This post is going to talk you through a few of the hand lettering resources I use to produce the lettering and calligraphy you see on my Instagram profile, or during my #DoYouSpeakDevon project hand lettering Devon dialect.
Hand lettering Devon Dialect: #DoYouSpeakDevon
Every sheet of paper I used hand lettering Devon dialect during the month.
In October 2017 I started a month-long project; hand lettering Devon words and phrases to share online. Many Devonian residents shared their own experiences and memories of these words. And, many people from outside the county expressed their bewilderment, confusion or amusement at the words and phrases I shared.
I wanted to take an opportunity to talk a bit more about the process of doing this project, and the things I learned from it.
You may have noticed the Inktober hashtag pop up every year. Inktober is an annual art challenge started by american illustrator Jake Parker. Every October thousands of people try to complete one piece of art each day, and share it online using the Inktober hashtag. It’s a fun project that encourages people at any level to share and improve their art skills over the course of the month.
I first took part in Inktober in 2016, although I only managed to share ten things over the month. A big part of the problem was a lack of prior planning; I just sat down each day and tried to think of something to share. If I couldn’t think of anything I’d end up not posting that day. For 2017 I planned ahead and decided to choose a theme, making sure I had each day’s submission planned out in advance.
Hand Lettering Devon Culture
Having been raised in a rural village in North Devon, I’ve always wanted to create a project based around the dialect words and phrases I heard in my youth. I’ve also been working to improve my hand lettering skills, sharing my lettering progress on instagram. Inktober 2017 seemed like the perfect chance to bring these things together; hand lettering devon dialect over the course of the month.
In early September I sat down to make a list; and decided on the following rules:
- Each word or phrase had to be one I either used myself, or personally heard being used ‘in the wild’.
- I would try my best to represent the pronunciation I heard by spelling each word or phrase phonetically (a decision which caused some controversy at times).
I worried these constraints might limit the number of pieces I could think of, but within five minutes I had 26 day’s worth of content, and within 24 hours I’d managed 37. I edited the list down to 31, and arranged them in an order that gave a good variety of length (some were single words, some three or four) and meanings (Viddy and Proper Job have fairly similar uses) across the month.
On October 1st I sat down and started hand lettering Devon dialect with, fittingly, ‘Ow be’e knackin’?
It soon became a bit of a habit; each night I’d sit down at around 8pm, grab a pencil and some paper, and start quickly sketching a few different ideas of how to represent the word in an appropriate lettering style. Once I settled on a style I’d start working on tracing paper to produce the inked version; either tracing over the pencil sketch, or starting in pencil and inking over the top.
Once I’d finished the piece I’d photograph it with my mobile phone, adjust the brightness and contrast in Photoshop Express, and post the final version up onto Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. All-in-all the process would take between thirty minutes and an hour.
You can see all of the images I shared in the galleries throughout this article; but here’s a few of my favourites in more detail:
Mizzle
If you’ve ever experienced mizzle, the thick, claggy, foggy light rain that is so common is South West Britain, this piece will bring a smile to your face. To create this one I lettered the word first, then placed a new sheet of tracing paper over the top and started to create the rain drops using a thicker pen over the letters. It took a while to finish but was good fun to do.
Do’bake
A Do’bake is someone who acts in a stupid manner or does something silly. The slightly wonky lettering style on this one was good fun, and came out well considering it’s the first time I tried to write like this.
Dractly
Controversial! ‘Dreckly’ is a widely used on souvenirs from Cornwall, to the point that this spelling has become considered correct by many. But this spelling just didn’t reflect the word I would hear growing up. The middle syllable was definitely harsher and more ‘a’-like, and there was a ‘t’ in the middle too. Staying true to my rules I wrote the word as ‘Dractly’ and fully expected a few people to ask me why. In the end I think I was asked 3 times why I had spelt the word this way, but everyone seemed to understand my reasoning.
Hand Lettering Devon Memories
Within a few days of starting this project it became apparent that people were enjoying the project. I started to get some nice comments on Facebook, with people sharing their own memories of family members who used the words and phrases I was lettering. A few people also let me know how happy they were to see these pieces of cultural history being kept alive in the modern age. I also had people messaging me to ask when the next word was coming, or making suggestions of their own.
