You need a branding agency that sees the bigger picture
Branding is more than design and storytelling. It embodies identity. Any branding agency that tells you otherwise needs to Think Bigger.
Your business conveys its brand identity through products or services, marketing communications, and physical evidence, e.g. working environment[s] and employee behaviour. These brand elements shape internal and external stakeholder perception. They’ll have a direct impact on profit and your balance sheet.
It’s no secret that employee, supplier and customer brand opinion can be the difference between commercial success and failure. So, why do so many managing directors and boards not invest in their brands? Or worse, leave it in the hands of glorified graphic designers?
If you want your brand to add value, you must consider how its elements position your business against your competitors. .
You must invest in it, protect it, and project an identity that goes over and above stakeholder expectations. Only then will it become valuable.
Effective branding should tell stakeholders who you are, what you do, and how you do it better than everyone else. It should communicate your vision. So, don’t fall into the trap of relegating your brand to half-baked logo design.
Marketing strategy must precede creative execution if you want your branding to work. Put strategy first, and you’ll develop a brand identity, build awareness and communicate its value with clarity and purpose.
You’ll need help from a full-service marketing and branding agency like Intermedia. We’ll help you build a brand you and your employees will be proud to be part of. And you’ll have an asset your shareholders will value too.
We approach branding the right way – strategy first
Intermedia’s strategic marketing framework is intrinsic to the brand development process. It’s a precursor to it. If you already have a strategy, no problem. You’ll have much of the information we need.
Our goal is to create a snapshot of where you are now – a brand audit. Then we’ll establish where your brand needs to be to compete more effectively.
We’ll help you create your brand vision, define its personality, uncover your brand values, and competitive positioning. Justifying the outputs with external research and direct input from your team – so they’ll have no problem buying into the brand and start ‘living it’.
Strategic work complete, our CIM qualified marketers and branding consultants put the creative process in motion. They’ll brief and manage our design studio to ensure your visual identity captures your brand essence. Your business’s DNA.
Your logo, symbol, colourways, font standards, tone-of-voice, iconography, and imagery style will be scrutinised and carefully considered. But this is just the start.
Intermedia will help you roll-out all aspects of your brand. We’ll work closely with your human resource and operational teams to guide employee behaviour, align products, and harmonise your working environments, cross-location. But most of all, we’ll establish brand consistency across your internal and external marketing communications.
Who wants a brand identity that looks like a patchwork quilt and has no substance behind it? If you’re here – not you!
So, whether you want to start from scratch or refine your existing brand identity, Intermedia has the strategic capability and measured creative skills to set your business on an upward trajectory.
We’re the branding agency for you.
Our branding agency services:
Brand positioning
Occupy the most profitable space in your market and customers’ minds
We analyse your customer expectations and how your competitors position themselves to find a distinct space where your business can thrive. A space that doesn’t stretch you operationally but allows you to differentiate yourselves and connect with customers most valuable to your business.
As part of brand strategy, our professional marketers help you to bridge the gap between your brand’s current reality and your vision. A vision you can realise through your brand’s positive characteristics and benefits. And a competitive space you can own.
Clear positioning will improve your brand recognition, and build customer loyalty. It’ll drive sales. You’ll have steady cash-flow and profit, instead of the incessant worry of boom and bust.
Find a positive space in customers’ minds, put the effort in to stay there and you’ll reap its long-term rewards.
Brand messaging
Say the right things, to the right people
Once you’ve found an uncontended market position, you need to express the value you offer. We’ll help you define your key points of difference in a series of concise, hard-hitting, and persuasive messages.
Some messages will be rational, some emotional. But all will be customer benefit orientated, and built on your brand’s value proposition. Without this, you risk wasting time, money and effort by communicating an offer that isn’t relevant or attractive to your customers.
Intermedia will help you build a message hierarchy so that your marketing campaigns communicate your brand’s value in a sentence.
Brand naming
What’s in a name? Only the linchpin of brand identity
The only constant is change. As your business and the micro and macro environment in which it operates evolves, your brand name can become outmoded or irrelevant.
You might have a new strategic business unit, or new product in need of a name. Or you’re going through a merger and need to rename your entire organisation.
Whether you need to name a new product or want to rename your company, it signifies change. The stakes couldn’t be higher when you want your stakeholders to create positive associations with your new product or status change. You don’t want the output to be reduced to a superficial moniker – do you?
