A brand is not what you say it is; it’s what others believe it is. It’s your company’s reputation—the expectation that resides in the mind of your customer. It’s a set of intangible assets—an emotional relationship that allows your business to connect with your customers, clients and prospects.

A brand represents clarity, reassurance, consistency, status and everything that enables a business to help define it. People trust brands, develop strong loyalties to them, buy them and believe in their superiority.

As products and services become indistinguishable, as competition creates infinite choices, differentiation is imperative. It speaks out with one distinctive voice — on the web, in an advertisement, in conversations with salespeople, in a conference — and must project the same unified message.

Brand Identity is the visual and verbal expression of a brand across a wide variety of material. It’s a strategically organized structure that presents consistency and unity throughout all channels of communication.

The foundation of this structure includes both a continuous visual language that encompasses your logo, fonts, colors, layout and imagery as well as a consistent verbal message crafted to project a compelling voice that resonates throughout your target audience.

Brand awareness and recognition are facilitated by a visual identity—shape, color, content. Through repeated exposure, these symbols become recognizable. Your logo is the point of entry to your brand.

Your brand identity will:

• Express the kind of organization you are
• Connect your company to images and ideas
• Build equity over time
• Provide consistency

To translate your vision into a tangible expression, your brand identity must be:

• Memorable and appropriate
• Immediately recognizable
• Clear and consistent
• Scalable
• Works both in black and white and in color

Your identity must be coherent. It must be experienced the same whether it is online, in print or elsewhere by:

• Look and feel: use of colors, typeface and formats
• Voice: a consistent message across all marketing tools.
• Unification: must be unified across all products.
• Standards: a high and consistent level of quality.
• Clarity and simplicity: make it easy to understand.

Your brand identity is the visual and verbal expression of your business and an integrated brand identity is essential for success.

Integrated Branding, sometimes referred to as integrated marketing, is an organized structure of visual design standards and consistent messaging (your brand identity) throughout all of your marketing efforts from your logo and business card to your website and marketing materials.

Integrating your brand identity allows your target market to associate your particular company with your product or service. It allows your business to speak with a consistent unified voice and builds recognition.

A tagline reinforces a company’s message. It is a slogan, clarifier, descriptor, company statement or guiding principal that describes or helps create interest. A tagline does a little of the explaining for you, blending who you are with what you do.

It should be:

• Short
• Differentiated from competitors
• Unique
• Easy to say and remember
• Evoke an emotional response
• Capture brand essence