Branding + messaging

Those two concepts — branding and messaging — are slippery indeed. Do you already have them, or do you need them? What are they, exactly? Who comes up with this stuff, and how?

Jell works with its clients to develop all aspects of brand and message. We’ve even partnered with well-established companies to reinvent them completely: exploring new names, researching domain availability, and helping senior management grow new brand architectures.

Let’s start with where you are now.

What words come to mind when you try to describe your organization? Do you reel off products or services? The size of your staff or your operations? Your market share or membership base?

Imagine listening to your own little monologue. Are you telling a story that matters? Does your story fan curiosity or douse it?

Look at this another way. Could your employees, customers, clients, or partners accurately describe what you do or how you’re unique? Would those descriptions concur? Would they make you proud? Do they describe your best traits — or a pigeonhole you’d like to escape?

These are the topics we tackle in messaging. We strive for a story that is easily told, eagerly heard, and fully comprehended. We seek to discover the essence of your organization and shine a bright light on its promise.

We’ll offer you a systematic way to talk about yourself. Company, product, and service naming are all fair game for consideration. Different messages may be required for different constituencies or different settings. Words matter.

Messaging is where branding starts. It’s the blueprint.

Breathing life into a brand.

We’ve just touched on the first dimension of branding: the verbal dimension — the way you need to talk about your brand and the way your stakeholders need to think about your brand. Yes, it’s all words, but they’re carefully chosen words. Words that are true, meaningful to your target audiences, and built to last.

This verbal dimension of branding is key. But branding needs two more dimensions to come to life: the emotional dimension and the visual dimension.

The emotional dimension may seem like unnecessary fluff. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is the connection that your organization offers employees, customers, clients, and partners — whatever that connection truly is. Perhaps you offer loyalty. Perhaps you offer confidence, or respect, or excitement, or quality. That’s all powerful stuff, stuff that needs to be captured and put on display. The emotional dimension of your brand promise must suffuse everything.

Finally, there’s the visual dimension: what people see and, hopefully, recall nonverbally. Yes, a logo is a part of that. But “logo” is hardly the same as “brand;” it’s just one little view.

These days, a home page is a major face of the brand, no matter who you are. But there’s more. A consistent color palette, a certain energy, a unique approach to typography — these are all part of the third dimension, and they must all be in harmony with the first two dimensions.

Put it all together in the right way and you’ll have something evocative and timeless. Something strong, proud, and memorable. Not window dressing. Not trend-driven. You’ll have something real — a brand you can stand behind, project in everything you do, and build upon in the future.