What is branding and what are its functions? How is a successful brand developed and promoted online? How to create a company logo using modern technologies?
Hello, friends. In touch Alexander Berezhnov, entrepreneur, marketer and permanent author of the HiterBober.ru website.
In this article, we will talk about creating a brand online. Every day more and more companies advertise on the Internet, improve their sites, and some projects generally exist only on the World Wide Web and earn money by selling advertising or providing services. The development of a brand book is an important step in positioning and further promoting your company, both on the supermarket shelves and in the fight for online sales.
In a separate section of the article, I will also tell you how we created our own brand on the Internet - our site HiterBober.ru, where we started and what "chips" and techniques we use today for effective promotion and "self-PR".
1. What is a brand and branding - their impact on the development of online and offline business
The modern consumer market is inextricably linked with advertising and marketing technologies. A successful brand speaks for itself - it sells a product before customers see it.
Today it is difficult to find a civilized person who would not name a dozen successful world brands and well-known trademarks of his country.
Everyone is familiar with such “offline brands” as BMW, McDomalds, Lukoil, Mars, Gazprom, Beeline, SONY, Coca-Cola, Nike, Armani and others.
However, in recent decades there have been biggest online brands:
I am sure that you have used at least half of them at least once in your life.
Moreover, active buyers (users) can always say why one brand is better than another and what unique qualities the products from this or that manufacturer have.
In large companies, branding is given maximum attention: entire departments are engaged in the creation, promotion and positioning of brands and company logos.
If you want to succeed in your business, then developing a strong and memorable brand is essential. A successful brand is the first and most effective way to increase sales and an integral part of the brand.
The brand includes:
- logo;
- corporate design (style);
- consumer perception of the product;
- emotional characteristics of a product or service;
- tagline.
A brand is not just a sonorous name, but also the benefits (benefits) that a consumer receives when he purchases a product of a certain brand. This is a kind of guarantee of quality and confidence of the buyer that he will not be deceived.
When creating a successful business, you need to strive to ensure that the quality of the product meets or exceeds the expectations of the target audience. People should get exactly what they pay for and expect.
A brand is always more than a logo or an eye-catching symbol. This is a product or a whole company with a positive credit of trust and a high level of support from the consumer audience.
The attitude of the target group of buyers affects the image of the product and even its properties, but the product itself is always primary. If you don’t have a quality product, even the most ingenious branding will not help you stay in the consumer market.
2. Stages of effective online branding implementation
Any modern business is represented on the Internet. Moreover, some commercial projects work exclusively within the global network.
For this reason, building brands online is a particularly relevant issue in the current market conditions.
If you intend to sell your product online, you need a recognizable brand. And every brand or newly created business needs its own website through which its products or services will be sold. To do this, I advise you to use the Wix online website builder and create a website on it.
In my opinion, this is the most convenient and promising website builder on the web with millions of users around the world.
The latest digital and information technologies provided by the Wix developers will help you effortlessly create your own online project even for those users who have no idea about programming or working with graphic editors.
Now let's move on to creating brands. Like any responsible task, this process is carried out in stages.
Stage 1. Setting goals and planning
The main value of any business is determined by its benefit to others and, as a result, the commercial effectiveness of the project.
If your product is useful to the consumer, his image will be positive, which will inevitably affect the promotion of the brand itself. And then a positive brand will itself influence the mind and perception of the buyer.
At the initial stage, it is necessary to set branding goals, develop a company vision and create a strategic plan. It is also necessary to determine the target audience and understand what the channels of communication with consumers will be.
At this stage, the following are also determined:
- brand mission;
- brand life cycle (how long is the active period of the product or service calculated);
- place of the brand in the structure of the company;
- budget.
Perfect branding doesn't have to mean costly. The main thing is a qualitative research of the audience and a creative approach.
Stage 2. Market research and competitive analysis
Analysis of the market and competitive environment is the most important stage of effective branding. Research is a competent analysis of the general situation on the market regarding the products of your segment. This also includes the definition of price parameters and market research.
It is also necessary to understand how long the brand will be able to maintain its presence in the market, whether it is characterized by dependence on the season, what are the regional characteristics of the consumer audience.
An important point is the analysis of competitors. It is a big mistake to think that you will be accepted in the market with open arms. It is a misconception to treat competitors condescendingly and underestimate them.
Identifying the strengths and weaknesses of competing companies is an art. Experts say that no one will conduct a full-fledged competitive analysis better than the business owner himself.
