branding services

create a powerful identity for your brand

why brands are now more important than ever

do you know where your business needs to move to, in order to achieve success?

With change comes opportunity. Now, more than ever, we're asking our clients: "How quickly can your business pivot? How quickly can it change and adapt to market conditions? Consumers have never had more power than they do today. Products and services will come and go… but people don’t.

Because of this, the role of branding has changed dramatically. What used to be about differentiation is now more about staying relevant in the context of a turbulent market. Our brand workshops will help you decide what your brand stands for (and against) while looking to the future, to help you stay relevant.

brands are living, breathing assets

Brand positioning refers to the place that your brand occupies in the minds of your customers and how it is distinguished from the products or services offered by your competitors.

Put simply, brand positioning is the process of planting your brand in the mind of your customers. It can also be referred to as a positioning strategy, brand strategy or a brand positioning statement.

At b4b we build a strategic and creative foundation for the future by clearly defining a brand's purpose and role. This creates identification, differentiation, loyal customers, and tangible value for businesses.

There are many layers to effective brand positioning and any number of variables that need to be considered in the brand positioning process.

align your marketing messaging

Integrated marketing messaging helps align our clients’ essential marketing messaging to potential and existing end-users and helps to optimise brand awareness amongst key target groups.

The most effective advertising and marketing focus for any brand, product or service is through a single-minded approach that is distinctive, differentiating and motivating.

Often during the early stages of a client relationship, we find that their business is communicating fragmented marketing messages to customers with little or no visual integration.

Our approach to rectify this involves an audit of marketing materials and messages (by channel) and an assessment of the level of integration across all communications platforms.

Integrated marketing communications is a strategic, collaborative and promotional marketing function at b4b, through which a targeted audience receives consistent and persuasive brand messaging in an integrated way to move customers through the buying process.

We take a brand-led and integrated approach to all our clients’ marketing requirements. Even if the requirement is a functional website to promote a product or a service, we begin with the end in mind (i.e. sales) and ensure that the brand core messaging is motivating, differentiating and aligned across whichever channels are considered the most relevant to audience groups.

We work with many of our clients to assist in crafting effective marketing strategies and marketing plans. Our approach relies on the following core factors:

in-house expertise with significant experience in writing literally hundreds of marketing strategies and marketing plans over more than 20 years in both UK and international markets
creativity and insight – based on original thinking and experience
economic awareness – of existing market conditions and trends

how we work

We use research and original thinking to gain a clear and deep understanding of unmet needs related to brands, customers or markets.

Our rigorous approach to brand positioning involves a tried and tested methodology that has helped multiple clients to really understand what their brand stands for and how to articulate its core attributes in competitive and often fragmented market places.

developing a strong brand identity

A brand identity is the visible elements of a brand such as colour, typography, design and logo that identify and distinguish the brand in consumers’ minds. By developing strong brand identities for our clients we help them command a price premium by providing perceived quality worth paying for.

Our process for developing a strong brand identity includes a deep understanding of the brand positioning and a thorough creative briefing process involving the client and a number of internal departments including Strategy, Creative & Digital. The b4b briefing process includes target audience definitions and what we want consumers to think, feel and do as a result of exposure to your brand identity.

We can assist with defining the following:

brand name
design of the logo
typography
use of colours, shapes and other visual elements
the craft of the language used in advertising and marketing

As part of the b4b brand identity process, we produce a set of brand guidelines for each logo/marque that we create. Our brand guidelines are essentially an instruction manual and rule book on how to communicate the brand identity that we have created for you. They lay out all the visual details as well as important notes about the company’s tone of voice and messaging.

To start building your brand, please get in touch with our experts today on 01202 684400.

We are able to help with the following, to shape and grow your brand:

brand audits
brand workshops
internal brand communications
integrated brand messaging
brand books
brand identity

brand workshops

Each b4b brand workshop is an experience. Our workshops are interactive, informal, fun and challenging. They are generally conducted off site at venues selected by clients – or we can host in our boardroom at the b4b office here in Poole.

Brand workshops range from half a day to two days depending on the brief.

Brand workshops tend to involve:

a clear set of objectives and outputs
whiteboards
lots of sticky notes!
stimulus materials (videos, print outs etc)
team-based interaction
team presentations

deliverables from a brand workshop include

updated positioning statement
brand positioning strategy
visual concepts
content strategy
brand propositions
Unique Selling Points (USPs)
target audience segmentation and personas
marketing communications plan
updated company values
updated purpose and vision statements

"Before building the website, we had a brand workshop with b4b, drilling into the USP of MASS Concrete, defining our vision, purpose and values. We found this exercise immensely useful, it helped us knuckle down to the essence of our brand."

Chris Smith-Wright, MASS Concrete

brand audits

Our methodology exposes the strengths and weaknesses of your brand – how consistently it is applied and the effectiveness of your proposition amongst key audiences.

Our approach involves consideration of three core audiences namely: internal, external, and the customers' experience.

The key to a successful brand audit is to understand from the outset what you are measuring. Who are your target customers and what does your brand promise them?

Invariably the first stage in our process is to understand what you think your brand is – before evaluating what others think.

Whilst a brand audit can be carried out in isolation, it is quite often the precursor to deeper brand exploration including brand proposition and brand identity development.

an overview of our approach

Desk-based research and collation of all brand assets
Assessment of how well your brand messaging is integrated and consistent
Qualitative assessment of your internal brand
Qualitative assessment of your external brand
Assessment of your brand proposition
Assessment of your brand identity

brand books

Brand books capture and portray the core essence of our clients’ brands. Often described as ‘look books’ they tell the story of the evolution of the brand and what it represents to consumers.

Carefully crafted design, high-quality photography and exceptional production values combine to reflect brand values and personality.

In the digital age, it is interesting to observe the reaction of customers who engage with a well-crafted ‘coffee table’ publication about a brand.

The brand book is often the culmination of brand projects that we conduct for clients and it is a powerful tool that is effective for both external and internal audiences.

brand book benefits

The development of a brand book for Nurturing By Nature, who specialises in raw food diets for pets, was a statement of intent by a company focused on transforming their business through an ambitious expansion plan.

Their transformation required internal and external buy-in: from an extremely long-standing and loyal workforce to an established and 'old school' customer base.

A printed publication of thebrand book was made available to all employees, placed in retail outlets and published online. The publication brought to life the ambition of the company and explained in simple terms what the new brand represented - to staff and customers.

Since publication, staff retention has remained at 100% and the customer base has been retained and expanded.

Find out more about building your brand with b4b. Get in touch with our experts today on 01202 684400.