Creative Brand Strategy - PROJECT 4 LECTURE NOTES

Edita Chew En Thung / 0357357

Creative Brand Strategy / Bachelor of Design (Honours) in Creative Media / Taylor's University
LECTURE NOTES

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Table of Content

1. INSTRUCTIONS

2. LECTURE NOTES

3. COMPILATION

4. REFLECTION

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INSTRUCTIONS

LECTURE NOTES

Week 2: The Branding Process -Making the brand experience Week 3: The Online Brand Experience

The lecture in Creative Branding Strategy (week six) was all about learning this branding process, and in particular, about brand experience. I was taught that branding is not about logos or even commercials but rather the feeling the brand creates whenever people are exposed to it.

What is Brand Experience?

Brand experience This is an emotional response to a brand that people exhibit. It encompasses all times of contact such as visiting a site or an advertisement and using a product. These occasions create an impression that just stays on the heads of customers.

Why is Brand Experience Important?

Loyalty and trust may be established with the help of the powerful brand experience. It assists a firm to be unique by attaching a good relationship between the brand and customers. When humanity likes the process, they are also likely to continue and invite the rest of the world to purchase the brand.

What is a Good Brand Experience?

It is a combination of a great number of things. It is a matter of clear messages and appealing images, easy navigating in the site and the excellent customer service. All this must demonstrate the values and personality of the brand.

Direct Marketing and Indirect Marketing

Websites and advertisements are examples of direct marketing; and those have a direct influence on your brand perception. A great first impression can be created by a nice and user-friendly site. In the meantime, indirect marketing, that is, employee behavior and reactions in social networks, also influences the perceptions of people towards your brand.

Personalization

The power of personalization was one of the lessons that I learned. Customers want to feel unique. When a brand calls the client by the name (using the first name), displays an ability to understand the needs of a customer or provide the specific information, the connection becomes stronger. Human beings enjoy feeling significant.

Week 4: Brand Positioning  Taking a Stand with a Purpose

In Creative Branding Strategy this week we touched upon the concept of brand positioning, or, in other words, how a brand differentiates itself and becomes etched into the mind of the audience. With people spoilt with choices, positioning makes a brand stand out in the contemporary world.

What is brand positioning?

Brand positioning refers to what distinguishes your brand and gives the brand a worth; and then, communicating on it rightfully to the intended audience. It is what makes one see your brand and know the reason why they should settle on you and not on another person.

Why Is It That Important?

The following is what brand positioning will help us to do:

It differentiates your brand among others.

It assists you to form a good emotional relationship with your readers.

It provides character to your brand, its mission and its transparency.

No matter how good the product is, without juxtaposition it may become buried in the crowd.

 How to Discover the Correct Brand Position?

What we come up with is a basic 3 step process as follows:

Understand:

What do people that you are selling to want?

What has your brand got to offer?

What are your competitors undertaking?

Get Your Location:

It should reach out to the customers.

Your brand has to be real in what it promises.

It should not be the same with the rivals.

Use It Here And There:

Your position should be reflected in your images, tone, pack and marketing and the way your product feels.

How to Construct a Brand Positioning Strategy

Take a glance at your existing position in the market...

Investigate your competitors

Compare and find the differences

Discover the uniqueness about your brand

Write positioning statement

Implement it.

Assess and refine as it goes on

Brands Positioning Strategies Strategies

Brand positioning may be done in some of the following ways:

Easy, fast, or accessible (ex. Grab or Uber)

Niche Service,  Providing something that is difficult to obtain by someone

Problem-Solution - Fixing a genuine problem in which people can be interested.

Week 5: Event Planning- Transforming Dream into Reality

This week in Creative Branding Strategy, we did the whole thing on event planning: and why it is so significant when it comes to creating the brand experience. Events make people touch a brand, whether it is the opening of a product, opening a pop-up store, or a brand activiation. Before that can occur, the behind-the-scene planning must be bombproof.

What is an event plan?

Event plan (sometimes referred to as event management plan) acts as a guidebook to organizing an event. It provides all the measures, functions and pieces of information necessary to ensure that all goes well, before, during and after the event.

To be short: it makes you stay focused and organized.

Making an Event Plan:

A breakdown of what a good event plan must entail is as fol- lows:

 Goal and objectives What will you do with the event?