The End
By the time October 31st came around I had managed to post every single day of the month. My final phrase, ‘Frape n’ up!’, was also one of my favourites. The lettering seemed to come together quickly, and the final photo came out very cleanly.
Reflections
Two weeks down the line, and with a bit of perspective, I realise there are a few things that I learned from this project.
Be Genuine
A lot of people seemed to really enjoy seeing the work I shared during this project. While hand lettering Devon dialect was something I wanted to do personally; I can also see now that because it was significant to me, it is also significant to a lot of people. The stories they shared and the encouragement that gave me made thie project so much more worthwhile and enjoyable.
Done is better than perfect
I have a habit to try and perfect and polish everything I do to the best of my ability. Don’t get me wrong: I still think this is a benefit for my client work, and I fully intend to continue this when I’m being commissioned. However, it does sometimes mean that I fail to share or complete personal projects because I just don’t feel they’re ready to go out into the world yet. Taking part in a month long daily project soon changed my perspective on this. Instead of aiming for ‘as good as possible’, I realised that ‘good enough for today’ was the best route forward. Hand lettering Devon words and phrases every day taught me to aim for a certain level, share, and move on.
There was the odd piece that went out without me being totally happy with the quality (‘Granfer’ for example, or the black fill on ‘Where be’e gwain?’). But none of these pieces had to stand alone; because of the nature of this project if I wasn’t happy with today’s image I could do better tomorrow. Also the few lower-quality images still stand up to scrutiny as part of a larger project.
Be Generous
Related to the two points above, I also saw that if you put work into the world people will respond. Because this project was being shared with people for free and being shared to the social media accounts they were already using it was effortless for them to engage and respond. I absolutely intend to share more projects like this with people in the future.
What’s next?
I still have five or six suggestions from people that I’ve saved. I will be hand lettering Devon dialect some more over the next few months.
I’m also going to revisit some of the words I’ve already produced and work them up a little bit more to produce higher quality lettering. Once this is done I may look into turning these pieces into products like posters, pin badges, or desktop backgrounds.
I’ve also thought of a few other Devon-related projects exploring the history and culture of the county I live in. If I do start any of these I will be sharing my process and progress in the open, here on the blog and across my social media profiles.
Hand lettering Devon words and phrases for a month was one of the best projects I’ve ever done. I hope you enjoyed finding out a bit more about the process.
Here’s the project in full:
If you have a favourite piece of Devon dialect you’d like to see hand lettered, or anything else about Devon you think would be good for me to explore in a project why not leave a comment below, or get in touch?
#ExeterLiveHour Tweetup
On September 14th 2017 there’s a Tweetup for local businesses around the Exeter Area being organised by @Exeter_Hour, @Devon_Exeter and @ExploringExeter (if you;re not following these guys on Twitter yet you really should be). The tweetup is being held at Oddfellows in Exeter, and will be a great chance for local businesses to meet up and network with each other.
So it looks like we are organising a #tweetup but we want it to be more than that. Hoping to show case some of your talents, anyone up 4 it?
— #ExeterHour (@Exeter_Hour) July 21, 2017
To help the organisers publicise the event I’ve been working with them to produce a set of eflyers for use on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram:
The images will be doing the rounds on Social Media over the next week. Keep your eyes peeled for them. And if you are attending #ExeterLiveHour one the 14th I look forward to seeing you there!
Brand Personality and the Brand Deck
Brand personality is at the core of every great brand. From Innocent Drinks’ cheeky, irreverent language to BMW’s confidence, every brand has a personality dictating the tone of their language, imagery and style. That’s why, whenever I work with someone to define and create their brand, I start with defining the brand personality.
Defining brand personality
It can be difficult to nail a brand’s personality down, however. The method I used previously involved gathering a group of stakeholders and handing them each a sheet of post-it notes. Then I asked them to start listing attributes that describe their company. It can be an effective process, prompting discussion around different personality traits and the positive and negative associations certain words might carry.