Stage 3. Development of the name and corporate identity
Entire volumes have been written about choosing a catchy and strong name for companies or commercial products. Within the framework of this article, we will indicate the main features of an effective name.
Here they are:
- conciseness (the shorter the name, the easier it is to remember);
- phonetic euphony;
- meaningfulness (even an incomprehensible name should have a hidden meaning);
- uniqueness.
Ideally, if the name is directly related to the activities of your company. A unique brand should be registered with a patent organization (in the Russian Federation it is Rospatent). Legal protection is the basis for the successful development of the brand in the future.
Please note that the brand is registered in the form of a trademark ™ , can only be owned by a legal entity.
A euphonious and successful name is only half the battle. Now you need to create a unique design and visual style of the brand - this task can be entrusted to an experienced designer or use modern technologies - the already mentioned Wix constructor.
Using the Wix website builder, we easily sketched out the site of a possible consulting agency HiterBober.ru
Here's what his hat looks like (screenshot):
Let's be honest, this is a powerful tool for those who do not own various technologies at all, such as html, css and want to create a professional website in an hour and a half.
When you get to the site builder, you are prompted to select the type of site you plan to create:
It's nice that the developers are so attentive to the needs of the user.
What we personally liked when working with this constructor is the flexibility of each element.
For example, if this is a picture, then dozens of its types and color schemes will help create a certain mood for the site, depending on the type of activity that you are engaged in.
The same can be said about fonts when using Wix - everything here is like in the well-known Word editor - size, color, text, alignment and other familiar parameters are adjusted.
Now one-page or landing page has become a very popular type of site. No problem – this website builder allows you to create a professional landing page with effects and unique “juicy” pictures.
Once the site theme itself is ready, you can publish it on the Internet as a full-fledged site with the click of a button.
All you have to do is launch traffic to the created page and get customers.
Therefore, friends, when creating a brand online, if you do not want to "bother" with complex technologies, program codes and design, we sincerely recommend Wix as a professional tool.
We can say that Wicks is your free webmaster who realizes any of your wishes, turning website creation into a simple and exciting experience.
Stage 4. Brand positioning on the Internet and its promotion
Positioning is the selection of a unique position for the brand in the mind of the consumer. Ideally, a product, service or company should occupy a free niche in the perception of the buyer and be associated with unique benefits.
A professional approach prescribes the development of a "brand book" - a manual that clearly states how the brand is used, what its mission and main idea are.
For promotion, a media plan is being developed and an advertising campaign is being prepared. It depends on competent advertising whether a new message reaches the target audience or gets stuck somewhere halfway to it.
Stage 5. Evaluation of effectiveness
Performance review is a set of activities that allow you to evaluate an existing brand after it has been “launched to the masses”.
Monitoring is carried out either in the form of a selective survey of the audience, or through a professional audit of the company's activities.
In simple terms, a brand can be considered effective if, after its creation and promotion, the profits of a company or organization have increased markedly.
But here it is worthwhile to understand how much sales volume has grown thanks to a successful brand (logo).
In the table below, I clearly presented the stages and steps of developing an attractive brand, including online:
3. Five properties of a strong online brand
Branding carried out in accordance with all the rules will definitely give a positive result: your product (website) will become recognizable, a positive image of the offer will form in the mind of the consumer.
What are the characteristics of a strong brand? These same properties apply to branding in general, whether it's an online project or an offline business.
We list them in order of importance.
Property 1. Honesty
A company that is honest with the consumer is more likely to build a positive brand image. A real brand never deceives the audience or flirts with it.
If a company shows underestimated or overestimated expectations through its logo (slogan), this directly affects the level of sales. Therefore, it is necessary to strive for the maximum correspondence between the proposal and the expectations of consumers.
Property 2. Recognizability
Recognition is simplicity and accessibility. These qualities help the brand to be realized in all other directions.
To make a brand recognizable, you need to focus on the psychology of consumers and rely, first of all, on the benefits that the product gives to the client.
An example of the competent use of this property is an advertisement for a well-known shampoo, which is firmly positioned in the mind of the buyer as a remedy for dandruff No. 1.
Property 3. Uniqueness
A brand that is unlike other brands experiences minimal negative impact from competitors.
It is necessary to ensure that your product is unique and inimitable in the consumer market, both in terms of functionality and in terms of the emotions that it evokes.
Property 4. Integrity
Integrity is brand recognition at all levels of communication with the audience. This is the result of carefully done work of designers and marketers.
Integrity means that all costs invested in the product are 100% working for its positive image. If the brand is underdeveloped at some point, its promotion will resemble a "deaf phone" - you speak, but the audience does not hear you.
