Month: February 2019

What are the aspects of a rebrand?

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Taking on a rebrand is a serious commitment. You need to be sure that this is what’s needed for your business to move forward but also that you know what you need before going into it. It may seem daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. It can be made so much simpler by knowing what is required. Within this article, we are going to look at what you as a company and brand need to look at when you are considering a rebrand

Have you determined your brands target audience?

Every brand needs a target audience, no matter what it is you are selling. These are the people that you hope are going to be buying the majority of your products or services. However, after 5, maybe 10 years as a brand evolves, does your target audience change? This is the first question that you need to ask yourself before going through with a rebrand. The current brand that you have will have been created to appeal to certain people, but as you evolve more and more people are going to be buying your products or using your services and as such when your rebrand you can’t focus solely on those you did before. You need to conduct research into who your current customers are and base your need branding on them.

Have you established a brand mission statement?

As every company or brand begins, it is important that you have a mission statement. This is for telling customers why you are doing what you are doing. What do you want to gain from selling your products or services? It is important that this is often customer focused, as not very many people are going to buy from a company who’s mission statement is ‘we want to make money’, just keep that bit to yourself. But over the years that you are in business, might your mission statement change? As you start to offer new products or services, or gain a new customer base, you might begin to see that what you are selling your products for changes. You need to make sure that when you are going through with a rebrand, you take this into consideration and base it around the new mission statement.

More importantly, does your brand truly reflect your current offerings and product?

As we have previously stated, over the course of 5 or 10 years that your company is in business, the products or services that you sell may very well change. You might change as a brand completely but it is more likely that you will just branch out and offer more products or services than you did at the beginning. With this, you need to reflect on what your brand says against what it is you are selling. If they don’t match, then you know that it is time to think about a rebrand, to ensure your customers don’t get confused, or that the new product you are offering doesn’t fail because no-one knows you are selling it.

Is your brand ready for your future projects and clients?

You may be thinking about a rebrand, but not sure if you should or not. However, one question that we suggest you ask yourself is are you ready for the future? The current direction that you are heading, do you think that this will be enough for 5 or 10 year down the line, when the market that you are in has shifted and new competitors have entered the fray? This is where you need to do further research on the market and your competitors, to see what exactly they are doing and try to build your new rebrand off this.

How has your business changed its values or consumers since the last time you looked at your branding?

There is a fair possibility that you haven’t looked into your businesses values or your consumers in any great depth since you first started your company. However, before going into a rebrand it is very important to do this. Look at how your customers may have changed from when you began to now. Has the age range increased or decreased? What demographic are they coming from? Looking at all of this will help immensely in bringing about your rebrand and making sure that it is what works for you

Here at Kaizen Brand Evolution we want to make sure that when you are undertaking a rebrand it is the best you can get and also one that works for you and where your company is at in the moment. If you feel like you are heading towards a rebrand, please do not hesitate to give us a call on 028 9005 2007 or send us en email to studio@kaizenbrandevolution.com, we’d love to chat.

The importance of design in leaflets and flyers

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Leaflets and flyers are used by many businesses across the world, whether they are advertising a new product or talking about the services that they offer. However, when it comes to a flyer it is important to make sure that it looks good. This is due to the limited amount of space that you sometimes have to get across the message that you want, but also because more often than not people are being handed them as they are making their way to a certain destination, so have other things on their mind. This means that you need to capture their attention as soon as they are handed it and this is where the design comes in. Within this article, we are going to look at the importance of design when creating flyers and some tips for getting the best design on them.

Eye-Catching Design

Let’s start with the most obvious; the design. Whatever it is you are trying to sell or inform people of, the design on your flyer HAS to be eye-catching. Without an eye-catching design, people are either going to walk straight past your flyer, or take one and throw it out immediately as they think they won’t be interested in it. Obviously, this is exactly what you want to avoid. When designing your flyers, make sure that whatever you are putting on the front can be seen immediately and as such is the right size, instead of either being too small or too big and people can’t figure out what it is. In this instance, it’s probably alright to assume that you are going to include some form of text on your flyers. Make sure that you don’t cover your design in loads of text. Whatever you have to say, keep it short and snappy, as if the first thing that someone sees on a flyer they have been handed is loads and loads of text, they are sure not to want to read it, no matter if they are in a rush or not.

Use Colour to your advantage

Nobody wants to see a drab flyer. Instead of helping to bring out the design of the flyer, it will only dampen it and as a result, those who see it won’t want to read it at all. So make sure that the colour you use, compliments the design that you have chosen, but also makes people look at the flyer. By all means still use dark colours in your flyers, as they can really help to get across the message that you want, depending on what you are talking about. If you are using a theme in your flyer, do some research beforehand and pick colours from that era or topic. For example, if you are designing a flyer advertising an 90s disco party, research what colours would have been popular during this time, such as bright colours, possibly some neon and big lettering to accompany this. Doing some research beforehand will really help bring your flyer to life.