There was always one issue though: the vast number of adjectives that exist in the english language. When you hand someone a piece of paper and ask them to use any word to describe their brand personality, they are swamped by the number of options available.
Analysis Paralysis
Analysis paralysis kicks in when someone has so many choices they become unable to pick just one. The answer is to limit the choices to a smaller set, but this would create too much compromise for a brand personality workshop. Forcing people to shoehorn their brand around unsuitable character traits is just not useful.
The Brand Deck
I can’t remember where I first saw the Brand Deck by Simple.Honest.Work, but I can remember having one of those “Why didn’t I think of that!?” moments. It was such an elegant solution to the brand personality process.
The brand deck website at www.branding.cards
The Brand Deck started of as a project on Kickstarter. It consists of 50 cards printed with 2 opposing character traits, one on each side. The remaining 4 cards are printed with category headers: “You are”, “You are not”, “N/A”, and “You are torn”. The aim is simple: you lay out the four header cards on a table, and then go through each of the 50 cards in the deck. By the end you will have placed each card into one of the four categories.
The category cards help you focus on each personality trait.
What you are, and what you aren’t
Because the cards are printed with opposing traits on each side they encourage discussion around the meanings of each. For example, is it more fitting to describe your brand as “small”, or to make it clear you aren’t “big”? Is your offering “simple” or definitely not “complex”? It may sound like a small detail, but sometimes stating what your aren’t is more important than saying what you are.
As you add cards you brand personality start to take shape.
Once you’ve worked through the pack it’s time to start whittling your cards down by keeping the most relevant traits. By the end you have a group of 3-6 strong characteristics that can define your brand personality.
Enjoy yourself!
Perhaps the real strength of the Brand Deck is just how enjoyable the process can be. Discussing and considering different aspects of your business is a really worthwhile activity. Choosing a small number to rally behind can really help focus people’s attention on what’s important to their customers. Fianlly, understanding your own brand personality helps show you how to stand out from your competition.
A simple box, asking a potentially complex question.
The whole process can be really valuable for any business, whether they’re considering a rebrand or just want to realign their current thinking and make sure everybody is pushing in the same direction.
What’s your brand personality?
If you would like to explore your brand personality speak to me about holding a branding workshop. It can be a really great way to check the health of your brand and make sure your staff are all reading off the same hymn sheet.
Revisiting the Coldharbour Mill Museum brand
One of the things I love most about being a designer is seeing work I produce out in the real world. That’s why I was delighted to be invited to the opening of the Fox Brothers’ exhibition at Coldharbour Mill Museum: Not just to see the exhibition, but to have a look around the site and see how they were using the museum brand I created for them last year.
The gift aid sign in the visitors’ centre
The Coldharbour Mill Museum brand was a fun project to work on. It arose when Coldharbour Mill was looking to make a move from being a passion-project for a team of volunteers to a professional venture. By adopting a professional looking museum brand they could position themselves as a genuine tourist attraction, vying for the attention of the thousands of holidaymakers who descend on Devon in the summer.
Seeing the brand in the flesh
The logo, with the iconic chimney that inspired it.
The new museum brand is visible as soon as you arrive at the site. The logo adorns the buildings facing you as you approach, flanks the entrance to the car park, and dominates a large sign welcoming you to the museum.
This sign greets you in the car park
When you cross the bridge from the car park you are directed to the visitor’s centre; which also has a large branded sign on the wall. A blue plaque to the right of the door informs you that the building has been dedicated to the memory of a former volunteer, Peter Spencer. The museum logo has been carved into this plaque, and it looks beautiful.
The Peter Spencer Visitors’ Centre
This is the first time I’ve ever seen my work on a blue plaque.
As you continue around Coldharbour, the museum brand is visible all around you. Simple signs have been mounted above the doors to each building, and there are signposts directing you around the site.
These signposts unobtrusively guide you around the site.
