We think loving our own brand is important to demonstrate our passion for brand marketing!
We hear a lot about brands – corporate brands – branding – brand values and also today personal brand – but what does the word brand really mean?
The Design Council talks about brand as a set of associations that a person (or group of people) makes with a company, product, service, individual or organisation. Brands often spend millions on their brand – creating their brand persona, values along with the brand assets – guidelines for how their brand assets can be used on all their marketing collateral.
When it comes to corporate branding organisations we like to ensure that all materials created or designed are in keeping with their brand, aligning to their values, using their logo and messaging absolutely in line with brand guidelines. Creating consistency across all marketing communication materials.
When we talk about creating a corporate range for our clients we want to really understand their brand, its values, guidelines and the objectives of all of their marketing collateral. One thing we often see is various marketeers buying merchandise on an ad-hoc basis, rather than looking at the overall marketing strategy ensuring all buyers understand what their needs are throughout the year, creating a plan to ensure all materials are consistent in terms of look and feel and materials used are of the right quality and aligned to their core values.
As a business The Sourcing Team went through a rebrand in 2011 and it was a great experience not just because we loved the new fresh logo, it was much more than that, our design partners took us on a journey which was really engaging across the business – in really understanding what our own brand was all about and how we wanted to talk about ourselves and of course, market ourselves.
Not just the directors of the business; but all of our team were engaged in understanding the core of our business, what do our values truly mean, what is the vision and what do we want people to think about us?
The experience of re-branding our own business; helped all of our team understand more about the challenges many of our customers face; brand stand out, clarity of offer, how you differentiate, what is the brand personality, what are the needs of your customers and where do you fit in the market? We went through the exercise of seeing our original logo placed against our competition and we did the same thing with the new brand identity. With the help of our fabulous designers we have a really good logo that definitely stands out and that says what we do! More than that it links with a fun way of sharing key messaging in how we play with ‘The Sourcing Team' for example ‘The Green but actually very pink Sourcing Team'.
That rebrand has made us think carefully about the branded materials we use as a business; how are they aligned with our values, do they say the right thing about us, are they stand out and memorable and, of course, ethically sourced and compliant.
We think being an organisation that cares passionately about our own brand helps us to do the same for our clients. We don't want our logo to be used incorrectly, produced incorrectly. We want everything on brand and consistent across all marketing collateral. And we love it when someone say's “I always love the pink envelope mailings from The Sourcing Team”! We want to delight, excite and show how amazing your own merchandise can be when you work with our team.
So, if you are looking to work with a fabulously creative team, who will help you plan your branded, marketing collateral for the year ahead – just click here to get started.