Brand Identity Carriers: Types and Business Benefits
Which brand bearers create the corporate identity? What are considered carriers of a brand's corporate identity? How does corporate identity benefit any company in the market?
What are considered carriers of a brand's corporate identity?
Corporate identity media are the main means of communication with the consumer, on which the main elements of the brand are placed.
Media convey information about the brand and show affiliation with it. These are the contact points through which the audience gets to know the company, remembers the brand and recognizes the product among the abundance of analogues.
It might already be clear from the context, but let us clarify once again: media and elements of corporate identity are not the same thing. The elements are more basic: a color palette, a set of fonts, unique graphic objects, photo style formats, patterns. Their roles and features are a separate topic for discussion.
The carriers act as places where branded elements are placed. All this together and collectively forms a corporate identity. Now let’s look at what specifically relates to carriers.
What carriers of the brand’s corporate identity exist?
The definition above included the phrase “any objects”. This is true. Develop corporate identity media possible on the basis of any things, objects, sites. And if you have a new unique branded object in your arsenal, this will only add recognition.
However, with an integrated approach to the development of a corporate identity, a certain basic set of media is formed:
Product packaging
If your product is supposed to be placed on store shelves, this will be almost the main carrier of your corporate identity. Unique packaging or product labels will cast a shadow on your neighbors on the shelf.
Your loyal audience won’t have to search for their favorite brand: they will quickly find their target based on colors, graphics or shape. And new audiences will likely pay attention if the product really stands out.
Printing
Perhaps this is the most extensive category in terms of the number of possible items. This includes everything related to printed materials, from a small leaflet to a huge billboard. In general, let's just list:
- Business cards
- Postcard
- Invitation
- Plastic card
- CD
- Sticker
- Price list
- Sticker
- Poster
- Banner sign
- Roll Up
- Press Wall
- Cityformat
- Label
- Paper bag
- T-shirt package
- Brochure
- Booklet
- Flyer
- Leaflet
- Billboard
- Lightbox
- Presentation
- Marketing kit
This does not mean that you need to take and develop all the media of your corporate identity. The format of work and promotion of a particular company requires certain media.
Presentations, marketing kits, banners and some other media can be used both in printed and electronic form, as well as on Internet platforms. It all depends on the goals.
Stationery and documents
What items are used while working in the office? Folders for documents, flash drives, pens, diaries and notepads, badges - that's all.
Separately, we note letterhead documents. They not only correspond to a uniform design style in internal work, but also add confidence and status when interacting with partners, clients, and contractors.
Internet platforms
By 2022, there is almost no debate about the need to create an official company website and corporate social networks. This already looks like a prerequisite for starting and developing a business in modern realities.
The website and social networks themselves serve as carriers of the corporate identity, plus elements of their design and content - profile avatar, banners on the website, covers of publications. Also e-mail: electronic correspondence and all kinds of mailings will have higher status and results when the corporate style is read in them.
Uniform
An excellent carrier of corporate identity will be clothing of employees in corporate colors, with a logo and recognizable graphic elements.
Employees themselves will feel involved in the great work that the company is doing, and clients will interact with them with great confidence.
Transport
If the type of activity involves transporting products, delivering or sending employees to meetings, then branded cars will be very useful. Your brand will be encountered in completely different places and situations.
Office
A large carrier of corporate identity that you can find yourself inside. Walls and pieces of furniture in corporate colors, photographs of the team, branded signs, signs - you can also get creative in the interior.
If you develop a corporate identity for your office, you can easily immerse any visitor into the atmosphere and culture of the company. This means there is a chance for more loyal communication.
Merch
This is already a more fashionable moment. This includes all souvenirs that the brand sells or gives to customers as souvenirs. These are T-shirts, sweaters, mugs, keychains, badges, calendars and everything that a person can use in everyday life. And in advertising campaigns - sweepstakes, promotions - all these things can also be a tool for attracting customers.
Regarding logo, then somewhere it is possible to meet it among the list of carriers. To some extent, this is a basic element of corporate identity. You can be classified in both categories, or better yet, in neither category.
When it comes to brand identification, the logo stands apart and occupies a fairly strong position. This is the main distinctive sign of the company, by which the audience immediately determines who they are dealing with.
What benefits does corporate identity bring to a company?
We went through all the categories and individual carriers of the corporate identity. What is the beneficial effect of this whole set?
The benefit can be shown through understanding the essence of the corporate identity and the functions it performs.
Corporate identity is a unified visual image of the brand.
This unity is created by the individual complex of elements graphics, colors, typography. And the style is transmitted and becomes recognizable through objects with which the audience comes into contact - brand carriers.
By definition, yes. But a corporate identity is also a tool for performing several important functions:
- Identification. This is when a company is recognized not only by hearing the name. The development of corporate identity media in a single visual design allows you to recognize the brand by just the colors and shape of the product packaging, a couple of graphic elements, and the design of the website pages.
- Tuning The similar features of all media and the unique image created distinguish the brand from competitors in the niche.
- Promotion. Each carrier of the corporate identity, any distinctive feature in itself works for the success of the brand. The more media are collected into a single image, the more channels of promotion and audience attraction there are.
- Image The corporate style of a brand should not create any image, but only a positive one. How the entire visual responds to the audience is how the brand will be treated.
It is better to entrust the development of media for a brand’s corporate identity to specialists in the field of marketing and graphic design. A competent corporate identity attracts loyal customers.
Even if your product has more profitable analogues, but your brand stands out, it is recognizable and has a good reputation among the audience, then no one will even think about the formal difference in price tags and will boldly buy your product.
A decent corporate identity has a correlation with increasing company profits. But it also helps reduce promotion costs in the future. A comprehensive and immediately developed presentation of the image makes promotion more effective and significantly facilitates the further launch of advertising campaigns - new product lines will be released with less investment.
The corporate identity should emphasize the professionalism of the company and each of its employees. And for this to be the case, it is worth order the development of a corporate identity and each of its carriers in a professional design studio.
Denying its necessity or trying to slowly develop it on your own will not yield results, but will only eat up precious time.
Corporate identity is not just a logo on the background, it is an integrated approach: analyzing the company for a style that suits it, selecting design elements that speak about the brand, identifying the really necessary media, knowing all the rules of design, trends and the subtle ability to apply all this.