Branding : from the inside out
A few weeks ago I started working with a company in the architecture & interior design industry that wanted to refresh and realign their branding. The company was four years old, yet still relatively ‘youthful’ in an industry that was dominated by big international legacy brands. The challenges were clear; level up the brand’s proposition, fortify its reputation as being an independent and creative studio; but at the same time still keep its charisma.
Much of that charisma came from its founder; who established a culture of exuberance, energy and ‘funk’ – and early relationships with firms (that led to winning projects) would rely heavily on the founder’s personality traits and approach to business. It’s very commonplace for a founder to reflect their own personality traits as becoming the personality of the brand – they generally mould into one entity. This not only helps the brand to become memorable, but assigns the brand a familiarity and context with its stakeholders and potential clients.
However as business grows this can present a couple of problems, as experienced by studio : 1) How can this business scale and harness this reputation so that the charisma comes across in ALL its staff and 2) how to use this unique personality to play and compete with the big boys but be taken as a serious player.
In the 3 week brand discovery workshop we ran, the team initially struggled to extract the personality of the business away from the personality of the founder. This got me thinking about how much a brand’s personality and values comes from the inside out, and what potential downsides and upsides this was as the business grows.
When undergoing a brand discovery workshop, I ask my clients to always think of the brand as another person – with its own values, beliefs, feelings, even physical appearance. In doing so allows the team to objectively view the brand as extracted from its owners or co founders; albeit there are overlapping values. Once this mindset is in place, it then becomes quite easy for the team to collaboratively decide on how this brand should look, feel, act, think, see and be.
When we develop a brand from ‘the inside out’, we pay attention to its history, past perceptions and actions and also how the team themselves feel about the brand, in doing so we understand the deep connections a brand has to the culture and motivations of their entire team. These elements should not be underestimated in the brand proposition, in some cases, it can differentiate to a potential client the level of quality and reputation the brand will ultimately project.
At the end of the day, a collaborative, team approach that pays homage to a founding reputation and brand value to build and scale those elements is what’s needed to keep a brand grounded to its roots, while it grows, and competes amongst much stronger competitors.
