Recently we’ve been asking ourselves some big questions: Is our brand still relevant? How ready to respond is our brand? Does our brand bring clarity in this complex new environment?
What we’ve learnt will shape the future of our brand and could help your organisation survive and thrive too.
Brands need to move with the times
Once brands were considered in static, two dimensional terms. Today, we need to understand how they live and breathe in three dimensions and how they respond to the fourth dimension – time. Does your brand animate? Does it work with video and respond effortlessly across mobile, desktop and tablet?
That only accounts for time on the micro level, a few seconds at most. We also need to consider the macro level of time – how will your brand and identity respond from day to day, week to week and season to season. If the spring of 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that modern brands need to be able to react to events both big and small.
At rbl we produce powerful, fluid brands that can adapt to everything from changing formats to changing times – and that’s why, when we began redesigning our own website, we started with a clear ambition: ‘rbl needs to move’.
The need for clarity has never been clearer
Adrian Shaughnessy famously compared graphic design to a wine glass because what really matters is the content not the form that contains it. But that still leaves a lot of room between plastic prosecco glasses and crystal champagne flutes.
The best wine glasses have been honed and refined to perfectly present the wine, accentuate the aroma and feel great in the hand. In design terms this means creating a brand that can present your product in its best light, help customers navigate your offer and engage with your organisation in the first place.
When the world is in turmoil it’s more important than ever that your brand helps your audience understand your message and digest your content by communicating with clarity and confidence.
As a result we have developed stronger more consistent messaging, restructured and simplified our offer, stripped away unnecessary visual elements, rewritten and represented all our case studies, and created an entire new online platform to present our work and our approach to strategic branding in the best light possible.
Without purpose branding is pointless
It’s only when you understand the purpose of your organisation that you can understand the vernacular of your brand – the visual and verbal language you need to help your audience understand who you are and what you do and most importantly why you exist.
If your brand isn’t serving your purpose, or any purpose, it is pure decoration. This is why our approach to strategic branding always begins with discovering the insights into your organisation, market and customers that build the foundations of a powerful, purposeful brand.
Using lockdown to compare the work we do with what we say about ourselves has helped us be clearer than ever that rbl is a strategic brand agency – not a marketing agency or an advertising agency. We exist to help our clients find the purpose at the heart of their brands and every element of our own brand is designed to support that purpose, in an increasingly digital world.
Are you as clear on who you are and what your purpose is? Does your brand work hard to support that purpose? If not, maybe our experience could help you to find the insight, ideas and impact your business and brand need.
More information on our approach to Positive Purpose:
The CEO’s view:
How do you steer your organisation in a new, positive direction when the world turns upside down? Read more
The strategist’s view:
What are the big trends driving change and how should brands respond? Read more
See Positive Purpose in action:
Uniting 40 separate businesses behind a powerful, unifying philosophy. See more
Transforming an international federation into a global, dynamic, sports movement. See more
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