Designed for the environment
When I worked on the museum’s brand, one of the first things we stipulated was the primary colour of the brand. The exterior woodwork of nearly every building on-site is painted drum red—the same colour used when Coldharbour was still a working mill. I sampled and matched this colour for the primary burgundy tone of the brand. This decision was perfect, the modern branded signage blends in with the rest of the environment to direct and inform visitors without jumping out at them.
The sign complements the drum red door.
Why the Coldharbour Mill Museum brand works so well
My ethos when working with clients is to treat them as collaborators and partners. I try to get the best understanding of their business I can so that the brand we create is as relevant as possible.
Coldharbour Mill have even used this branding for their new ‘Project Splash’ country park.
In the case of Coldharbour, the vast majority of staff are volunteers. They have limited time, opportunity or knowledge to produce the branded materials required. The museum’s limited budget prevents hiring a designer to specifically work on these items either.
The leaflet for Project Splash
Taking these circumstances into account I made the Coldharbour Mill Museum brand as simple as I could:
- An easily recognisable logo.
- A palette of a few colours; primarily drum red.
- One readily available typeface: Gill Sans.
These elements combined create a simple but distinctive brand that Coldharbour use to full effect.
Do you need a museum brand?
If you have a small business or museum branding project you would like to talk to me about why not send me a message?
‘The Foxes: A Family Business’ Exhibition
The Foxes: A Family Business is an exhibition documenting the history and achievements of the Fox family; entrepreneurs, industrialists and founders of Coldharbour Mill. I worked with Mill to design the exhibition’s interpretation boards.
I Don’t Like Stephen King
I’ve never enjoyed any of Stephen King’s books.
Something about his writing style strikes me as immature, the plot twists always seem predictable, and I can never relate to the main characters in the same way I do with other novelists’.
I have friends who love his books, people whose literary opinions I trust and respect. These friends have lent me some of their favourite King novels; but they just weren’t for me. I can safely say that I will never, ever, buy a single Stephen King book.
Is Stephen King Worried?
Do you imagine Mr King has ever lost a single night’s sleep over me? Of course not. He has published over 50 books, more than 200 short stories and sold in excess of 350 million copies. Those are staggering figures, he’s a phenomenally successful author.
He’s not going to worry about me, he’s going to write for his fans. There are literally millions of people out there who love what he does – if he tried to write his next book for me, how many of them might be turned off?
In his book On Writing King says:
You can’t please all of the readers all of the time; you can’t please even some of the readers all of the time, but you really ought to try to please at least some of the readers some of the time.
Stephen King is happy with the knowledge that you can’t please everyone.
You Can’t Please Everyone
When somebody tries to please everyone, their ideal becomes bland, characterless mediocrity. Ironically, these attributes are guaranteed to please absolutely no-one.
So why do so many companies try to please everyone? Making the kinds of statement that seem to offer the best of both worlds, but where they clearly can’t achieve one half without compromising on the other:
We’re a family business, offering a truly professional service.
If you’re a family company, I’m guessing your management team aren’t handpicked from the best in the industry.
We’re a national company, that acts like a local company.
If you’re a national company, you won’t have the vested interest in the regional economy that a genuinely local company will have.
We offer the best quality, at the lowest prices.
If you’re pricing to a budget, then quality clearly can’t be your primary concern.
Companies make these kind of statements because they’re worried. They don’t want to pin their colours to the mast too openly, for fear that some people might take a look at their message, decide it’s not for them, and walk away.
These are precisely the wrong people to be worried about.
Instead, worry about the people who will see what you have to offer and nod in agreement. The people who like the level of care and investment a family-run business offers. The people who like the security of working with a large organisation. The people who aren’t worried about buying ‘the best’, but want to buy the best for them.
You can only find these people if you’re not trying to please everyone else.
Find ‘Your’ People
So shout your message from the rooftops; there are people out there who agree, and you need to let them see you. These are your people, they are the ones who will become your most passionate customers and your best advocates. They’ll tell all their friends how great you are, and those friends will want to see what all the fuss is about. Maybe, unlike me and Stephen King, those friends might just like you too.