Property 5. Maximum audience reach
It is obvious that the brand that everyone hears and sees brings the maximum profit. Try to promote your brand in all ways that are available to you.
There are dozens of ways to promote a product on the Internet, and every year new effective methods appear. Use them before others, and your “message” will reach every potential consumer.
4. Case "HiterBober.ru" - how we created a popular online brand from scratch
Friends, a little practical story for marketers and people just interested in how we created our popular online brand.
About 4 years ago, with my friend and business partner Vitaliy, we created a personal blog - "Heater Beaver".
Name
When choosing a name, we wrote down 74 options on a piece of paper. Each of them had to meet several fundamental criteria.
Here they are - the parameters for selecting the brand name of our site:
- Memorability. The name should "crash" into memory and stay in it for a long time.
- Rhyming. Based on the first criterion, in my experience, I will say that rhyming brands and names are better remembered.
- Intrigue. A person, having heard the intriguing name of the site, already wants to go to it. After all, it’s interesting what the “Cunning Beaver” prepared for him there;)
- Simplicity. The title should be simple. We immediately dismissed options like Infobizconsult.ru, BusinessMasterGuru.ru, and the like.
- Free and relevant domain name. I also wanted the spelling of the domain in Latin to be 100% identical to the Russian brand name..
Positioning
Based on the name, we position our site as a project for start-up entrepreneurs and people with an active lifestyle. The very brand of our site on the Internet is associated with a cunning and intelligent animal that will teach something new and non-standard.
Besides, financially wealthy and entrepreneurial people often call beavers, we also took this moment into account when creating the brand.
In general, in order to fully form the correct positioning of a brand or offer, it is necessary to answer several questions.
Let's answer these 7 questions from the point of view of positioning the brand of the HiterBober.ru website
- Who? HeatherBober.ru
- Which? A unique site providing expert content from small business practitioners.
- For whom? For start-up entrepreneurs, active businessmen and people with an active lifestyle.
- What is the need? Up-to-date information on ways of doing business and making money online and in real life.
- Against who? Unlike competitors and similar sites, we write for ordinary people, without abstruse schemes and complex terms.
- What is the difference? All expert advice, instructions and suggestions have been tested in practice PERSONALLY by the authors of the articles.
- Thus? You get ready-made step-by-step practical technologies for starting a business and making money with the personal support of the authors of the project.
Branding
As you can see, we have several “branding points” and branding elements on the site. Thanks to these techniques, we are often quoted, the site is bookmarked, and advertising is placed on it.
What elements (components) are used on the site as "brand":
- corporate colors (yellow, dark blue);
- logo (located in the header and footer (footer) of the site;
- branding of images on the site;
- mention in the greeting of the site the name "HiterBober.ru"
A few words about the site logo. As you can see, our Beaver is kind, one of his hands is in an open position, as if calling to “stay” (stay) on the site and study the project materials.
Promotion
- Search promotion. It is carried out due to a specially developed technology for writing and optimizing site materials. You can read about this in our separate article on compiling.
- "Word of mouth" and direct visits from bookmarks. It uses promotion to the account of the elements of "viral marketing", the basis for which is the intrigue and humor inherent in the name of the site.
Let's summarize the section.
This is how we created, and after several weeks of effort, developed our Beaver. Now we have not only online branding, but also other paraphernalia.
Attributes of the HiterBober.ru brand:
When they ask us what you do and we answer that we run our own popular site with such and such a name, people immediately get a smile.
The most important thing is that the name is remembered and you want to visit the site at least out of curiosity.
And in the next section, I will touch on the rules for developing a logo, since in the past I worked as a designer for several years and created not a single logo for different customers.
By developing a unique brand name, you have shown the world who you are and what you want. Now you need to add a unique sign or spelling to the product (company name) to stand out from others.
An effective logo always has some inner message, if you like - contains a short success story. The symbol should have an emotional component and a unique style.
As a rule, vector graphics editors are most often used for logo design: Adobe Issustrator and Corel Draw are the market leaders.
Less commonly, Photoshop is also used for this purpose, but since this program is mainly designed to work with raster graphics, professionals for drawing logos almost never use it to solve such a problem.
Now, online programs and various services are used to develop logos.
If you are not very familiar with professional designer tools, then in this case you can use simpler solutions.
For example, the popular website building platform Wix has a logo creation feature. Using the capabilities of this constructor, you can easily figure it out for a virtual environment and be able to do it yourself.
As you can see, modern technologies allow everyone who wants to become a creator and artist. It's simple, affordable and very effective.
