The Benefits of Investing in a Complete Brand Identity

Many times when small business owners come to Prolific looking for help with their branding, they contact us looking for "just a logo". Over time, we've discovered that "just a logo" isn't enough for your brand. That's why at Prolific we offer complete brand identity packages that set your company brand on a path for success in your market. This post covers the differences between your brand, brand identity, and logo — and why a cohesive brand identity is the best solution for your company.

Brand vs Brand Identity vs Logo

Brand: Your brand is the sum of the experiences your customers (and prospective customers and employees) have with your company. It's how customers think about and talk about your company to others — it's how others view you. The quality of your brand can be measured by how well outside brand perception matches the internal brand identity strategy.

Brand Identity: Your brand identity is a system of assets, tools, and guidelines designed to communicate, represent, and ultimately shape how the market views your brand. It's how we strategically position your brand in customers' minds — how we look, act, and talk, plus our values, promises, and intentions. Its quality is measured by how well your company values, personality, and promises are communicated and reinforced consistently across customer touchpoints.

Your logo: Your logo is a single visual mark that represents your company in the market. It's the keystone to your visual brand and an abbreviation of your entire brand identity. A good logo is unique and memorable, versatile and scalable, and fitting for both your brand and market.

The 3 reasons to design a brand identity instead of "just a logo"

1) An identity designed specifically for your company, market, and goals

There are two ways to create a logo. The "easy" way is to ask you what you want and make it — but then there's no way to know if the logo actually fits what your company needs, resonates with the market, or meets your goals, and no consideration for the rest of the brand around it. Usually those logos either aren't used or don't last. It's like buying a mechanical part before you've designed the machine. The right way is to plan and design the brand identity system as a whole first, so that system tells us what each component (like your logo) needs to be. That's the approach we use.

2) The tools to be consistent and cohesive in all your marketing

Does it feel like every marketing piece means reinventing the wheel? By strategically building your brand identity around your company, market, and goals, we create a system of tools that produces any number of future pieces that stay consistent with the whole. This is what I call Fractal Branding: build one brand identity system, and all future assets stem from — and look like — the whole, because they're built with the same tools. Fractal brands are self-similar.

3) Clarity, confidence, and enthusiasm — for you, your staff, and your clients

As we complete the process with you, you gain a clear understanding of who and what your company is and what that means in the market. That clarity lets your team act and decide with confidence. And clarity plus connection equals enthusiasm: your renewed clarity, plus the connection built through discovery, gives you fresh enthusiasm for your brand — and helps you attract the staff and customers who are the right fit, while weeding out those who aren't.