Brand cohesion is a very important concept when it comes to establishing your brand identity. At Starting Dimensions, if we were to define brand cohesion it would look something like this:
“Your brand is a reflection of your business purpose, values and identity, with full unity of every concept, element and idea including your visuals, culture, service, workflows and people.”
Let’s dive deeper into what this means. For a business, and often an individual, your brand is how you are seen and perceived. But, there is also a before and after effect to consider.
For example, imagine you see a new fitness studio open on your street, with incredible banners and brochures on every corner that capture your interest. You’re intrigued. However, when you visit their website to learn about their pricing, you find that it takes a few minutes to load and doesn’t have nearly as much information as you were hoping to find. Further, when you try to give them a call, you are greeted rudely by the owner who tells you that he doesn’t have time to answer every question and you should do your research. For you, the brand has not lived up to its promise.
This is brand cohesion. No matter how well you present one aspect of you business – if the rest does not match, then this will be at a detriment to your success. Here are a few more examples to get you thinking:
- A custom website with a mobile app that doesn’t feel like it’s the same product
- Having an excellent brick-and-mortar image but not replicating this in your digital identity
- Disjointed social media content full of different colors and fonts
- Marketing excellent customer service but failing to engage users when they make contact
- Branding yourself as an innovative workplace but failing to create an exciting culture for your employees
- Having the reputation as an excellent business but failing to ensure the people reflect that in their personal images
The brand that you put out there is your business as a whole.
Why should you care?
Businesses, organisations and even individuals have limited lifespans. Startups have a certain amount of time to gain traction or raise investment before the founders walk away. Likewise businesses must adapt to the times and refresh their offering and brand to stay relevant.
So why should you care? Because to attract the best talent, to engage old users and bring onboard new ones, you need to have a brand that resonates. If your website is outdated, if your socials don’t convey your message, if your company culture is not reflective of the current day and age, your success will be limited.
And if you’re just starting out, then it is important to get things right from the start. Staying current does not mean being complicated, it means being effective. Have a concise logo, an online image that reflects yourself or your business, if you have employees – a scalable culture that will work once you grow.
Where do you start?
If you’ve kept up with everything you’ve read so far, then you’ll see that your brand consists of both the visible and the invisible. It’s easier to start with the visible. Ensure that your visuals are on-point, that you’ve optimised your communications, crossed your t’s and dotted your i’s. Come up with a color palette, have a great website, these are the easy things.
Then…start with the invisible. Come up with a plan for the people you have and will have onboard, the culture, the way you’ll engage your staff, your sales techniques. This will take the most time and will bring with it delayed gratification.
How can we help?
At Starting Dimensions we want your brand to be standout and achieve great things. For established businesses, our mandate is to do a thorough sweep of your online and offline elements to understand what you’re doing great, and where you can improve. From this report we can come up with an action plan, short-term and long-term to help the business grow and prosper.
For new businesses or individuals, the process is a bit more fun. We brainstorm and work with you to come up with your brand and fine-tune your ideas into something tangible. Then we put it into action, as slow or as quick as you want.
Get in touch to see how we can help, and we’ll happily chat through your business and ideas.