Brand identity: Piece together your mosiac

Brand identity isn’t simply a logo and slogan: Factors and tips for building your brand

By Alexandra Smith

Put away your iron and get out your creativity.  Branding is no longer a single searing process of creating an identity, but an arrangement of many factors, a mosaic.

At Podcamp 5 Boston, Tamsen McMahon, of Sametz Associates and Brass Tack Thinking, makes branding clear, similar to a mosaic piece of art. McMahon dubs it “Mosaic Branding”

Brands are

• A Vision
• A Subject
• An Audience
• Material
• Style
• Resolution
  • A Mosaic: Many factors carefully positioned to best represent the image you want to portray.

Brands are not

• Logos
• Messages
• Public relations

A brand exists in consumers’ minds.

Brands answer the question: What are we about?

The answer must be abundantly clear: It’s what you represent.

Brand creation tips

• Location: Where you are located has a lot to do with how you present yourself.
• Audience: If you don’t know who your audience is, you know nothing about your brand. Understand all reasons why people find value in you.
• Material: Own your logo, custom labels, tagline, and type.
• Resolution: You must create clarity with your audience. The more pieces you put into your picture, the clearer it will be.
• Consultation: You can get more information by talking to less people than more, as long as each of those people represents different stakeholder groups.
• Be prepared: Be ready for something to go wrong. Own negative press. Consistently deliver pieces to your audience, so that when something goes wrong, you still have what you worked to put together.
• It’s about context: Move your brand to a culture of creation. Instead of focusing on controlling individual content, focus on the context in which it is understood — the mosaic.

Start sharpening your tools and use all of the above supplies to create a brand that people will care about.