A few design tips for creating logos:
- a good logo should look equally expressive on the packaging, on the magazine page, and on the computer screen;
- a quality symbol conveys to the client the atmosphere of the product and emphasizes its advantages;
- a spectacular logo always works for the general idea of the company;
- pay special attention to color - it should correspond to the spirit of your company and affect the emotions of the consumer;
- from time to time the logo needs to be finalized in accordance with current trends in marketing;
- don't get hung up on the design: the main thing is not the picture itself, but its inner message.
The perfect logo works for the brand for years and always matches the target audience. A well-crafted symbol of a product or company, in which material and creative resources are invested, will help save on advertising and other costs in the future.
6. Conclusion
Let's sum it up, friends. Branding is a vast and highly promising area of effort to effectively position your company both offline and online.
Building a positive brand image is a long and painstaking process. However, successful branding always pays for itself, and many times over.
Brand value is a very important element that can provide a company with long-term profit growth and a stable position in the market (in its industry). Branding is becoming a real weapon in the competition.
I wish you success in creating the development of your brands and ask you to rate the article.
Nelli Nedre, a Petersburger, dreamed of working as a designer since childhood. While studying at the institute, she realized that she was not interested in inventing expensive extravagant clothes that no one could wear in everyday life. After working as a designer for a streetwear brand, a year ago she decided to create her own company and began producing laconic items in discreet colors that fit into world fashion trends. Now Nelly's clothes are sold in ten stores, and the company's monthly turnover exceeds half a million rubles.
experience
Nelly Nedre
Brand founder
At the age of seven, I announced to my grandmother that when I grew up, I would become a designer. Then she gave me a suitcase with felt-tip pens, and since then, like an obsessed, I began to invent and draw various outfits. After graduating from school, without hesitation, she entered the faculty of fashion design. Education at the institute became a real school of life for me: they kicked me out every six months, they said that I would be a bad designer, that I would never succeed. At the same time, from the third year I began to make full-fledged collections, participated and won with them in international competitions. I experimented with shapes, tried different fabrics, searched for my own style. By my fifth year, I was a fully formed designer. The teachers at the institute demanded that we show our potential by making the most of our imagination, but I quickly outgrew this approach to clothing. I realized that I don’t want to make things that no one wears, even if they look interesting.
The practice that I went through with various designers helped me a lot to understand this. Before graduation, I managed to work in an atelier, a luxury brand, a streetwear brand, and even supervised production in China. In general, I probed all the soil that is possible. In my senior year, I was offered a job by the owner of the St. Petersburg streetwear brand Trailhead. The experience in his company was invaluable. This is a serious brand with a wide range of products, the founder of which has been working with clothes for twenty years and is well versed in the market - he knows what the Russian consumer is ready to buy. It doesn't do anything fancy, it only works with basic shapes and colors. I started as one of the designers of his brand, and he could say: “Nelli, what are you drawing! Who needs this pink button on the side, I won’t sell it to anyone!”
The company had an experimental workshop in which we made samples, sent them to stores and, if we understood that they were going well, we launched a large production in China. I was able to try a lot of things within Trailhead: I developed a line of women's clothing, which was almost never done before me, organized shootings for lookbooks and an online store. At some point, it became clear: I already know absolutely everything that is needed to open my own business.
Own business
I decided to leave Trailhead, and at that moment my friend, designer Asya Malbershtein, offered me to rent a twelve-meter room for a workshop. She has been pushing me to create her brand for a long time, and I thought that this room was a good sign. All my money, about 100 thousand rubles, I spent on a sewing machine and the purchase of fabrics for the first collection. Three months later, I realized that this was not enough, and took out a loan of 300,000.
With this money, I hired three people, bought additional equipment. I registered the brand name, it cost about 60 thousand rubles. They dissuaded me, they believed that this was an unnecessary expense, but for me this measure of protection was very important. I also made a website, registered an individual entrepreneur, received permission to trade. A year later, when I had five people on staff, I rented a 63-square-meter space, which now houses the production itself, the showroom, and the office.
Now I have a manager, three seamstresses, a constructor and a designer on my staff. For me, this is the golden time of the company, because so far it is not difficult to maintain a friendly working atmosphere, and each employee clearly understands what and when he should do. When there are more than fifteen people in the company, it will be very difficult to maintain the old trusting relationship with all employees. You will have to get used to communication in the "boss - subordinate" format. I managed to rehearse all the typical problems of working with a brand back in Trailhead, so I was ready for stressful situations. True, I had to develop an additional degree of rigidity in myself, without which the boss cannot be.