Exeter Social Media Cafe
Last Wednesday saw the inaugural Exeter Social Media Cafe, a free event helping local organisations to make better use of social media. The Cafe takes the form of an informal drop-in session; with a team of volunteer social media experts on hand to answer questions.
Get some free Social Media help for your Biz or Group at #ESMCafe Tues 15th Oct 5-8pm @StSidwells http://t.co/MtmeCIRCBO
— Exeter Social Media (@ExeterSoMe) October 12, 2013
I was pleasantly surprised when, after offering to help out in any way, Rob suggested I join the team. Although worried I might find myself out of my depth, I decided to take the plunge anyway.
And so on Wednesday I found myself sat down at a table, MacBook in front of me, ready for some tricky questions.
The Cafe at St Sidwell’s Centre played host.
The evening took place at St Sidwell’s Community Centre. It was an ideal venue for the event, being situated right in the heart of the city. St Sidwell’s also provided us with free Tea, Coffee, and Swiss Rolls. Thanks guys!
Steve from Devon Hour. was there. He and Curtis had an in-depth discussion about the many possibilities of Google+. Being a Google certified photographer, Curtis knows an awful lot about the big G’s products. He was certainly the right man for the job.
Left to right: Chris, ‘Devon Hour’ Steve and Curtis get to grips with Google+
I was designated the ‘Content Sharing’ specialist, which allowed me to help out Rupa. She was looking for a way to store articles and other media and then, along with a small team, share the links to social media when required. She was currently doing this through Evernote, but finding it wasn’t quite the right tool for the job.
My suggestion was to set up an account in Pocket. Pocket is a bookmarking website that allows you to save articles, images and anything else on the internet in one place. By tagging the articles with the names of the different team members, Rupa and the rest of her team would be able to organise their bookmarks easily. Pocket also syncs with IFTTT, allowing Rupa to automatically email team members, and send articles to Hootsuite or her blog when certain tags are used.
Rupa and Marie discuss the definition of Community Engagement
I thought that the Exeter Social Media Cafe was a great evening. The experts were all friendly open people, and the event had a lovely atmosphere. There was a real feeling of friendliness and sharing among all the attendees.
My favourite story from the evening had to be Sally. I met Sally at the door, and she wasn’t really sure what she was there for, other than to find out more about social media. After a short chat she admitted her sister was on Facebook and she wanted to know a bit more about it before setting up an account.
Nick was the evening’s Facebook expert, so I introduced Sally to him and left them to it. I later discovered that Sally not only had no Facebook account, she also had no computer or internet access at home. By the time Sally left she was going to contact her phone company about a broadband account and head to John Lewis to try out a Chromebook.
If you’re reading this Sally, I think you were really brave to walk in off the street like that; and I hope you’re enjoying being online.
And I got my very own name tag:
My name tag: isn;t it beautiful!?
The Exeter Social Media Cafe is intended to be a regular event, and will need people to both give and receive advice to make it a success. If you want to come along to the next one follow Exeter Social Media on Twitter, and keep an eye out for the #ESMCafe hashtag.
The Importance of Difference or: Drowning in the Sea of Options
Decisions, Decisions, Decisions
You’re faced with an unbelievable number of decisions every day.
What are you going to wear?
Will you need a jacket?
White toast or brown?
Jam or marmalade?
Orange or apple juice?
Tea or coffee?
And all this before you’ve even finished breakfast!
Some of these questions are easy; maybe the answer’s obvious, the options are limited or you make the same choice so much it’s become second nature (Do you take sugar in your tea?)
Other times you may have to think a bit harder, maybe you don’t make that particular decision often enough to have a quick choice. I personally agonise over restaurant menus for ages before deciding (and then only when it’s forced upon me by the approach of the waiter).
In fact, considering how much practice human beings get at decision making, it’s a wonder that we’re still so bad at it. Some websites have entire sections devoted to helping people with their desicions. I bet that you struggle to make choices, big and small, all the time.
And the modern world isn’t helping with this problem.
The Sea of Options
In the past if you wanted to hire a builder, there would probably only be a handful in your locality. The chances were quite high that they would have worked with your neighbours, so it was easy to get recommendations and make an informed choice.