Our brand naming process will help you to find a name that has substance, one that’s suitable for now and your future.
Brand visual identity
It really is more than a logo!
Think brand, and you immediately think logo. We design logos. We do it well. But there’s much more to the process.
Granted. A well-designed logo is paramount. It’s the keystone in successful brand identity development. What’s more, it’s likely to be the most visible aspect of your brand.
The brand planning service delivered by our marketers ensures you have a frame of reference to keep your brand elements in line with your vision. But it’s our specialist design studio that will communicate your brand identity visually.
Rest assured, we’ll create a stunning logo for you, but we won’t produce it in isolation. Our designers build on your strategic marketing and brand planning, so your broader visual identity has characteristics fitting for your business, its people and the industry in which you compete. We’ll capture your brand personality, so you can express it.
You’ll have an identity that’s unique and memorable. It will have versatility so you can use it across your marketing communications, wherever needed.
When your stakeholders see your brand identity, they’ll have a favourable impression. A brand your customers will trust and repeatedly buy from.
Rebranding
Changing perception can make all the difference
Over time, brands become tired and no longer connect with customers. If this happens, it has a corrosive effect on purchase decisions. Before you know it, your sales will be in rapid decline, as will your brand reputation.
Rebranding takes care. Get it wrong, and you face catastrophe. Don’t leave this critical marketing issue to chance by hiring a freelance designer. No matter how good they say they are, they won’t be a patch on an experienced branding agency.
Intermedia marketers take a holistic view of where your brand is now. We assess the business challenges you face, and which of your brand elements need work.
You could well need a visual rebrand. Fine. Our designers are more than up to the task. But is an overhaul required, or a just design refinement? We’ll help you find out.
We’re familiar with most rebrand scenarios. You might need to convey a new vision, repackage an existing product, or are going through a merger. Our brand experts will advise you on what’s the best course of action for the task at hand.
We’ll reconnect you with your customers and your market. And we’ll make sure you invest your rebrand budget where it counts.
Product branding
Give your new product or service a fighting chance
If you want to engage your target audience effectively, build customer loyalty and win their business you need to launch brands, not products. Even in B2B markets, purchase decisions aren’t made with logic alone.
80% of new products fail. Many don’t establish the emotional connection necessary to create the perception of quality, consistency and trust in customers’ minds. In B2B markets, management teams often ignore softer factors like brand experience.
But we’re all consumers. You make hundreds of comparisons daily about how you’re marketed to. More than ever, B2B products and services need a balance of logical and emotional appeal.
So, after all your research and hard work in product development, don’t risk it. Call Intermedia, and we’ll make sure your product is in the top 20%. We’ll build you a brand that packs a punch.
Brand guidelines
The instruction manual to keep your branding consistent
What’s the point in investing in visual brand identity, if it’s inconsistent when it sees the light of day?
If you want to improve brand awareness and recall, consistency is everything.
When you create an identity, it’s easy to forget; it’s the coalface where your people operate, where brand consistency falls down. Not due to malice, or a lack of will. Your people need guidance.
Our design studio will create easy to follow brand guidelines so you’ll have a unified visual appearance across your marketing communications and collateral. And if needed, we’ll even hold seminars on how to use them.
You can have your guidelines in print, PDF, or web-based formats. It doesn’t matter if your team operate within the same site, or you’ve global offices and supply chains – there’ll always be a copy to hand. You can take comfort in knowing that when people use your brand, they’ll use it correctly.
What’s more, brand consistency will end any confusion your customers may have. They’ll continue to buy, and you’ll profit.
We’ll deliver your brand-building instruction manual. Then, all you need to do is follow it.
We’re a branding agency that knows how to add real value
PH Jones came to Intermedia when they needed a branding agency to help with a rebrand.
We helped them keep a grip of their strong presence in existing markets, prepared them to enter new ones, and repackaged their business to sell on to British Gas.
Learn moreLet us give your branding Bigger Impact
Do you want to build a successful brand?
You need an agency that understands the difference between a logo and a brand identity.
If you want to reposition your business, shed an outdated image and build a valuable asset, talk to Intermedia.
Digital World Centre, 1 Lowry Plaza,
The Quays, MediaCityUK,
Manchester, M50 3UB
