A good branding project requires patience, however. Brands take years to establish themselves and require continuous, present and unmistakably creative activities.

A successful branding or corporate design agency will support clients and their brands in the long term and sustainably. A concise brand image is created by communicating the company's values. Both a clear strategic alignment of the corporate identity and its powerful visual and emotional presentation of the brand design play a central role here.

The brand feeling created by established, existing brands ensures that customers remain loyal in the long term and recommend the brand to others. Good branding should last for years, but also requires ongoing development, as people and markets are constantly changing.

An experienced branding or corporate design agency is required to achieve this. From brand definition to logo development and visual identity design, a team of creative designers and strategic thinkers is essential. We, the Ruess Group, combine both. And we have been doing so for more than 15 years.

The exact definition of the target group is an important step in the brand development process. One that is unfortunately often overlooked. It is essential to understand that different target groups are addressed by different approaches to tone, aesthetics and brand personality.

By first working out what characteristics and needs are specific to the target audience, it becomes much easier to design a brand that resonates and works.

A proven approach for precisely identifying the target group is the creation of personas, or buyer profiles. A persona outlines a typical representation of a potential customer for whom the brand's products or services are relevant.

Such a profile should include fundamental attributes such as age, place of residence and income level, but also more specific information such as political beliefs, specific use cases for the product and preferred brands.

A comprehensive study of the competition – including their websites, advertising, videos, social media posts, blogs, pricing, communication strategies, market positions, strengths and weaknesses – is essential.

Competitor websites quickly provide insight into prevailing themes and strategies in the industry. A competitive analysis table can help structure and prioritise insights gained and provide a clear perspective on how to position the company and its brand in relation to other players in the industry.

This table can serve as a key foundation for developing both effective and efficient strategies to differentiate the brand from the competition in an authentic and compelling way.

What is the purpose of the brand and how does it position itself within its industry?

It is advisable to commission a branding agency to develop a mission statement. The mission statement acts as the foundation for all branding activities and should be consistent with the company's values.

The mission statement can metaphorically be seen as the "soul baring" of the brand. Although this can be a challenging task, the following three essential questions, together with the expertise of strategic thinkers from an experienced branding agency, can provide essential guidance:

• Why does the company exist?
• What problem do its products or services solve?
• Why should customers choose this company over the competition?

The personality of a brand is one of its essential characteristics and serves as a direct testimony to its uniqueness. Furthermore, a well thought-out brand personality ensures that the targeted clientele is addressed in a focused manner.

Consistent language should be used in all brand activities – be it websites, social media profiles, emails or product pages. Regardless of when and how customers come into contact with the brand, they should always encounter the same personality.

The tonality or "voice" of a brand is largely derived from the target group, mission statement and sector to which it belongs. It's important, therefore, to investigate what personality traits resonate with the target group in order to draw inspiration from them.

There are five fundamental aspects to consider when building brand personalities, which can help conceptualise, define and develop a unique and long-term effective personality:

• Enthusiasm
• Authenticity
• Resilience
• Expertise
• Sophistication

Once the personality of a brand has been established, it should be anchored in an editorial style guide. It is helpful to imagine the brand as a real person and have it communicate in a way that a real person would.

People are naturally drawn to stories because these touch them on an emotional and personal level and prove to be especially effective in marketing.

Every gripping brand story usually begins with a main character – a customer – confronted with a problem. The customer meets a counsellor, receives a plan and is called to take action to avert future challenges.

Storytelling provides a valuable complement to the mission statement by illustrating why the brand exists, what it believes in and what it has to offer. An effective dramatisation could include the following elements:

• Problem: Every compelling story has significant challenges. It should analyse what customers want and need and how to address both their practical requirements and their underlying emotive motivations.
• Advice: This part should highlight why the brand serves as a solution to the target group's problem. This can be done, for example, through customer testimonials that highlight the uniqueness of the brand compared to the competition.
• Climax: A suspenseful arc that shows customers the potential negative consequences that could arise if they decide against the proposed solution.
• Resolution: Concrete promises should be formulated here that customers can rely on if they decide in favour of the company and its brand. It can also show how the customer's choice will have a positive impact.
• Call-to-action: The explicit invitation to purchase the product. It is important that this invitation is not formulated too directly or aggressively, but is rounded off with a short, valid reason.