Nowadays you may turn to the ubiquitous Google; but a search for builders near Cullompton (where I live) turned up 186 results.
One hundred and eighty six.
And it’s not even a big town!
How could you possibly begin to whittle a list of 186 people down to just one? That’s just a ridiculous number.
It’s the Sea of Options, and it’s ready to drown you.
And it’s not just builders. Someone could easily drown whilst trying to choose a mechanic, a restaurant, caterer, farm fresh boxed veg supplier…
When faced with too many options and no stand-out choices people tend to do one of two things:
- They don’t make a desicion (drowning’s quite a peaceful way to go apparently).
- They default to the easiest (cheapest, closest, most popular, closest to the top of the search results) option, a bit like desperately grabbing the nearest piece of flotsam.
You’re One Tiny Drop
For your target audience, you are one tiny drop within the Sea of Options.
That’s not to say you don’t offer excellent customer service, or a fantastic product. In fact; I’m sure that you do.
I bet your current customers are crawling over each other to give you repeat business (and if they’re not, you may have come to the wrong place. Sort that out first). But if I haven’t heard of you before, what would make me choose you over any of the other options out there?
What’s the Difference?
If I lined you up with all of your competitors, and asked “What do you do better than everyone else here?” what would you reply?
Genuinely, think about it: what would you say?
When you answer that question, you establish a difference…your difference.
Your difference is really important. It’s the thing you should be shouting loudest about.
It’s the thing you should be building your everyday decisions around.
It should be the first thing I notice when I find you on Google, or walk into your shop, or read your Twitter bio.
Your difference makes you stand out among your competitors.
When someone’s drowning in the sea of options; your difference is a handle they can hold onto.
And if you can pull someone out of the Sea of Options, even for a second, you’ve made an important move.
You’ve stopped being an option; you’ve become a choice.
So tell me…What makes you different?
Keeping your Brand Promise
Have you ever walked out of the cinema feeling let down?
Did the film you had just seen completely fail to live up to the promises made in its action-filled trailers and hyperbolic advertising campaign?
How would you feel if I told you that some of your customers had this feeling after using your Brand?
Your Brand Promises
When you create a USP for your business, and when (through your promotion, your advertising, your website and your branding) you communicate this USP to your customers, you are creating an expectation of experience. This expectation is your Brand Promise.
As we all know, making promises is the easy part.
The difficulty of any promise is not in the making; but in the keeping.
Are you keeping your Brand Promise?
So how do you monitor whether your delivering your Brand Promise? Here’s a little Venn diagram that will help you quickly identify where your Brand Promise is being matched by the Brand Experience.
This Venn Diagram helps you focus your efforts where they’re needed
The diagram uses these three areas:
Aspirations: This is essentially your USP. How do you want your Brand to be percieved?
Audience: The Audience is everybody outside of your Brand. This includes – but is not limited to – existing and potential customers, suppliers and competitiors.
Agents: Your agents are the people within your brand. This could include you, your staff and any contractors or freelancers who may work for you.
By discovering the Audience and Agent’s opinions of your brand, and plotting them in relation to your Aspiration, you can quickly and easily see how well you are keeping your Brand Promise, and where you are failing to live up to expectations.
If you find all three areas converge in the middle then well done. If not, you’re going to need to adjust some of your business practices to compensate.
Printable versions of this diagram can be downloaded in both .jpg and .pdf format.
Will you find this diagram useful? Do you use any methods for matching Brand Experience to Brand Promise? If so, please leave a comment below.
Making a Difference: How to Establish a USP
The cornerstone of a stand-out brand is a single, strong message. A message that creates a very clear image in the minds of its audience.
This is the USP; the Unique Selling Point (or Proposition; whichever you prefer).
A USP is an invaluable tool for any business. A well defined USP gives a focal point to guide your future decisions and give you real differentiation in the minds of potential customers.
So how do you create a USP?
What makes you different?
What is the one thing you strive to do that makes your business unique in its field?
If you can answer that question now, move on to the next heading.
