6 steps to make your brand a showstopper
How to make a show-stopping brand that everyone comes back for more of
Healthy living and eating are a big part of our lives, especially now we are in Devon. We enjoy the beautiful outdoor spaces of Dartmoor and South Devon coast, plus try to eat more locally and seasonally. However, with the The Great British Bake Off and the pandemic lockdowns our eldest daughter took up baking during, so we do have a weak spot for a showstopper bake!
Taking inspiration from #GBBO, we’ve been thinking about what makes for a show-stopping brand - a brand that everyone keeps coming back for; one that people rave about and demand the recipe! Here are our key steps for a showstopper brand.
If you’d like to check our other blogs that cover branding from lots of different angles, explore branding here.
In terms of Wildings, we are a brand studio based in Torquay, South Devon, offering branding, website design & brand video to creative businesses across the UK - find out more about our branding services for businesses.
1. An awesome brand is a smash hit at the party
If you want a showstopper cake you need to know which party you’re going to.
You’re going to be unpopular if you show up at a children’s birthday party with a Christmas cake stuffed with nuts, marzipan and laced with alcohol - and the parents won’t be impressed either!
Knowing where you want your brand to show up allows you to include the right ingredients that will go down well with the people you want to attract and impress. Equally, it allows you to avoid elements that attract the wrong people or don’t fit with your market.
A brand that includes all the right elements that appeal to its ideal customers increases its appeal. You become the ‘life and soul of the party’ and become a fixture on future guest lists; in brand terms, that is repeat clients or customers making repeat purchases and passing your name onto their friends.
2. Great brands have been prepared well
A great cake is all in the preparation.
If you forget to grease your baking pans before pouring the batter, the mixture will stick in the oven. Trying to prise the cake from the pan is a messy business: you may have to patch it up or even end up throwing it away.
When we design brands for businesses, the initial preparation phase is crucial. This is when we examine the business and its internal branding. We look at your vision, mission and values; market, audience and services; analyse your strengths and weaknesses; and look at the lay of the land before committing to action or a particular direction.
Brands that undergo this initial analysis and prep are in much better position when they come to subsequent shaping and designing phases. By looking at your business from every angle and considering all the factors, we give you every chance of success when it comes to the fun stuff - baking and icing.
3. A successful brand has the perfect mixture of ingredients
If you’ve ever tried to bake a cake in a rush, it’s likely you may have tried blending the butter or eggs directly from the fridge. Mixing rock hard butter is not fun and the results are not great! By leaving ingredients to reach room temperature you blend them better and produce a cake with a larger volume.
In terms of branding, it’s so important to take the time to blend the elements into the forming and shaping process carefully and in good order. The constant temptation for brand owners is to jump straight to concepts for the external branding, particularly the logo and social media icons.
If you’re in a big rush to create your brand or undergo a rebrand, but aren’t prepared to go through the process, you run the risk of a brand that simply feels wrong and is unappealing. Alternatively, for your rush, you pay a premium and be prepared to answer a lot of questions and do a lot of hard thinking in a very short space of time.
4. A showstopper brand hits the ground running
Pre-heating the oven before putting your cake mixture in to bake can seem slightly pointless. However, allowing the cake mixture to reach baking hot as quickly as possible is the equivalent of hitting the ground running. It delivers the best results for the bake, whether shape, structure, texture or crust.
The branding equivalent is how we structure and shape your brand through the research and design phases. This includes lots of healthy, in-depth conversations with you - almost like having a business coach! Grappling with your core fundamentals behind the scenes means that when your brand is ready to hit your market, it can perform and get the results you want.
If you launch you brand without the pre-heating of the conversations, reflection and research, it has been formed in sub-optimal conditions. What we see then is that brand owners feel confused, unclear and muddled in their market and often redoing the branding after a few months.
Form your brand under optimal conditions and it will fly.
5. Strong brands are carefully-combined
There are a number of ways to get the best from your cake ingredients, such as stirring together dry ingredients; combining butter and sugar throughly; or adding eggs one by one.
Adding too many eggs and wet ingredients at once or over-mixing the batter can lead to a soggy, doughy or dense structure - not pleasant for eating! The reverse is true - well-combined ingredients in the right measure give a wonderfully light and airy structure that makes the final experience a joy and one that will be repeated.
When we build brands, we follow a set of careful phases, each building on the previous in a steady way that brings clarity and focus. We start with the internal branding, which provides essential foundations, and only then do we build the external branding when it has a structure to support it.
We help you through the process so that you don’t need to worry about juggling or balancing all the important elements in your brand so that they coalesce. Avoid being tempted to do it yourself or go it alone with your branding, if you want that brand that is a joy to market and is a delight to your audience.
6. A great brand is baked to perfection
Towards the end of baking, it’s important to check that the mixture is fully cooked through before cooling (then the fun stuff can happen!). Taking a cake out of the oven prematurely can lead to an undercooked ‘soggy bottom’, plus it can tear when you turn it out. Also, icing or adding cream to a hot cake is disastrous!
As we’ve said, one of the top three mistakes brand owners make is caving to the pressure and temptation to jump the gun. We get it - you want to get on with marketing your business and building your audience! - but if your brand is underdone or tough as old boots, it makes for a very unappetising experience.
Be patient and undergo the process if you want a raving, insatiable audience that can’t help itself but come back for more servings of your brand and all that it has to offer.
These are our steps for your showstopper brand with inspiration from The Great British Bake Off (plus thanks to Better Homes & Gardens for the background reading!), and we’d love to hear any of your thoughts or reflections. Do head over to the corresponding post on Instagram to join the conversation and share your opinion.
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