Work with shops
It is important to understand that I did not start from scratch. In addition to experience, I had good connections with stores: we were friends with some of the owners, we had previously collaborated with some. Therefore, I knew exactly where I would sell my first collection.
The first time I sold 50 things a month. Now, on average, we sell about 400 items per month for half a million rubles. We cooperate with ten stores scattered throughout the cities of Russia, the largest of them is Moscow - Trends Brands in Tsvetnoy. Now, I am sure, the number of stores promoting Russian designers will only increase.
I did not plan to open my own offline store: there was simply no space. However, it turned out that people, having bought our clothes in other stores, began to visit the site and write to us directly. So I opened a showroom, and now it sells as much as all the other outlets. Our online store brings us another 100 thousand a month. This is beneficial for us, because we supply clothes to other stores with a fifty percent discount, and we can sell them at the regular retail price.
Cheating in stores is very different: in St. Petersburg it is somewhere around 100%, that is, a store buys a thing from us for 1,500 rubles, and sells it for 3,000. In Moscow, cheating can reach 250%.
The cost of production also depends on how much time and effort the seamstress spends on this thing. If we, for example, made an experimental model of a dress, I ask the seamstress how difficult it was for her to work with him and how long it took her. If it was difficult and slow, I exclude this model from the collection. I determine the price based on the fact that I need to pay my employees a normal salary and develop the brand. I would like to please customers by setting the minimum price, but I do not agree to work at zero, my work costs money.
Create a collection
The system of work in a large and local brand is largely different. The giants of the industry are trying to predict trends for several years ahead. They have special people who travel the world and collect information about trends in all possible areas: from art to new technologies. They also take into account the economic background. When you immediately produce thousands of pieces of clothing at a factory in China, you take a big risk, you have to be meticulous, save on threads and buttons. Since we are still a small brand, we do not adhere to a clear seasonality and prepare small capsule collections four to five times a year. It takes me about two months to create a collection.
I always start by looking at 60 of my favorite clothing websites and blogs for inspiration, figuring out what's hot right now. I'm putting together my own moodboard, which can include works of art, and excerpts from films, and photos of a friend, and music. Six months before the official release, new collections are posted on the Style.com website, I notice the details that most often appear in all brands. Having prepared the base for inspiration, I close myself in the apartment for several days and draw. According to my drawings, the designer makes trial patterns, then we sew the first samples, measure them, and refine them. When the collection is ready, we photograph it for the lookbook, send it to stores and wait for a reaction. A collection can have, for example, nine models in four colors. It is not necessary that each of these 36 items will be produced in more than one copy.
Choice of things
Buyers of stores usually know their customers well and understand what they will be ready to buy from them. Some take mostly basic classic things, while others, on the contrary, choose more extravagant models. First, they order a trial batch, then, focusing on demand, they buy something extra. We do not have a warehouse where we store things, because we always sew a certain amount for a specific order.
Gradually, we realized which models go best, so we singled out a separate Gills Classic line. These are things that are in constant demand, regardless of the season. If you look closely, all global brands have their own database of models, which they reproduce year after year. Chanel jacket, classic Carhartt sweatshirt, pumps. These are proven things to which you can add a pocket or change the fabric, but in fact they are always the same. Adidas' best-selling model is the classic black 3-Stripes tracksuit. Brands always make money on the simplest, most basic things. The same goes for color: black and gray always go with a bang, especially in Russia. My brand is also based on versatile pieces and a monochrome palette. Of the fabrics, I chose the footer for work, because that's what I feel best.
I have a principle: I will never do just a beautiful thing that I can’t make money on. When I come up with a beautiful and simple model, I look at whether it falls into trends, calculate the cost of its production and calculate how much it will be sold in stores. If I understand that no one will buy it for such a price, I immediately cease to like it and I refuse it.
Photos: Yasya Vogelhardt
Do you want your brand to become as recognizable as GeniusMarketing?
I think it makes no sense to talk a lot about what a brand is and how important it is for a business. After all, already from the first lines at the word “brand”, each of you had your own chain of associations, and the names of well-known companies immediately popped up in your memory.
I bet if you make a list and we compare it to the rest, we'll find more than one match. This is the power of brand telepathy, isn't it?! Legendary brand!
Let's look at how to create just such a brand for your business.
The main ingredients for creating a legendary brand
So where to start creating ? Perhaps the most important. You need to clearly understand what their needs are and how they perceive your company. Depending on how a company upholds its values and beliefs, how honest it is in its actions, employees and customers have positive or negative feelings about it.