Choosing a brand name is one of the most important decisions in the branding process.

Great brand names are often characterised by their compactness and conciseness, often in the form of abbreviations or one or two easily memorised words.

Although there are some basic approaches to naming, the overall task is complex and as the name needs to have a long-term impact, hiring a specialised branding agency can be beneficial:

• Combined words: Examples such as Adidas use compound words.
• Names of inspirational entities: Like Nike, named after the goddess of victory from Greek mythology.
• Relevant words or expressions: Mastercard as an example, conveys direct relevance to the financial sector.
• Word mergers: Facebook combines two common terms to create a unique name.
• Modified words: Tumblr takes a creative variation of a common word.

Before finalising a name, it is essential to check it and similar variants through internet research and trademark law. Similarities with existing brand names can not only cause confusion, but also lead to web traffic being unintentionally directed to a competitor. And, of course, the legal situation, which can protect registered brand names in many fields of activity, also needs to be taken into account.

A powerful slogan is invaluable. It should be concise yet meaningful so that the branding or brand building agency can place it in a variety of ways – be it on social media, in the header of the website or in the email signature.

The slogan not only needs to be short and catchy, but also consistent with all branding initiatives. Even the most attractive and catchy tagline can miss the mark and confuse the audience if it is not consistent with the overall branding.

Although there are no strict criteria for creating and formulating a slogan other than brevity and impact, the following approaches can serve as a source of inspiration to get you started:

• Metaphors: Imprinting through the use of figurative language.
• Expressing attitude: Manifesting the brand identity.
• Action description: Emphasising an active, dynamic aspect.
• Highlighting advantages: Clearly naming the benefits for the customer.
• Rhymes or slogans: Anchoring the slogan in the memory with a melodious or witty saying.

The brand's logo acts as its face and often conveys the first impression to the customer. It is, metaphorically speaking, its outstretched hand. Therefore, the creation of a logo is an essential step in the branding process.

A logo integrates various graphic elements and the branding or brand-building agency will take several dimensions into consideration: Colour palette, typography and image selection are three critical design components in logo development.

• Colours convey certain messages and attention should be paid to their psychological effects during logo development, which are grounded in colour psychology and colour theory.
• Fonts convey the tonality and identity of a brand in a similar way to colours and images. For example, we often associate bold, wide fonts with strength, while serif fonts are traditionally associated with authority.
• Many logos integrate images. Brand logos often rely on the face of a person or a personified animal to achieve a "humanisation" of the brand through familiarity.

In contrast, abstract logos focus more on form and colour than on inherent meaning, which only develops through the recipient's association with the other brand elements:

• Monograms create a symbol from one or more letters of the brand name. Word marks usually only present the brand name without integrating additional symbols or mascots.
• Symbols serve as graphic metaphors for a brand.
• Combination logos combine different types, such as text with an image or symbol. This is ideal for brands that believe both logo types are important to their identity.

Within this framework, the brand's tone of voice is established, including how it should sound and what look and feel it wants to convey.

The brand personality should be clearly recognisable in every social media post, every marketing campaign and all the way through to the web design.

Once the brand essence has been established, the decisive process of integrating the brand into the entire company begins. The branding agency, having designed the previously mentioned style guide, ensures a consistent language and presence across all communication channels.

Brand value, also known as brand equity, is the added value that a company generates through the simple fact of being known and recognised over lesser-known competitors. With a robust brand equity, customer relationships can be strengthened and higher prices realised. Statistics back this up by showing that 60% of consumers prefer to buy products from brands they are familiar with.

A customer who identifies with a brand tends to remain loyal to it and its products. A brand that enjoys high customer loyalty and repeat purchase feels less pressure to continually acquire new customers.

Considering that acquiring new customers is up to five times more costly than retaining existing ones, companies with a strong brand and a loyal customer base will have proportionally lower marketing costs per product sold.

Creating such a brand requires the expertise of an experienced branding agency that masters design, strategy and communication. We at the Ruess Group are precisely this kind of partner. And as a full-service agency, we can work together with specialists from all areas of marketing, from creation to event and online marketing, which has proven to be particularly valuable for data, feedback and testing in such projects.