We caught up with Sam Smith after her insightful Retail Matters Live Talk at London Stationery Show 2023. In case you missed it, read on below to hear her top takeaways.
Thank you to everyone who attended my talk on Branding & Your Bottom Line at London Stationery Show this year. I loved answering all your branding questions and quandaries. For those of you who didn’t get a chance, fear not. Here’s some background and my top 3 talk takeaways.
We looked at why a distinctive, consistent brand is essential for your business, and I shared some case studies of brands I’ve worked with and how the work we did together made such a significant and positive impact on their bottom line and resulted in growth.
There are, of course, many elements that make up a strong branding strategy. Here are three we focused on. These tips will propel your brand forward to becoming recognisable and gain the all-important trust of your customer.
Cohesion
- Ask yourself, does your digital presence match your physical space?
- Do you have a consistent look & feel across all your customer touchpoints?
- Will your customer know it’s you when you show up?
If you answered no to these questions, try pulling all your visual communications together and reviewing them. Include photos of your store, shop front, screenshots of your website & Instagram feed, paperwork that goes into your orders, grab a carrier bag, look at the materials you use – EVERYTHING!
Seeing it all together can really show up any inconsistencies in your branding.
Brand Codes
- Brand codes are the 3 to 5 distinctive (usually visual) assets you use to promote your brand. This will include your logo, but what else is recognised by your customer? Your fonts, photography or Illustration style, a founder figure, a graphic or pattern.
- Brand codes maintain brand salience and shorten the last 2 feet for a customer from seeing something and buying it.
- Always be distinctive and memorable with your communications. Use your brand codes and codify everything!
Tone of Voice
- Would your customer recognise you from your content alone? From the way, you speak to them? When a tone of voice is deployed consistently, it can be as recognisable as your colours and font, for example. If your brand is high-end, use professional language; if your brand is laid-back, be more conversational.
- Try taking two pieces of content on two different channels and check do they sound like they are coming from the same organisation?
If not:
- Gather your brand information together, including your business plan, values, mission etc
- Get inside your customer’s head. How would they speak or phrase things?
- If your brand was a person, who would it be? Jot down their qualities and attributes
- Put pen to paper and write some guidelines. Include brand traits, create a style guide and/or grammar rules for your brand
- Keep checking for consistency
Sam Smith set up her design studio in 2009, and after years of helping businesses build successful brands, Sam took on the challenge of creating her own when she founded HELLO TIME in 2018. Not only the founder, but Sam is the creator of the award-winning HELLO TIME Planner. If you need help, Sam provides visual identity audits for small businesses, helping you evaluate and sanity-check your creative output for consistency and growth. Contact Sam at hello@hellotime.co.uk.