Can customers think of your company as something tangible, individual, and real? If you act openly, you will attract people like you. And then you can build friendly relationships with customers.
Logo is an important element of the brand, but it is not yet a brand. It is your presence, language, connection to something that everyone understands and uses. Do not think that your work is over after the approval of the logo.
To create a successful brand, you need 3 main ingredients:
- Understanding your customers
- Friendly attitude towards customers
- Honest (open) positioning
Influence people's lives. Remember that everything you do, you do for them, not for yourself. Give them benefit, faith and hope that they can become even better. This creates experiences, which in turn create memories.
Mistakes to avoid when building a brand
Remember the brands from the 60s. How did they manage to stand the test of time? You need to strive to create a brand that people want to stick your logo on the bumper of a car or get it tattooed on their body.
Make sure you ask the right questions about your company and customers. Your goal is to align the company's mission, beliefs, and values with the brand you're building. This will help to avoid misunderstandings and also ensure that your company's image is maintained.
Develop 2-3 versions of the brand concept. This way you won't be limited to just one option. This will allow you to choose the best one, which you will refine and improve.
Choosing your brand color
Answering questions about your company will help you make the right choice of color. Find out what colors are used in your industry, including your competitors. Start with them.
The color and its meaning should confirm your interpretation of the logo and future brand principles.
IN article you have already read and should know that each color corresponds to a certain type of emotion, feeling and memory. Consider this.
Logo. General trends
Logos can be divided into 3 types:
- Symbol/ picture
- Letter inscription
- Combination of drawing and lettering
Recently, symbols (emblems) have been more often used on the Internet to represent the brand. And this movement is just beginning to grow, although this approach has been used in the automotive industry for quite some time. The company emblem is placed on the front and rear of the car, and the combined logo (sign + inscription) is used for documentation.
Logo must be unique to gain recognition as well as display a deeper interpretation of the brand that evokes certain emotions and memories.
Many symbolic logos that we see today have gone through more than one reincarnation. Apple, Starbucks and Twitter are prime examples of how the logo becomes as recognizable or even more recognizable than the lettering logo or a combination of the two.
Which type of logo will work best for you depends on several factors: type of production, target audience, mission of the company and its beliefs.
Combined logos, where the inscription and the symbol appear together, are a universal solution. Over time, when the brand becomes sufficiently recognizable, you can leave only the emblem. You can also separate the logo elements and use these parts separately for different occasions to improve your brand flexibility.
And now let's get down to practice and consider the 6 stages of creating a legendary brand:
- Preparation
Write what your company promises to customers as a brand and how they perceive it.
Most likely, you will see aspects of the company that may not have been obvious before, those key differences that make it unique. This will help to correctly draw up a project brief, look deeper into the brand and make an informed decision at every stage of branding, including when creating a logo.
- Study
Create a mind map from keywords that describe your company, its name. This will help you visualize any associated words that will come in handy for creating a logo.
Create a board from sketches. It will give you a unique, deep and meditative perspective on the branding process. Pictures, shapes, colors and textures that you collect on this board will allow you to quickly and effortlessly create a wide variety of combinations, see and touch them live.
- Logo sketch
Draw a logo.
Don't think about whether you can draw or not. Now it doesn't matter. Get all your thoughts and ideas down on paper. The essence of the process is to extract from the subconscious the maximum of options, which will then be selected and improved.
- Formalization
At this stage, some worthwhile ideas should already appear. Do you prefer any sketch? What constantly grabs your attention?
- Is it in line with the design brief?
- Will this be a powerful impetus for the development of the company?
- Does it evoke positive feelings and emotions?
- Will it be remembered?
At the stage of formalizing your concept, the whole process can slow down dramatically. The questions above will help you move forward in the right direction.
After all this work, you need to make sure that the logo looks harmonious in different designs, colors and proportions of the details of the picture. It should be equally good in any size.
- Polishing
Start playing with color, picture and placement. Your preliminary research should suggest how best to do this. What colors can evoke feelings and memories that are closely associated with your company?
- Presentation
All your research, preparation process, deep thoughts and interpretation of your logo and brand can now be presented to your team. This is an exciting part of the process for everyone, including your clients.
The presentation of the logo explains how the process went and why those decisions were made. In this way, you direct the imagination and focus people's attention on the correct interpretation and understanding of your brand.
It is possible, even with a small budget!
The history of the Nike logo is surprising in that it was created by college student Carolyn Davidson for just $35. The decision to keep the logo simple allowed the brand to evolve and adapt around it. This is perhaps one of the main reasons why we are so familiar with this brand.
