problems your ideal clients are facing. What do they look for? Where do they seek help?
01
define:
Define your customer persona. Think about age, interests, profession, routines, goals, aspirations, etc.
04
determine:
Map out their decision-making process and where and how your brand can help them.
03
map out:
Map out their decision-making process and where and how your brand can help them.
Colours
How your target feels about your brand is more potent than what they think about your brand. This means that your brand colours should be selected by their meaning, a preference is not enough.
Brand colours are a reflection of your brand identity and evoke a strong and immediate emotional response.
Tip
Select 3 colours to create your brand palette, your primary colour, an accent and a neutral.
red
Power
Excitement
Strength
Power
Passion
Energy
orange
Confidence
Warmth
Innovation
Friendliness
Energy
Bravery
Yellow
Optimism
Warmth
Happiness
Creativity
Friendliness
Affordable
Green
Health
Hope
Nature
Growth
Freshness
Prosperity
Blue
Trust
Loyalty
Logic
Serenity
Security
Competence
Pink
Imagination
Transformation
Passion
Balance
Creativity
Luxury
Brown
Seriousness
Earthiness
Reliability
Warmth
Support
Authenticity
Black
Sophistication
Security
Power
Authority
Substance
Novelty
White
Cleanness
Clarity
Purity
Simplicity
Freshness
High-End
Typography
Like colours, your brand’s fonts can make or break your visual identity. After all, it’s not just what you say: It’s how you say it.
Selecting the right typography can help amplify your brand’s message and give your logo and overall brand identity a unique feel.
Tip
Consider your brand personality, then select the font that evokes those feelings and ideas you want to communicate.
The Workbook
So now that you’ve discovered your brand essence, you’ve got your foundations and you’re all set to elevate your brand.
If you want to keep exploring your ideas, I put together a FREE workbook that you can download below. If you need a beautiful brand identity but aren’t sure about your brand’s essence yet – this is for you!
I've created this workbook with you in mind, an ambitious and passionate entrepreneur, to help you find clarity and discover your brand's essence, so you can shape it into something that truly represents your brand's purpose.
Download your free copy of the workbook
The workbook is packed full of goodness to make the process more dynamic and enjoyable. I hope it helps you create a beautiful, successful brand with foundations and meaning.
Share your brand’s journey in the comments, or let’s chat on Instagram!
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