Organise

Before you start putting your flyer together, it is important that you have all of the information gathered that you want to be there. There is nothing worse than having something designed and then printed only to realise that some key piece of information is missing. So it is good to be organised while the research is being done, but just as important to keep everything organised on the flyer itself. Use an information hierarchy, where the most important pieces of information or text will be the easiest to see, as this is what you will want them to lock their eyes onto almost immediately. As well as this, while it may seem like a good idea to try and be abstract when designing a flyer, sometimes keeping it simple is the best course of action, because if the information is all scattered about it can make it hard to understand and read, leading to people not wanting to.

Hopefully, this gave you a little bit more insight into just why Graphic Design is so important when creating a flyer or leaflet and that one done up in Word, really isn’t going to cut it. However, we do understand that not everyone is a graphic designer. So if you are in need of some design for your next project give us a call on 028 9507 2007 or email us at studio@kaizenbrandevolution.com, we’d love to chat.

Where to start Branding for a small business?

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Every business has to start somewhere, as they aim to become the market leader in their industry. One thing that will help them do this, almost more than anything else is their brand. It is vital for anyone, whether you are just starting out or have been around for 20 years, you need a good brand. But for those small businesses that have just entered their chosen market, their brand will define them, maybe not forever as they can re-brand, but for the first 5 – 10 years it will be how people view them. However, for small businesses, where do you start? Branding is a daunting task but when done correctly it will come off better than you can imagine. Within this article, we are going to look where you should start

Define your brand

As previously mentioned, branding will define your business and how you are viewed. But before you can get there, you need to define yourself, know what you are about. You need to know what your core beliefs are and what the values of your business are before you can think about starting the branding process. A good way to do this is to look at the product or service that you are selling. From here you can begin to look at the market that you are going to be entering and also the customer base that you are going to be targetting. What is the market like? What do your customers want? Do some research into this, looking at who your competitors are going to be and how they deal with and interact with their customers.

Another good thing to do is to think of your business as a person, why is your business doing what it is doing? What is driving it to do these things? Try and understand that while the customers and clients that are involved in your market are after the same product or service, they are all different people and will respond differently to a brand. It is key that you understand this when defining your brand so that you can try your best to appeal to everyone in the market, eventually leading to you having the majority share.

With that in mind, it becomes easier to figure out what the values of your business will be, and what you want to come from your business aside from selling. Once you have all of this, you can start to think more about your physical branding, using what you have found to shape how it is going to look and feel to you. Your brand should do 3 things: Promote your business, connect with your customer base and make you different from those in your chosen market. With the research that you have done, you’re on your way to getting all of these.

Building your brand:

Once you have got the definition of your brand done and dusted, it is time to start thinking about building your brand. This will often be where the design studio comes in, helping to create the graphics and the visual identity for you. However, before this, it is imperative to make sure that what you bring to them, the research about your customers, competitors, the market and everything about what your brand will stand for, is 100% consistent. There isn’t much worse than a business with a brand that says one thing in one instance and then says another somewhere else. This will result in customers feeling that they can’t trust you, as they aren’t sure what they are going to get.

Another thing is to make sure that you stay true to yourself. When you enter a market, there are going to be brands there that have the majority share and have been top dogs for a while. It may be tempting to copy what their business model and take some things from their brand. This is not a good move. When brands begin to copy other brands, especially ones that are very successful, customers and clients alike are very unlikely to do business with them as they will feel that immediately get the impression of what they are selling is almost like a knockoff of the first brand. You want to be original and something brand new, not only so that customers trust you but also so that you stand out in whatever market you have chosen, which depending on the product can be very saturated.

Finally, be innovative. If you have something in mind that you want to say or a value that you want your business to uphold, then do it. Instead of shying away from something and following the pack, stand out from the crowd and shout about why you are different and why customers and clients should choose you over your competitors.

If you are a small business owner, we do hope that this article has provided you with a little insight into how you should begin to brand your business and the process that is involved beforehand. Here at Kaizen Brand Evolution, we have helped many businesses with their first-time brand as well as rebrands, so it is fair to say we know what we are talking about. If you are thinking of your brand and would like some help with the process, please don’t hesitate to give us a call on 028 9507 2007 or email us at studio@kaizenbrandevolution.com, we’d love to chat.

How important is a Brand?

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We’ll start with the obvious: Branding is very, very important for any business. There isn’t any ‘might’ or ‘could be’, it just IS. But why is it important? What does a brand do for you and your business exactly? Within this article we are going to take a look at exactly that, helping to give you a better understanding of why Brands are important and why you need one if you haven’t already.

Firstly, what exactly is a Brand? What is Branding? In the conventional sense, branding is where a company creates everything that will identify them, from their name to their logo and colours that will be encompassed within this. A brand is something that makes a business easily identifiable from others that work within the same industry as them. But a brand is also so much more than this, as it becomes everything you do as a business. All of your actions will be viewed not as individuals, but as a whole under one BRAND.

