That is one of the million-dollar marketing questions. Ask a room full of MBA’s and you’ll get a room full of answers. Unfortunately, branding as a term is used, misused and overused and leaves a lot of people generally confused not only about what branding means, but what value it really holds. Isn’t branding only something that McDonald’s, Google, Coca-Cola and BMW get to experience? Branding must be expensive, elusive and ethereal.
Think again.
In simple terms, branding is the creation of an entity with its own individual and recognizable identity. It is the combination of a logo mark, typestyle and sometimes tag-line, overall design congruency, and message and tone consistency. When you add to the mix purposeful company culture, deeply rooted values and a core belief system, you have created a brand. The whole has a value greater than the sum of its parts since alone, they are somewhat meaningless. Here’s an example.
FDM CASE STUDY #3
At Fresh Dirt Marketing, we work with micro businesses and startups on a regular basis. It is rare that we find a client with an established brand. When we were selected to help brand our client, First Entertainment Financial, it was no different.
We started with the company name. We needed to come up with something that fit our client’s company’s personality. Since the company was still very small – without multiple locations and employees - we had to draw inspiration from the owner’s vision, his own style, and that of his centers of influence. We had to balance his desire for a name that was different, and our needs to find something that was not-too-serious but not-too-risky, understandable to his target, and most importantly, not already service marked. It was quite a task. Two weeks and a half-dozen “almost” company names later, Lyric Financial was born.
What we learned from our client while helping create his company’s name and build their strategy gave us the tools we needed to take that company name and make it a brand. We now understood his company’s culture, values and core beliefs. First of all, we learned that at Lyric, it’s all about taking the way things are normally done and turning them up side down. There were no rules - this had everything to do with Lyric’s brand. Lyric is a finance company that serves musicians, so the culture is loose – no suits allowed. The products would have cool names like FastForwardMyRoyalties. Traditional banking terminology would be turned on its head because the founder of Lyric Financial is a music guy turned banker. Not the other way around, which is much more common on Nashville’s famous Row. Lyric isn’t a bank per se, but understands the financial needs of the music industry, and that alone makes them different and appealing. We had our core competency.
The logo mark for Lyric isn’t a mark at all. In this case, we knew that the products would tell the story of the company, so each of them would have their own marks. The Lyric Financial mark is a laid-back typestyle in silver on a black background that can be replicated in a number of branded colors.
We let these core values drive the tag line penned as “Words. Music. Money.” Again, the Lyric Financial feel is about as simple as you can get because banking often doesn’t seem simple and Lyric is the “anti-bank.” “Words. Music. Money.” describes what Lyric does – they lend money to the people that write the words that are made into music. Their market gets it, and it requires little to no copy support.
The decision was made to use images of real artists and clients on the Lyric website and in their advertising design. We let the irreverent tone drive font selection and advertising and web copy. We played on the idea that many songs are written on scrap paper and the backs of napkins whenever the inspiration hits. We developed a postcard campaign that played on the “back of the napkin” idea and all the while, we kept it clean and simple. The design stays congruent and we often promote the product while keeping the Lyric Financial message secondary. It isn’t about the company; it is about what they bring to the music community.
Lyric’s branding efforts along with strategic alliances including the FastForward My Royalties program offered exclusively to BMI Members have launched Lyric Financial to success even in tough financial times.
Download a pdf of this case study with more information at www.freshdirtmarketing.com/lyric_casestudy.pdf
