How do startups develop a strong brand identity and maintain consistency as they grow?

Before starting with any project, an extensive research of the market should be done. This will give an overall idea about the needs of the consumers. Once you gain all the knowledge about the market and consumers, you will able to a develop a product that can become a strong foundation for your startup thereby helping you to elevate your brand identity. To maintain this identity, you will be needing to invest a certain amount for promotion of your product. The more you channelize your product (in an efficient way), the more you sell it; making a firm grip of your brand in the market. One more IMPORTANT thing which you to have remember is take feedback from your customers. These feedback will give valuable insights with which you can improve your product and maintain your brand’s identity.

Brands are built over years and decades. Trust and positive brand identity is built over a long period of time. This is obviously difficult for a startup. The only way for a startup to gain positive brand identity is to give the impression that they can be trusted and that their work/product is of a great quality. The way to build trust is to appear as if you're not a startup or fly-by-night. The way to give the impression that your work is quality is to have your 'own house in order' when it comes to the quality of your appearance. There are several ways to do this: - Make sure that your CI looks like you spent money on it i.e website, collateral (business cards) etc. - Use language like 'We' and not 'I' when speaking to clients or potential clients. - Ask outsourced suppliers if you can give them your business' e-mail address and visa versa in order to appear as though you have more team members. The key is looking professional. Brand identity grows with time.

It takes time to build brand equity, but the process of creating the identify of your should start from day 1. Founders should be clear about the personality that you aspire for your brand, the look & feel you wish your brand to have, etc. A logo is one of the most visible faces of your brand. Your logo is most likely to be your most frequent and most visible brand representative. Hence, a logo should clearly state the following: Who you are What you do How well the logo is designed and how well the messaging is in the tag line will create the first impressions about the brand’s personality. Right from the time you exchange business cards, or when you release an ad – in print, TV or online, or when someone visits your site, it is often the name of the company, represented by the logo + tag line  that will be noticed for the first time. For startups it is critical that the logo and the tag line is designed well. This is because when you are new, most people would not know what you do and who you are. Hence, when they interact with your brand for the first time, it is usually the logo unit that will set the first impressions about what you do. While a badly designed logo may not necessarily send the wrong impression, a well-designed logo will most certainly create a favorable impression. Similarly, with tag lines. Tag lines should be used to communicate clearly what you do. E.g. “Online fashion store”. Often entrepreneurs make the mistake of using a tag line which is nothing but a smart set of words with no reference to what you do. This is of little use in brand management. E.g. for a healthcare brand, if the tagline said ‘We care for you”, it really means nothing to anyone and does not establish what the brand does. Instead, if the tagline were to be specific saying “Your neighborhood childcare clinic’, there is specificity in communicating what the promise is. If your tag line can also communicate your value proposition, it is ideal. E.g. “Affordable cardiac care” The fonts, colours, images, writing style, language, spacing between lines, amount of openness or clutter in the design, etc. are all things that create a personality for the brand online and in digital mediums. In the offline world, things like quality of the paper, the quality of printing, etc. are other factors that add to the personality of the brand. Over time, after some initial adjustments, the startup starts settling into a set of colours, fonts, styles, language, etc. It then takes effort to recognize these and then reinforce the brand personality by being consistent in using these in all communication. (Often we see companies whose brochures, business cards and websites look like they are of 3 different companies... only because no one bothered to be consistent with elements that create a brand's personality).

There are different factors that would affect this. The most important one being, how much money you can invest in branding exercises. I'm assuming that when you say startup, you mean an organisation that is started with little to no capital investment but with some extremely committed founders. First off, give some thought to what the startup is about. What industry does it belong to? What personality will future employees have? Who are your clients? Who are the people you will be interacting with in your clients' organisations? More importantly, who are your customers? How do they behave? What is their personality? How do you want them to perceive your startup? Lastly, what is your promise to all these stakeholders? Once you start addressing these questions, similiar questions will pop up. Once all these questions are answered, you will have your basic 'identity' in place. (If you have have friends or know people in the branding world, take their opinion. From what I've experienced, people do want to support startups and extend help where they can. )The next thing you need to do is create this identity, communicate it and build it over time. Spend time naming the startup. Sometimes the name will come to you instantly and it will just fit. Sometimes you might have to give it more thought. Before you finalise on the name, get some thoughts on it. In todays time, I'd even suggest you check the availability of the domain name before finalizing on it. Next, do NOT compromise on the visual identity. Invest as much as you can afford into the logo. I repeat, Do not compromise on this. Extend this identity to your visiting cards and website (if you're building one.) If you don't have the $$$ for a website, get a static image put up that represents the startup. (Like mine, http://www.digitaldubba.com). Get custom emails. Do not use gmail, yahoo etc..extensions. It just makes you look uncommitted. Next, work on delivering your promise to all stakeholders. Your first objective as a startup is to build your company. Work on that. Do not spend time actively thinking about brand building. I'm not saying you ignore it, but if you stick to your original ideals and deliver on every promise, you will build goodwill and your brand will become more visibile. Once you have some money to spend, you can think of larger brand building activities. These again, will be specific to your industry and audience. If you are really serious about it at this stage, you might want to consult a firm that specializes in branding. Here too, be careful of who you want to work with. Meet multiple people/agencies. Trust is an important factor here. sahil

