Gibbons | Peck approaches branding from the inside out. We begin by looking at the core of your brand. Discovering the personality, temperament, attitudes, preferences… everything that makes your brand unique. From there, we build a system of expressions, to communicate your brand, in the most positive light, to the five senses of your customers, employees, vendors, and competitors. Sounds simple. But it gets pretty detailed.

1. Branding creates loyalty. Even when a product or service is perceived as undifferentiated based on attributes, consumers and stakeholders are more loyal to well-branded entities than to their comparatively less-branded competitors.
2. Branding gives us control over pricing. Although pricing is an extremely complicated matter, any ability to manage pricing to our benefit is extremely valuable.
3. Branding cuts through information clutter. Every communication generated must compete for attention with thousands of communications and visual stimuli. The consistency of branding enables each communication to work harder, by impacting the public with synergistic brand awareness. As consumers become accustomed to seeing consistent expressions, they begin to allow it to pass through their cognitive filters. This gives our brand communication greater impact with fewer exposures, which means media dollars go further. This also allows for more rapid acceptance of (and in turn, faster return on investment for) our programs and services when we put them out into the marketplace.
4. Branding protects us from competitive attacks. As loyal users and stakeholders attribute to our brand the qualities they seek, it becomes increasingly difficult for competitors to own or be known for those qualities (in the minds of those consumers and stakeholders). As the brand becomes more deeply ingrained in their decision process (more trusted by the consumers and stakeholders), the desired qualities become linked with components of our brand (simply by association).
5. Branding can save us costs and increase our productivity. A complete branding system eliminates the need to remake basic decisions regarding color, shape, copy style, tone, key message, etc. This creates enormous efficiencies in the production of communications—fewer people getting more done in less time. As an internal marketing tool, a well-defined, well-expressed brand attracts top professionals and creates loyalty among current employees. As a human resource tool it is extremely valuable.

(Based on Marketing Aesthetics, The Strategic Management of Brands, Identity, and Image, Bernd Schmitt and Alex Simonson’s comprehensive book on branding and the role of brands in the strategic management of organizations.)