What is brand magic & how do I bring it into branding?
An introduction to the power of ‘brand magic’
‘Brand magic’ is a popular, but somewhat unhelpful, term in the sphere of branding (compare with epithets like ‘soul-led’). In essence, brand magic refers to the intangible elements and emotional connections that a brand can create with its audience. When it does so, this can powerfully boost the appeal of a brand, although it can be hard to put your finger on it. It has an alluring, indefinable quality, hence the term brand magic.
In this blog our aim is to demystify brand magic as a term relating to your small business branding. By unpacking and identifying a brand’s unique qualities and experiences, we want to show tangibly how you can set your small business brand apart from your competitors and foster deep loyalty and engagement among customers who choose to journey with your brand.
As a small business branding agency in Devon, we can quickly tell from experience which clients know who their business targets; can give clear direction about what they are after; and know clearly who they are making their content and materials for. Sadly, many small businesses don’t always know what they want or even need. Without a deep understanding of your own business, it’s impossible to attain any sense of brand magic in your branding, and that’s what this blog is about.
“A powerful brand will resonate at an emotional and subconscious level, communicate your business values and often naturally convey what you stand for; it will appeal directly to the right kinds of clients you want which will make running your business easier. ”
Wildings is a design agency in Devon. Our studio is based in Torquay, South Devon, and we provide branding for creative, hospitality and lifestyle businesses across Devon and the UK (like garden designers, interior designers, architects, floral designers). If you’d like to find out more, explore our branding for small businesses or contact this branding agency in Devon →
Why is brand magic important?
A powerful brand will resonate at an emotional and subconscious level, communicate your business values and often naturally convey what you stand for; it will appeal directly to the right kinds of clients you want which will make running your business easier.
One of the big dilemmas often facing our clients is the need to be noticed, whether through a search engine or to wow their audience with captivating visuals. Today it can be so challenging to really stand out in ever competing and crowded markets and to resonate with those you’re trying to connect with. Good branding will help you do this easily.
The best branding will authentically represent your brand and what you stand for, whilst also emotionally connecting people to what you do. We spent a season living in Morocco, where the symbol of love is not the heart but the liver; "you have conquered my liver" constitutes as a declaration of love. Personally, I find this statement to be true. When I really want or like something it’s my guts and emotions that stop me and cause me to make decisions my rational self never knew or considered.
The practical part of our brain only makes decisions when our emotions agree - that’s why it can be so hard to do the right thing if we don’t feel the emotional benefit of it. Successful brands know how to speak to our emotions and hook us, making them utterly irresistible - they make us feel good about ourselves and feed into the parts of our brain that thrives on risk and reward. Most of us buy with our emotions - our hearts and not our heads…
Why is brand magic about clarity (not something abstract)?
Connecting on an emotional level with customers through your business requires that you get to the core of what you do and communicate that through every design decision you make for your brand. Appealing to everyone means you’ll end up appealing to no-one. It’s vital that you create something compelling to engage with your audience, and tap into the way your customers think and behave.
If you need to get clear about building a successful brand, sometimes intuition and luck can help you to do that, but putting in the hard work and getting clear means it takes the guesswork out and you can make informed decisions that are right for the future direction of your business.
Without being clear about your vision and ideal client, it will be really challenging to write successful copy for a website or understand what style of visual brand language will connect with your kind of customer. Good branding uncovers all these things so that your business will resonate with your dream audience.
What are the eight key components of brand magic?
1. Ability to spark emotional connections
Brands that evoke strong emotions are better able to create lasting relationships with their audiences. Given that people make decisions primarily based on their emotions, rather than a rational basis, means this quality is an important one. Emotional resonance can be achieved through elements such as:
Storytelling
Consistent brand messaging
Messaging that aligning with the values and aspirations of the target audience
2. An interesting personality
Every human has a distinct personality and we get annoyed when people don’t treat us like individuals. The same goes for a brand. A brand should have distinct characteristics and human-like traits that can be attributed to it, which allow its audience to relate to it and make it more appealing in its market. It goes without saying that this brand personality should be consistently reflected across all touchpoints and in all the messaging, whether digital, physical or in admin e-mails to clients!
3. Brand authenticity across the board
A good brand is authentic: its branding should convey a genuine regard for the values it seeks to embody and these should be transparent in the messaging and touchpoints of the branding. An authentic brand stays true to its mission and values. It keeps its promises to its customers. All of these elements of authenticity help build trust with existing and potential clients.
4. Provides a unique experience
Brand magic is not just about words or visuals, but the experience a customer has. A brand needs to provides a memorable and unique experience; one that resonates in a deep way with customers that’s different or that they’ve not experienced before. This experience is a key way a good brand differentiates itself from competitors. A brand experience can includes things like the unboxing of a product; customer service dealing with complaints; as well as the user journey on the website when buying or researching a product.
5. Innovative: not satisfied with ‘good enough’
Continual innovation of a brand’s products or services plus staying ahead of prevailing marketing trends can contribute to a brand's magic. By innovation, we don’t just mean launching a new product, but in a more holistic way; one that is committed to developing and improving what the customer receives. A commitment to changing for the better, shows that a brand is dynamic, forward-thinking and understands the importance of giving value to its consumers (not just taking their money).
6. Is able to build a community of engaged individuals
Community has become a bit of a cliché in branding terms, but a great brand should be able to take a customer beyond a mere transaction to something deeper. A brand that can build a community around itself - its offering and its values - is exponentially more impactful because of that strong connection between the business and its audience. It can then leverage that connection or use it to shift conversations or perceptions of others. Practical examples include conversations on social media or freely given customer feedback to improve the service offering.
7. Well thought-through design elements in the branding
Brand magic of course comes down to the design of the branding at a certain level. The branding itself has to be designed well and incorporate a visual language that aligns with the key elements of its brand strategy. Well-considered branding elements can include details within icons or logomarks; or symbolism within the overall visual identity that pick up on a brand’s values or chosen marketplace. Anything else in the design of the branding that draws a link between the brand strategy, customers and marketplace can enhance the brand magic of a business. The more these elements form a bridge with a consumer's life and identity, the more meaningful the brand becomes, and hence its sense of brand magic.
8. Reputation for consistent quality
Consistency may not strike you as a particularly magical element, but it goes to show that brand magic can be very pragmatic. Having a reputation for being able to deliver consistent quality over time is hugely powerful for a brand in portraying a sense of reliability and trustworthiness to potential clients. Brands that do this have the enviable ability to then draw on their customers’ loyalty to advocate on their behalf. Now that is probably the epitome of brand magic: being able to harness the good will of someone else to advocate on your behalf!
How do I get brand magic for my branding?
So you want a bit of that brand magic for your small business branding? Here are the key steps and elements that go into creating a brand that has soul, brand magic and that makes the right kind of impact:
How to pinpoint your brand’s strengths & uniqueness like a boss for success
Profile your customers
Craft your vision
Find your character
Focus your brand tone, tone of voice and verbal branding
Design your brand logo and sub-marks, colour and font pairings
Curate your visual branding through photography, illustrations and patterns
Create your brand touch points - both print and online
Cultivate your social media / content creation / storytelling
Engineer your user experience / physical spaces
Engage your audience, relationships and brand ambassadors
As you can see, there’s quite a bit that goes into getting brand magic for your small business branding and why a brand is so much more than a logo (not to parrot what every brand designer says!).
These are our tips to help you get started with bringing the magic to your brand, 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.