Be it a green field startup or a new product/brand launch from a house of brands, the ideal way for strategically envisaging a brand and subsequent values one wants to be associated with it is to understand the physical and emotional place it will hold in your consumers life. Eg. if today i launch 2 brands of single malt whisky..lets say i call 1 BigSips and the other SmokyMountain. Which one would you choose, simply based on the name? Again, if for eg. my story around SmokyMountain, which is priced at the same cost of lets say a Glen... features college kids, would the intended consumer, who has the money to pay for the product be willing to buy me? Third and i think equally important is to investigate your product and see whether distribution wise, will it make sense to sell it through exclusivity or inclusivity. If these 3 things are taken care of, the only way to cement your brand identity is through a consistent level of service and product quality.

There is a difference between a brand identity and your brand. Brand Identity: This is the visual representation of your brand. Logo and other elements that people see. It has LITTLE TO DO WITH YOUR BRAND. Nobody buys a logo. If you go to a company for branding and the first thing they do is start budgeting for your logo and brochures, RUN. Many graphic artist, web designers and video production companies say they do branding, but for them branding is just another way for them to sell you creative services. RUN! Branding: This is the business end. Branding broadly is... Who you are to your ideal customer. The emotional hooks to your ideal customer. The authentic relationships you build with your ideal customer. A value proposition that uses those hooks and relationship to  create a critical and compelling need to purchase on the part of your customer. One of my books, Brand.gineering, provides a 14 step process and workbook to helping a client, step-by-step to developing a brand. The book purchase on Amazon includes a free download of a workbook to aid in that process. Go to our web site http://www.brandgineering.org to read more and download a PDF of the book for FREE. http://Purzue.com also did an interview with me on the subject of personal branding that may be found at http://blog.purzue.com/2013/04/30/purzue-interviews-carl-hartman-ceo-green-cheese-media-group-inc-sr-partner-brand-gineering-and-best-selling-author/ The fact is that the future of branding is really centered around building customer relationships through story-based content that connects customers to the lifestyle surrounding the brand and makes a purchase critical and compelling - hooking the customer through perceived relationship using hyper-advanced transmedia structures. Managing Brand Growth: Is very much tied to your relationship to your ideal customers. One of our first priorities working with a company is that we create a "brand university" for the company. All staff are trained and integrated into the brand. Apple does something very similar. You train staff about the culture of the brand. AND, you have to live that from the top down - no lip service. Brand Identity Growth: When it comes to consistency of a brand image we start from the very beginning constructing a manual and standards that grows with the company. Brand Vision: We also create a growth plan for the brand. I'm not going to outline the kinds of things we put into that, but it is very detailed business modeling for that business. So, if all you got for your money is logos and brochures, you got ripped off. Likely, its just a graphic arts firm that has done nothing to build your brand. Putting the term "branding" in sales literature is en vogue right now, along with content marketing and a bunch of other buzzwords that are used to sell you the same old content and methods in a new wrapper. Most of these companies use traditional advertising models that are an epic failure.

Firstly, you must ask yourself what exactly it is that your company does. From there you can craft a mission statement. The mission statement should be brief and to the point. It should also have some descriptions that differentiate you from your competitors so that people can know what to expect from using your product.The mission statement is essentially your backbone, and reason why someone would use whatever it is that you're selling.After that’s clear you can start to think of how you will achieve this mission. You must create guidelines that you follow, which will be your Vision Statement.A vision of who you want to be and what values you want your company to hold. This is what will start to define you for who you are, and how people will perceive you.This vision is what you have to glue yourself to, and never vier away from. A huge reason why Arthur Anderson got caught up in the Enron scandal was because they forgot their Core values and their vision. Once Mr. Anderson retired, the preceding focused less on hiring ethical trustworthy people as it always had, and started hiring anyone who would make them money. This eventually led to their downfall and great embarrassment. If you disregard to your core values, you will turn into a monster. If you refer to them with every decision you make, saying “does this align with our companies values?” You will be A-Okay.The start up I work for now, http://www.thingthing.co, is in the growth phase. We recently tweaked our business plan and as we did, our initial thoughts were always, “does this change who we are?” If not, we sent it!One further way to strengthen your identity is to have good Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Although it might take a small toll on your revenue, it often brings rewarding outcomes. People will view you as less of a ‘company,’ and more of, as a good neighbor. This increases the intangible equity of your brand.Hope this was somewhat helpful!