A Brand is important because, as previously stated, it helps set you apart from your competitors and tells customers why they should do business with you, over someone else who is offering more or less the same product or service. You build your brand from the ground up, not only the way you see it but also in the way that you want to be perceived by others, because due to how much your brand encompasses of your business, it is how you will become recognised and viewed by everybody, not only those within your industry.

One of the most important aspects of your brand is that of your logo, so it is vital that you get it right, but also that it makes sense in the message you are trying to get across. Your logo will essentially become the face of your company before you ever employees. The logo that you choose therefore needs to be professional, as people will immediately begin to view you in a professional manner, someone that they can trust and want to do business with. It is important at this stage that you put the investment in and get a professional graphic designer to do this for you, instead of someone who might be able to give you what you want. A professional will be able to take everything that you already have and everything that you want to achieve and bring this into a logo that is going to match your business, help to bring you success and ultimately help to bring you a positive ROI.

What you will ultimately want to achieve from your business, is for it to bring in customers and for them to buy your products or use your services. A strong brand will undoubtedly help with this. It will help to generate new customers because it instantly creates a positive impression of you. Again, similar to having a professional logo, having an excellent overall brand means people are more likely to do business with you. From this, begins the word of mouth process as the popularity of your brand spreads from person to person, helping to increase the number of customers that you have and ultimately the amount of profit you are pulling in.

A great brand isn’t just for the benefit of customers, however, as you will immediately notice that it benefits your employees, or that they show improvement, especially if you have recently rebranded and are showing a renew sense commitment to your brand, your goals and your cause. Employees will have greater satisfaction and sense of pride in saying that they work for you, making them happier to come to work and making the workplace a better place overall.

Finally, another advantage of having an excellent brand is the fact you will be given respect in the market you are involved in. You are more likely to get business again from those you have worked with, but also more likely to be taken seriously by competitors, as they can see that you are serious about what you are doing. Strong branding will help to give the impression that you are an industry expert, even if you are only starting out.

We hope that by reading this you have seen the importance of a brand and just how much it can help nearly every aspect of your business, both day to day and long term. To follow up on this, we are holding an an event on the 22nd of February titled, “When is the right time to rebrand” this will aim to show you when is the perfect time and help you through the process. Tickets can be purchased right here for only £5: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/when-is-a-good-time-to-rebrand-tickets-54847035961

If you feel that you are in need of some branding work, feel free to give us a call on 028 9507 2007 or send us an email at studio@kaizenbrandevolution.com, we’d love to have a chat.

Investor Pitch Deck Design – Fyre

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If you were recently enthralled by the Fyre Festival documentary on Netflix, you’ll certainly have some questions about the investors and how they came to the decision to invest in the “Greatest Festival That Never Happened”.

Below as you can see, the Fyre presentation deck is well designed and has substance in areas. In others it’s purely aspirational, with 3 of the 8 potential brand partners are showing as “pending”. This content is glossed over and hidden in plain site. Overall the content is well put together and the use of the aspirational imagery, which was so prominently featured in the documentary, strikes a key with the tone of the brand and its ambitions.

It’s easy to visualise the goals of the brand and the opportunities it presents through the presentation deck. While we all have our own opinions about the documentary and its participants, the pitch deck could have contributed to gaining investment, even with some questionable content.

Fyre Investor Pitch Deck

Pitch Deck Design

As a design and branding agency working with start ups, pitch decks are commonplace in our studio. From tech firms to media agencies, we take provided presentations and create enhanced versions for a variety of uses, including investment rounds.

As a studio it’s not just our remit create a beautifully designed pitch deck in line with brand aspirations. But also to critically review and understand presentations’ intent. In doing so we extract key information, highlighting and focusing the readers attention on the key points made.

Designing a Pitch Deck

When designing a pitch deck the first step in the process is reviewing the content. We’re happy to receive emails, word docs or even half finished powerpoint files. Once we have reviewed the content, we meet for a discussion on intent.

What do you want to achieve with this pitch deck?

Understanding intent allows us to communicate in a manner your recipients expect. An investment round deck looks and feels different to a quarterly review deck because the intent differs. At this meeting it’s great to get brand assets also. Armed with content and assets, we’re ready to start designing.

We design he cover and 2-3 inner pages of the deck first. In doing this we can gain approval of our style, highlighted elements and content layout. Upon acceptance of this we roll our the style across all other pages. We send the document to you for review and upon final sign off, export this to your chosen format.

Want to start a pitch deck project with us? Get in touch using the contact form below. Alternatively do get in touch with us on 028 9507 2007

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And in case you haven’t seen some of the reactionary marketing from our local brands, here’s a Lidl Google search ad on the topic of Fyre 🙂