If you're on a tight budget, you might want to take a closer look at the research phase. The answers to the questions and the project assignment will give you enough impetus to develop really good ideas.
Conclusion
Creating a legendary brand is not easy, but if you follow these guidelines, everything will work out. Just keep in mind, you won't necessarily get the results you want just by spending more money on branding. It's best to put in the extra effort to make sure your brand truly reflects the company's core values.
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told how to make your own clothing brand in Russia. Look At Me publishes a transcription of the master class.The domestic fashion industry is in disgrace. People like to talk about it, hold round tables, discuss it, but in reality, little happens. There is even a myth that it is uninteresting and unprofitable to do this. We would like to dispel this myth: doing this is not only interesting and profitable, but you can do it without prejudice to your own sense of style and taste.
The fashion industry is production, press and shops. Production is both design, fabric manufacturing and tailoring, and the production of accessories. Without the press, the industry cannot exist either, because people need to know about you. And without shops, too, because sales are the main thing.
Every company has a concept. We used to think it was a stupid thing, but then we realized what it was for. It is necessary that each employee understands what he is doing and why. So we sat down and wrote what our Oh, my brand is about and what we want to do. And we want to make in Russia a brand of inexpensive knitwear that in all respects corresponds to the level of a stable European brand. And focus it not only on the Russian market, but make it recognizable and sold throughout the global fashion community.
You need to understand if there is a niche for you in the market. In Russia, on the one hand, there is a lot of luxury, and on the other hand, there are a huge number of retail chains where you rarely find something interesting. And there is a void between them. Of course, there are good brands of non-banal and at the same time inexpensive designer clothes that each of us can buy. But these brands are not so many that they form some kind of trend. We realized that there is a hole in the market, and we may well begin to fill it.
It is very important to have blind faith in yourself. Because in addition to some objective aspects of business and work, there is magic when everything seems to grow together by itself. But the business component is also very important, nothing will work without calculation. What we sew will have to be sold in such a way that we can then re-sew and, perhaps, even earn money.
Suppose we want to launch a clothing brand by September. We have three months, in which, having nothing but a certain amount of funds, we may well be in time. The time plan is divided into stages of work. Each stage - in turn on a step-by-step process on the way to finished things.
For starters, we just surfed the internet and collected pictures that we liked. We clearly understood that we wanted to make inexpensive good knitwear. There is American Apparel, there is H&M, there are a lot of other things, but we don’t have such a brand of our own. After collecting a lot of pictures, we decided what we want to do things. We had several categories of things: T-shirts, T-shirts, long sleeves, turtlenecks and hoodies.
Models must be decided by June 6th. Until June 11 - draw sketches. At the same time, you need to look for a constructor who will do all this for you, because you don’t know how to design. The designer is a professional, and he will eventually understand what you want. The design process, if the collection is small and things are more or less similar (for example, 10 simple dresses), takes a month. The designer can be hired on the side, or you can take on the staff.
In parallel, you need to look for fabric and accessories. There is nowhere to buy fabric in Russia. And good fittings too - so that it was cheap. We have stores, we have warehouses, but what is sold there is expensive and not of the best quality. Therefore, we order fabric in the Baltic States, which in the end is cheaper than buying it here. Finding all this is not difficult if you have Google and Yandex. You find a supplier, he sends you samples, and you, having already walked around the shops and warehouses with us, understand what you want. You can buy a T-shirt, send it to them and say: I want this fabric, these properties, this composition. You also need to keep customs in mind. In winter, the fabric went to us for two and a half months. But if you do everything correctly, find a good intermediary, it will not be long. It's better not to do it yourself.
In parallel, we need to look for production. We do not have high-tech production in our country, but there are heaps of opportunities to sew a T-shirt from linen. In St. Petersburg, this is not worth doing - it's expensive. But this can be done in the Leningrad region, where a seamstress earns not 20,000 rubles, but 10,000 rubles, and the cost of the item is very low. Production can also be found on the Internet. Now you are ready to send the developed patterns to production.
At this time, work with the press begins. Even though you still don’t know exactly what the sleeves and collar of the T-shirt will be processed, you should already understand exactly who your audio audience is and in which magazines you want to see materials about yourself. It must be borne in mind that an issue is rented out on average in a month, and if you want to get into a print publication, then you need to send a press release about two months in advance, which journalists would pay attention to, and shooting so that they understand what they are offered write. During this month, you should already clearly understand what kind of fabric you have, you take 10 meters of this fabric, sew patterns you have developed from it and take them off. You get beautiful pictures of things before you actually own them. And in two months, while the magazines are being typeset, you already have something to send them and what to tell them.
