Crafting an indelible and enduring brand identity is essential to differentiating your business from your competition. Your brand needs to deftly affect the way in which customers view and asses your your business and evaluate your relevance to them, their lives, their challenges and their lifestyles.
All too often up and coming brands seem to miss the mark when it comes to creating a consistent brand identity on film. This flipping between brand styles and personalities creates an undependable image in the mind of consumers, making your brand image whimsical and transient in nature.
Creating strong brand identities is about consistency but also about establishing what that brand identity is in the first place. Let’s take a closer look at how this is done.
Brand Archetypes
It would be remiss of me to discuss brand identity without first mentioning the concept of brand archetypes. Brand archetypes are based on the concept, originally devised by Carl Jung, of universal archetypes. There are various archetypes and each embodies a given set of personality, behavioural and ethical motivations, which can come to embody a brand. Understanding which archetype your brand should strive to be is as much about understanding your audience as it is your brand.
Ultimately though, an archetype will affect the content you choose to create and the tone of voice you adopt. Let’s take a look at the 12 brand archetypes:
- The Sage
Sage archetypes spend great amounts of time meditating on complex issues. Primarily motivated by uncovering and understanding truths.
- The Magician
Magician archetypes embody imagination but also invest a substantial amount of time into ensuring their creativity is approached with caution.
- The Caregiver
Caregiver archetypes are compassionate and possess a keen desire to ensure that everyone feels both safe and appreciated.
- The Explorer
Although Explorer brands understand boundaries, their determination and desire for freedom regularly leads to them pushing against those limitations.
- The Revolutionary
Revolutionary archetypes don’t just push the limits, their success comes from actively breaking the rules and challenging the status quo.
- The Lover
Lover archetypes appreciate beauty, passion, sensuality and intimacy. Lover brands are often overtly glamourous .
- The Creator
Creator archetypes thrive on innovation and their desire to help their audience realise their creative potential is paramount.
- The Ruler
Ruler brands are influential and accomplished, with a confidence and sense of stability that deftly communicates their trustworthiness.
- The Innocent
Innocent archetypes are happy, honest and optimistic, innocent brands embrace simplicity and stay away from heavy-handed messaging
- The Jester
Jester archetypes are motivated by pleasure and wholeheartedly advocate living in the moment.
- The Everyman
Unpretentious and approachable, Everyman archetypes are motivated by the desire to form meaningful connections
All too often businesses create content that clashes with their brand identity. This content can be jarring and even confusing to audiences who may have come to expect something markedly different from a brand they thought they understood. This inconsistency of tone and content style can put people off your brand and can erode trust and association amongst core demographics.
Having a brand archetype gives you a template and an anchor point that will help inform ongoing content strategy. Accommodating the fact that brand archetypes will influence even the smallest nuances of your brand identity is so important precisely because these characteristics will shape your vision and help you to establish a memorable and recognisable presence that your audience can identify with.
Getting the Tone Right
Your brand identity should capture the look, feel and personality of your brand, and speak to your audience in a way that encourages them to engage with you and your content. As your identity is far more than just your logo, it will naturally take hard work to effectively communicate the nuances of who you are through every brand film you create.
To do this effectively, you will need to establish and maintain a cohesive and distinctive visual language that your audience finds sufficiently appealing to want to engage with. When you’re working within a medium where every detail matters, you will often find yourself balancing the act of showcasing your brand values and pursuing innovative storytelling techniques that will surprise, delight and intrigue your core audience.
The visual language you use within your brand films should consider:
- Colour palette
A considered colour palette is the gateway to emotion and atmosphere. Primary, complementary and accent colours should work seamlessly together to convey a clear ambience and work to enhance the communication of your core message. This must also extend to visual treatments and/or filters, which will impact the overall ambience and tone of your brand film.
- Iconography and Imagery
Effective utilisation of imagery and iconography will be influenced by your brand’s visual language and the role you need it to play within your marketing communications. Your brand film will incorporate a combination of motion graphics, photography and cinematography. Each of these elements should be used appropriately to clearly communicate who you are and what you want your audience to know. Setting is also crucial to capture brand identity. If you want to shout about being a London based company, then shooting a brand film in London will certainly help galvanise this image.
- Typography
Selecting typography that reflects your brand identity is notoriously difficult. Following trends runs the risk of either appearing unoriginal or very quickly looking outdated, which is why deep diving into your brand’s personality always yields the best results. This is because typography should ideally be informed by the shape and movement of your logo and chosen iconography, which will ultimately contribute to the stimulation of an emotional response within your audience based on recognition and familiarity.
- Format
Brand identity is created through a consistent content strategy but this in itself can be expressed in many ways across many mediums. With video, it’s important to think about format and how you want to present yourself. For many brands, animation can work very well when it comes to crafting an enduring brand image, but finding the right style of animation (CGI, cell animation, or a combination of live film and animation) is important.
The composite of these individual elements will shape the perception of your brand, so understanding who you want to engage and maintaining authenticity is crucial to ensure your brand identity resonates with your ideal audience.
The best brand identities:
- Are cohesive, distinctive and stand out for the right reasons
- Make a memorable visual impact
- Are flexible enough to grow and evolve over time
- Are easy to integrate into every brand film and marketing initiative
It’s important never to forget that a strong brand identity can prompt your audience to think of your business whenever they see a particular colour or shape. Remember, audiences seek out communications from brands they like and can identify with. For this reason, you should consistently do everything in your power to meet the expectations of your unique audience and provide them with an experience that only you can.
Some Key Takeaways
- Focus on your Core Values
Use whatever makes you different to guide your core values and brand messaging. Amazon’s consistent focus on providing a seamless customer experience cultivates trust amongst its audience that this is a brand that will put the needs of its customers first.
- Remain Flexible
McDonalds is a prime example of a brand shifting its messaging to adapt to a new generation of health-conscious customers who still want convenience. If there are any pain points in your messaging, understanding how you can resolve those issues is key to maintaining a successful brand identity.
- Never Underestimate the Power of Emotion
Modern marketing landscapes are extremely data-driven, however it is crucial never to let that data completely overwhelm your need to anticipate how your audience will respond to everything you do on an emotional level.
Remember, your identity should establish a clear connection between your brand, your messaging and your audience. The stronger your identity, the easier you will find it to produce effective brand films that reflect your ethos, appeal to your audience and drive meaningful results for your business.