If you don’t know your difference, it’s because you don’t yet have one. This is not as bad as it sounds; it means you now have the opportunity of choosing your USP.
It can be anything you want it to be; just remember these three things:
- It should be Unique: No surprise there; but make sure that your competition isn’t already using a similar USP.
- It should have a genuine appeal: You can have the most unique proposition in the world, but if nobody wants it you don’t have a USP, but only a UP.
- It should be something you have a real interest in providing: If you dont have passion for what you’re doing you will lose motivation.
Do you have strong beliefs about the environment? Then become the most eco-friendly company in your sector.
Do you believe your competitions’ offerings are a bit lacklustre? Ramp up the quality of your product and show them up for the charlatans they are.
Do you have a background in physiotherapy? Offer your customers a full-body massage with their order.
Once you’ve figured out what your difference is going to be you can move on to the next step.
Turn your Difference into a USP
So you’ve got your difference; but you probably don’t have a USP yet. Chances are you have a unique selling paragraph, possibly a unique selling sentence. The next step is to refine this to a short, sharp point.
You should be able to define your USP in no more than 5 words; ideally 3 or 4.
Lets take the environmental example above and apply it to a cafe. “The most environmentally responsible coffee shop in town” is a good start, but too long; “The eco- friendly coffee shop” is much better; but it could be refined a bit more. “Eco-friendly coffee”: 3 words, straight to the point, an excellent USP.
Make it Happen
Now you’ve got your USP, it’s time to take some action. Your USP should be informing everything you do from now on.
Take the coffee shop from the previous example; there’s all sorts of things this shop can do to make itself more eco-friendly. Using responsibly grown coffee, printing menus on recycled card, grinding beans by hand, offering a discount to customers that bring in their own mugs; the possibilities are almost endless.
Also; make sure that any existing activities aren’t in direct opposition to your USP. If the “Eco-friendly coffee” shop left its lights on 24/7, didn’t recycle its rubbish, or had an owner who drove a large 4×4 everywhere the customers would detect a hint of hypocrisy in the “Eco-friendly” tag.
Remember, your brand is what you do, and how you do it.
Make Some Noise
Now you’ve done the hard work of defining your USP and putting it into action you need to let everybody know. Update your social media sites, issue a press release, put up some posters, hand out some flyers, shout it from the rooftops.
There’s no point in having a USP if nobody knows about it.
If you have employees, make sure they understand your USP. If your staff don’t know what it is they can’t help to comunicate it, and in a worst case they’ll give the wrong message altogether.
Look After it
Keep making decisions based on your USP and you will make it your own. Don’t worry about new businesses trying to copy-cat what you’re doing; you’ll have too much of a head start for them to take your USP from you.
A well thought-out and succinct USP should need very little alteration over time, but your execution and realisation of it will. Ensure all of your activities stay true to your USP, keep thinking of new and innovative ways to reinforce and enact it.
What are your views?
Do you have a USP? Are you struggling to define your USP? Leave a comment below and let me know your experience.
What is a Brand?
When many people say brand, they use the word to describe a particular product or service (e.g. my mum’s always used the same brand of washing powder). The word brand is also commonly used to refer to the things that make a product identifiable, such as logos, colour palettes or fonts. Branding is quite often viewed as something external to the rest of a business, a pretty little bow to wrap everything up in.
This is completely understandable. When large companies undergo a high-profile ‘rebrand’, they tend to show images of their website, store-front or staff uniforms with a shiny new logo applied. Many design agency websites are guilty of having a ‘branding’ section in their portfolio that shows nothing more than a slideshow of logos.
To define a brand purely in terms of the visual, however, is to ignore the many different things that a business can do to differentiate itself (or its products) from competition.
Keeping it Simple:
In it’s simplest form, I believe ‘brand’ can be described in one sentence:
Your brand is what you do and how you do it.
Seems easy when it’s put like that doesn’t it? But if you take a good look around, it doesn’t appear to be very easy. A lot of people struggle with maintaining a clear, consistent and well communicated brand throughout the many situations in which they interact with an audience, be that members of the public, customers, suppliers or staff.
