The importance of branding
Your business’ brand is one of its most important assets. It speaks volumes about who you are, what you stand for and where you are going. Look after it, and it will look after you
No matter where we go in today’s world, we’re almost literally bombarded with branding. Walk down the high street and shop fronts and advertising billboards will shout at you from every direction. Turn on the TV at home, or open up a magazine like this one, and you’ll be subjected to branding galore – corporate logos, slogans, even specialised vocabulary and writing styles. But if you’ve ever wondered why big business goes to all this trouble to shout its message loudly from every rooftop, wonder no more. We can let you in on a secret. They do it, because it makes them more money. And as a professional photographer, you can do exactly the same.
Think of an example of a brand and you’ll probably think of a mega corporation, like Coca Cola, McDonalds or Starbucks, but every company has a brand. A business’ brand is its culture – it’s how it is perceived by others and how it communicates with them. And when a photographer takes their brand to market, they are taking their soul, their personality and their principles too. Your brand quite literally represents everything you stand for. Without one, how are you going to communicate and market yourself. How are people going to take you seriously?
So what exactly is a brand? Well, photographers are bound to think first of the visual elements of the brand: a logo, website design and business cards. But a visual brand can also extend to something as abstract as consistent use of a typeface (the BBC for example) or even a particular colour (Royal Mail’s pillar box red being a good example). Then there are the non-visual elements of a brand – the language which a company uses in its communication. Supermarkets are a good example of how phrases can produce a brand image. ‘Every little helps’ and ‘Try something new today’ conjure up very different mental images.
Starting from the very beginning, developing a brand for your business may seem like a daunting process, but it doesn’t have to be. It can be an intriguing and thought-provoking task, which can inspire and motivate. Brand development comprises three stages: looking at your business’ personality; building your core values and developing a language with which your business can communicate with the outside world. Once this groundwork is done, the hard part is over.
Three steps to a brand
A great way of getting your brain into marketing mode is to story board. Get down to your nearest newsagents and buy a few magazines that cover your target business areas. Back at home get a pair of scissors and a large piece of mounting card and start cutting bits out. One storyboard for weddings, one for portraiture, children, teenagers, etc. You should have at least three storyboards that cover the different aspects of your business. It doesn’t matter what is on the ripped-out pages: adverts, photographs, even single words and phrases that appeal. Then take a step back and try to write down words that connect things on the storyboard.
Photographers who’ve done this exercise often can’t believe what they come up with: really amazing insights into what they want to do and which direction they are headed in. Real-life phrases like ‘childhood’ or ‘memories’ are not uncommon, but don’t be put off if you find yourself coming up with more abstract thoughts too. ‘White’, ‘spacious’ and ‘clean’ are equally valid terms that can be applied to your professional identity.
Hopefully, you’ll come away from your storyboards thinking ‘my work is going to be soft’, or ‘my work is going to be a bit edgy’, but whatever, it should start to give you a better idea of who you are as a professional photographer, and what it is that you offering to the market. Storyboards are also a great resource for a graphic designer to work from. They’ll get to know what is making you and your business tick.
With your storyboards dripping with ideas, and some key phrases linking them all together, it’s time to move onto the next stage – identifying your core. Everyone going into business should have these. Core values are your motivation. They represent want you want to do, and how you intend to go about doing it. Are you going to be family oriented? Are you focused on quality, or tradition, or reliability? Someone might use the phrase ‘sheer quality’, which might mean that when choosing album suppliers, for example, they pick a premium manufacturer like Queensbury. Other photographers often say their businesses will be honest, meaning they intend to be very upfront and open with their customers.
Next it’s time to develop your business’ language. Sit down and imagine you are having a conversation with a parent, a child, or anyone else you are likely to deal with. Write everything that you would be doing if you went on a shoot with them. This should be what they will experience when they are photographed by you.
Say you are photographing a baby, what conversation will you have with its parents? “I really want to capture the essence of childhood” or “I what to photograph want it’s like to be that age; the growing pains of a baby”. String those keywords together into sentences. Do this for every arm of the business, and you will start to build a language – a really honest language that describes your operation.
Language is very important: a lot of photographers write “contemporary, relaxed and spontaneous”, but what does this mean really? Words like these are in danger of just being jargon. It’s important when building your brand to build a language to communicate it with too. Innocent Drinks has a language, as did Anita Roderick when she was in charge of the Body Shop. As a business owner, you’ll use your brand’s language on the phone, on your website, in your letters and even face to face. A word of warning though: it’s important that this language should be your own, no matter how tempting it is to borrow phrases from others. It has to come from within, or it won’t make any sense and will appear out of place.
Core values never really disappear; they are what everything else is built on. You should never dilute or react against a core value, as this could harm your business. For example, if one of your core values is to be personal, this might manifest itself in you, as the photographer, signing every print and album that is sent out. Now imagine your business gets larger, and signing everything is much harder. If you stop adding this personal touch, you are reacting against one of your core values, and could damage your business.
Rebranding
So there you are: three steps to creating a brand for your business. Storyboards, core values and language. But what then? Well, like other aspects of your business, a brand needs caring for and nurturing. Every brand has a time span and, although your core values won’t change, fashions do. In this case, rebranding is the answer.
You’ll know intuitively when it’s the right time to rebrand. When you start to feel embarrassed by the way your company looks, or you begin to apologise for it, that’s when you should start to think about a refresh. Rebranding is all about reinventing the storyboard and language of your existing brand; it’s unusual to alter your core values. Sometimes a complete overhaul of image is required, whereas often changing what is already in place will work. For instance, when M&S rebranded recently it kept its trademark green colour, which helped to give shoppers a sense of familiarity with the company’s new look. Similarly, for your clients who’ve been involved with the business for a while, keeping an element of the brand identity is no bad thing.
For photographers who’ve not long been in business, ordering stationery in small print runs is good advice. When it runs out, use this as a reminder to have a look at your brand and make sure it is doing everything it is supposed to be. Early on in your business’ life, things will be progressing more rapidly than later on when it’s more established. Equally, however, don’t be tempted to reinvent yourself too often or you’ll run the risk of confusing your customers.
Hopefully, by now you’ll be able to see that your company needs branding to be successful. What’s more, creating a brand doesn’t have to cost thousands of pounds or involve a team of PR consultants. Without a brand your company has no personality and without a personality, no one will want to talk to you. With a brand you’ll be able to portray the image you want, and reap the fruits of your labour.
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