Press release. The main problem with most press releases is that instead of specific information, journalists have to read in what a beautiful flying image you will walk around the city. And the journalist has 50 such messages in his mailbox, so he opens them and immediately closes them. Write as it is: you represent such and such a brand, it is interesting because of this and that. You should pay attention, because it is beautiful and at the same time cheap. Or no one has done this before. You can find the addresses of journalists if you go to the kiosk and buy the magazines that interest you. Write a separate letter to each journalist. Wrote en masse - received en masse the answer "no". And most importantly: a good press release costs as much as a bad one, and a good shoot costs as much as a bad one. We must bear this in mind.
When things are ready, they must be sent to the store. To do this, you need to add your markup to the cost of things. This is called added value. Here, for example, is a dress: if you add 100% to its cost and another 100% is added to it in the store, it will cost 1,500 rubles. But your dress is so cool that it will sell for 3,000 rubles. So you can add more. Added value does not have a clear coefficient. But at the initial stage, you need to add more, because along the way you will still have a lot of errors, jambs, delays, and it will all cost money. And while you have a small turnover, these mistakes need to be insured.
Use the internet. Do not think about the show, it will not bring you any result, since we do not have an industry. But if you make a beautiful site, the effect will be much greater.
Come up with special projects. Often a print publication is not interested in publishing news about which 150 comments were written on Look At Me two months ago. Therefore, you can come up with all sorts of interesting things - for example, a limited collection, which you don’t tell anyone about, except for the editors of printed publications.
Use all free features. Publication is a sales tool. When the brand Oh, my posh! , they wrote a whole page about her in Afisha, and everyone came to us and asked: “How much did you pay?” Believe it or not, there is no such thing as paying for a publication for a good journal. Beautiful videos and photos can also be taken for free, and there is nothing shameful in this.
Help the store. For the store you are a partner, he is interested in selling you, making money on you. Therefore, print out the price list, prepare beautiful lookbooks, it will cost you 5,000 rubles, but it will be a tool that will help you sell better. A lookbook is a banal thing, well photographed on a white background, where articles, composition, colors and sizes are signed.
Think about where you will move next. If you spent your money on the initial project, then you can then find an investor who will allow you to enter a new stage. You will already have something to go with him.
How to create your brand - choosing a name and logo, registration steps. Get 7 tips on how to open your clothing brand + 4 ideas for successful advertising.
When opening a brand, an entrepreneur patents not only the logo of his company, its slogan and product features.
A brand is something more: all the emotions, associations, customer feelings associated with a product or service, positive and negative reviews, happy and disappointed consumers.
How to start your own clothing brand?
This is the question that this article will answer.
You will learn all the intricacies of the process of creating a new trademark, how to come up with a brand name, and how to register your creation with Rospatent.
How to come up with a brand name?
Brand development begins with the task of coming up with a brand name.
The consumer appreciates not only the graphic design of the company logo.
He is also interested in the semantic content contained in the title.
An entrepreneur must be creative.
The brand name is reflected in the success of all marketing operations!
How to come up with a unique brand name?
“In any project, the most important factor is the belief in success. Without faith, success is impossible.”
William James
Think about what will be special in the manufactured product, determine the competitive advantages of the product.
Again, remember that the target audience is young people who buy absolutely everything on the Internet.
When you follow these marketing steps, your clothes will very soon break out into a leading position in the market.
How a young girl herself created her own clothing brand is described in the next video.
Watch and get inspired:
How much money do you need to start your own clothing brand?
Let's move on to dry exact calculations.
Entrepreneurship in any manifestation does not tolerate financial mistakes.
For the convenience of arithmetic operations, we will take as a sample the monthly production of a batch of 1,000 units by your enterprise.
The cost of production of one unit is 450 rubles. (fabric + tailoring), selling price - 700 rubles.
Let's start by calculating the initial investment in production:
Monthly investment:
Monthly income from the sale of branded clothing will amount to 700,000 rubles.
With such indicators, the payback of a successful enterprise selling branded clothing will be 1 month.
Do you have a desire to test yourself as a designer and entrepreneur?
Your own clothing brand is the perfect solution.
The business quickly pays off and brings a stable income.
If after reading this article you still have a question: how to create your own clothing brand, it remains only to personally try in practice in order to understand all the subtleties of entrepreneurship.
All that is required to implement the project is perseverance and self-confidence.
Are you willing to pay that price for success?
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