In fact branding, as with many of the other seemingly simple things in life, is quite tricky to do well. Lots of large companies pay specialist design and branding agencies considerable sums of money to help define, align and communicate their brand. Some of the leading agencies, such as London’s SomeOne create rich multi-layered brand experiences for huge global companies. This kind of treatment is the Rolls Royce (itself a brand so well understood, it has become a metaphor) of branding, communicating a company’s values to every single corner of its enterprise.
So what about the smaller businesses: the start-ups, local suppliers, farm-shops and consultants of this world? Without the budget to have their brand professionally built from the ground up, can they unify their image? The answer is yes; but it takes a lot of thought, a bit of planning and, possibly, the ability to be completely honest with yourself (we’ll come back to that in a later post).
Lets take a look at the two elements of ‘brand’ that I defined earlier.
What You Do
In terms of your brand, ‘what you do’ means not just your main business activity, but EVERY one of the myriad tasks that go into keeping any business active. These could include things like buying from suppliers, marketing your services and disposing of your waste.
How You Do It
For each of the tasks above, there are different ways of approaching them. When a business buys from a supplier, do they pay on delivery or wait until the finance department is calling to remind them? When they put an advert in the local paper are they giving prominence to prices, or the quality of service? Do they go the extra mile to make sure as much waste as possible is recycled, or do they only do what the local council demands of them?
Regardless of whether you believe any of these approaches to be right or wrong, they each say something different about the business involved.
Why Does it Matter?
Many people can see the value of branding their products and services effectively to their clients. There is an easily recognised, and often measurable, return on investment in client-facing branding exercises; such as repackaging products, redesigning a website or redecoration a store. It can be harder to see the value of applying your brand to the way you deal with staff, suppliers and other groups.
In todays connected world, however, everybody has the ability to communicate with everybody else. This means that if there a is a gap between the brand image you present to your clients and the way you do business behind the scenes, it is likely to come to the attention of existing and potential customers alike.
In minor cases this may only cause slight surprise. In major cases it could cause confusion, mistrust or even worse.
Take, for example, a supermarket that makes a big fanfare about the amount of Fairtrade products it buys from the developing world. If you became aware that this same supermarket was paying ridiculously unfair prices to British Farmers would the Fairtrade campaign now seem like an ethical standpoint, or an exploitative marketing opportunity?
It is becoming more and more important to unify your brand across every business activity.
So Is a Logo Not important?
“A logo is the point of entry to the brand.”
Milton Glaser
None of this means that a logo is not important. An easily recognisable logo allows you to quickly and effectively take ownership of many of your communications and products. However; it comes back to the definition of ‘what you do and how you do it’. If you are using a logo, you need to be using one that somehow represents and communicates your practices, or at the very least: doesn’t contrast too heavily with them.
Large brands that have spent years (and fortunes) building a lot of awareness through marketing and advertising can use their logo in isolation and immediately communicate their brand qualities. Smaller businesses need to work a little bit harder to do this.
The logo is all that’s needed in this advert, but only because the brand is so well known
Think of you logo as a signature. If you’re really famous it’s known as an autograph, and that signature tells anyone looking at it all they need to know. If you’re not famous you’re best to put your signature at the bottom of a letter. If everything in that letter is truthful, your signature will start to gain positive associations.
Your logo should be viewed as a part of your overall brand. Overtime, with consistent and effective branding, your logo could come to represent you in isolation. Unless you are sure your brand is very well known and understood, however, you are probably better off to treat it as a smaller part of the whole picture.
Recap
So, regardless of who you are and what you do, your brand is defined by every purchase, sale, interaction & decision that you make. The very fact that you are reading this article says something about your brand, and the fact that I wrote it says something about mine.
To develop a unified and successful brand image, you need to think about every activity you do, and make sure that you are doing it in a way that stays true to your own brand. Of course, in order to do this; you need to know what your own brand is.
In the next post I will be looking at ways to define your brand; whether that be an already existing one, or the brand that you aspire to possess.
Until then; if you have any questions about this article, or want me to cover anything specific in the future please leave a comment below.