Roles and responsibilities Who does what?

Volunteers and training- How is your team going to aid the event?

Budget How much are all this going to cost?

Date & time -What time and date would the event be held?

Master plan- a plan with all the steps in it.

Location Where will it take place?

Event branding - How does the brand come out in the event?

Itinerary. What is the schedule?

Partnerships/sponsors Who are the other people involved?

Promotion & publicity- Word of mouth- How will they vocally know about it?

Day-of operations Day-of operations What occurs on the day itself?

Vendors How is food, materials etc. supplied?

What Is the importance of Event Planning?

It is not just an issue of having a great event, but it is indeed a planned one. That is why planning is important:

It assists to draw specific objectives and operations.

It provides you with a guide to work.

It reduces risk by making intelligent decisions.

It will assist in the making a memorable experience on the audience.

Week 7: Brands Brief Literacy On Taking the Blueprint to Branding Success

In Creative Brand Strategy this week, we covered one of the tools that a lot of people do not recognise as being very important, although it is: The Brand Brief. One thing was quite clear to me, as I went through the material, and that is building a strong brand does not come as a surprise. It begins with a work of blueprints. The blueprint is a brand brief.

And so, What Is a Brand Brief?

A brand brief can be regarded as a strategic cheat sheet of the identity of a brand. It is a paper which explicitly states what the brand is about, to whom is it oriented, how it writes, and where it is going. Consider it as your ultimate brand bible, so everything from the Instagram up to a investor deck is consistent.

It is not a tool of marketers only. They use it as a guide to keep in line designers, strategists, managers, even third-party workers.

Ingredients of a good brand brief

What constitutes a good brand brief is simple as follows:

Brand Vision: What will the brand eventually wish to be?

Brand Mission: The reason this brand is in existence. What is its underlying goal?

Brand Values: what are the values the brand operates by?

Target Audience: Who does the brand want to reach out and engage?

Brand Positioning: What is it that is unique and valuable about the brand on the market?

Tone and Voice What does the brand sound like? What is its personality?

Messaging: Which are the central messages that the brand uses on a constant basis?

All its elements are not merely a filler but contribute to a collective and strong identity.

What Makes a Brand brief so Significant?

It is not a question of a mere formality, but a question of strategy. The following are the best reasons why it matters:

Consistency: All people, including those responsible in creative and executive management, are brought to the same page.

Understanding: Makes the identity of the brand easy to understand.

Strategic Focus: Plans long term objectives and the path of achieving them.

Teamwork: Creates both intra and inter departmental seamlessness.

Creative Guidance: Provides order to the creative content such as logos, advertisements and campaigns.

The Design Brief- Vision and Execution

What attracted my attention was the following:

Who authors this work? It is normally kicked off by the client but the designer has to follow it up to the end.

What is the importance of this? Otherwise, misdirected projects are easily attained such as attempting to construct Lego in the dark.

How does it have to appear? It does not have to be fancy. Should simply be structured, apparent and comprehensive.

The concept here is that, a good design brief will eliminate the chances of the client and the creative team playing different playbooks.

COMPILATION

TASK 1

TASK 2

TASK 3

REFLECTION

In the recent weeks, I have learned more about how branding does in practice and not only through the visuals and slogans. During Week 2, I realized that brand experience consists of all driving people have with the brand. It is both emotional, individual and all about perception. The thing that impressed me was the fact that consistency and personalization is very important. Without connecting with the audience emotionally, each of the brands can be easily forgotten. I will regard branding as an experience as opposed to a creative product.

Week 4 gave me an insight into brand positioning, an aspect that has aided me to realize that a brand can easily stand out in a competitive market. I got to know that positioning is not just a matter of saying something that makes a brand unusual, but also selects whether that distinction matters to the consumers. This is related to the session in Week 5 about event planning, during which I realized how event planning means both brand positioning and experience in reals. Event management is not only about the logistics it is all about making a physical brand extension.

In closing, all these concepts culminated in Week 7, which dwelt on the brand brief. I found out that a proper brand brief straightens everything out. Message, design, target audience. It becomes the roadmap of the total branding work. Personally, I discover I have to write a brand brief in that it will make me think strategically about what a brand is and what a brand should say. Although, the lectures as such, did not impress much, I did obtain practical lessons that will help me view branding at my own creative work differently.