Tell your story

What can branding do for you?

At the heart of any successful organization is a strong brand identity. That’s where we come in! With our extensive experience in brand design, logo design, and messaging, we’ll work with you to create a brand guide that includes everything from visual elements to tone of voice. Our branding process will help you distinguish yourself in a competitive market and tell a memorable story that reflects who you are, where you work, and takes you where you want to go.

Branding Process Overview

Branding offerings

Brand architecture

Discover what makes your brand unique through a series of workshops and exercises as we craft messaging and imagery that resonates with your team and engages your customers.

Deliverables include

Brand messaging and story

Logo and visual identity kit
Full brand guide and launch support

Logo & visual identity design

Your logo and visual design are crucial for building a strong and impactful brand. Every color, line, and shape we create during our identity process is carefully chosen to reflect your personality and values.

Deliverables include

Logo update or refresh

Visual identity kit

Style board

Brand roll-out support

After creating a great brand identity, it’s time to launch! We’ll partner with you to ensure your team understands your brand and that your brand enters the market with a strong roll-out campaign.

Deliverables include

Launch campaign guidelines

Launch plan

Brand training

Our process

Discovery

Prepare for a series of exercises and conversations that will help us understand who you are and create a story that connects with your audience.

Background research into your brand
Interactive workshops to find your values

Find the core

We combine the information gathered from our discovery process with our research to create key messages and craft a brand story that will resonate with your audience.

Initial brand messaging
A unifying concept for your brand

Verbalize

Once we have established a strategic vision, we start creating written messages, voicing, and written deliverables for your brand.

Brand position, values, and personality
Hook and selling points
Brand voice and story

Visualize

Using your vision and values as our guide, we start working on your visual brand. Your message isn’t only conveyed through words, but also through colors, imagery, type, and design. We carefully craft each element to effectively communicate and enhance your brand.

Logo design
Visual identity system
Sample layouts and ads

Launch the brand

This is the moment! With your brand messaging and visuals crafted, it’s time to launch your new brand.

Online brand guide
Brand training
Roll-out planning and support

Branding FAQs

Just in case we lost ya up there.

Some questions to ask include: Has your target audience changed, are you currently attracting the wrong audience, or are you having trouble attracting the right audience? Have your services changed significantly? When you consider your materials, your logo, and your messaging, does it feel dated? Are you having trouble standing out from your competition? Has it been five years or longer since you did anything to update or refresh your brand? If you answer yes to any of these questions, it may be time to consider a re-brand.

Your brand encompasses everything that informs how people—especially potential customers—view your company. This includes your visual identity (logo, colors, design look and feel), your written messaging, the customer experience you provide, and what people hear about you (from others, in the news, and so on). While you can’t control every aspect of your brand, there’s a lot you can do to make sure your brand expresses why you’re unique and why people should want to do business with you.

Would you build a house without using blueprints? You could. You could start pouring cement on your lot until it looks about right. You could buy some boards and start constructing a house. You’d end up with walls and bedrooms, maybe even a bathroom or two. But would it look professional? Probably not. You’ll have a house, but it won’t be pretty. It won’t be a good expression of who you are. Establishing a brand requires careful planning that will save you time and money in the future. Your brand is more than a logo and a few design elements just as a well-designed house is more than wood and paint. That’s why, at Pivot, we call our brand process our brand architecture.

A strong brand will help you define what you can say that your competition can’t, which in turns helps customers understand why they should choose you. The strongest brands—like those developed with Pivot, if we say so ourselves—give customers a reason to build an affinity for the company that goes beyond what the company offers, so customers will choose that brand even if they’re not the least expensive, the most advanced, etc.

Brand alignment means several things: most of all, it means your entire team—from your CEO down to your most junior employee—understands your company’s history, values, where you’re headed, and how the brand is expressed through your products, services, and customer experience. At companies with strong brand alignment, everyone can tell you what the brand values are because they are lived out every day and discussed regularly. Brand alignment means customers get the same (amazing) experience from you, whether they are calling you on the phone, visiting your website, getting support, or dropping by a retail location. Brand alignment also means your visual and written materials are in alignment: the average person—who doesn’t have a degree in graphic design—can tell that your materials go together, and your brand voice is consistent whether you’re writing copy for a mailer, a billboard, a social media post, or some snazzy, dazzling website FAQs.

The process varies somewhat from client to client—depending on what a client needs—but the heart of our branding process is a brand exercise and working sessions. These allow the Pivot team to glean information about your brand from your key stakeholders. The results of these sessions are the written deliverables and a visual identity for your new brand. Your process might also include a brand perception study, naming, logo development, concept testing, an identity kit, and brand launch materials.

Generally, any stakeholder who will work directly with your brand or has veto power over the brand should be involved in the brand project. For most of our clients, this usually involves representatives from the C-suite and the marketing staff. Occasionally, people from other departments like customer service and operations get in on the fun, too. While there’s no required number of people for a brand project, we find that between five to eight people tends to be a good number. We have worked with groups as small as two and as large as… well, larger than we recommend. Having the final decision-makers involved every step of the way—which means attending and participating in brand architecture meetings—is critical.

We’d be honored to talk about your brand. Get in touch with Pivot and we’ll get rolling—literally!