BE
BOLD.

86% of consumers say authenticity is important when deciding what brands they like. We help you to tell your story to audiences who care with brand development strategies that stick.

*Stackla

86% graphic

The Value of a Brand Development Process

No matter your industry, the brand development process is crucial for building strong brand awareness. For over 17 years, we’ve partnered with B2B, B2C, and D2C companies to elevate their brands using a proven strategy that includes consistent messaging and visual identity guidelines, competitive differentiation, and consistent monitoring.

Your brand is more than just a logo – it embodies your values and vision. Through our collaborative brand development process, we create a comprehensive set of standards to guide your brand toward success. With this solid foundation, we ensure your brand remains strong and adaptable in this ever-evolving world.

Messaging Strategy

Our brand and content strategists help build your brand messaging from the ground up, creating a foundation that aligns your internal and external brand message and can evolve as your brand grows.

Visual Identity

There can be hundreds of touchpoints through which your audience comes in contact with your brand. Our creative and design teams develop a visual aesthetic that provides a consistent look and feel, building brand familiarity and loyalty across all touchpoints.

Brand Message Strategy

Our brand messaging services follow a proven brand development process that takes your competition and the digital landscape into consideration. Here’s a breakdown of what you can expect from our brand message strategy:

Competitor Research

Get insights into the activities of your competitors, including their brand messaging and visual identity, to identify gaps your brand can fill in the market (or what you should avoid) so you can be confident that your unique brand will stand out.

Brand Development Workshop

Get in a room with the Fishnet team to walk through your brand from top to bottom. The more we know about your brand, including the origin story, core values, and major goals, the better we can identify the direction your brand needs to go. Through exercises to get everyone thinking and talking, we identify the key points of focus for the initial engagement. 

Stakeholder and Customer/Partner Interviews

Rich information about your brand and how it is perceived comes from interviews with company stakeholders and your customers or partners, during which we engage in candid discussions about your brand’s value to help shape the overall messaging and visual identity.

Digital Landscape Analysis

What’s happening out there in the digital landscape? We research content production, social media activity, advertising tactics, and the behaviors and preferences of your target audience to help inform a winning content strategy for your brand. The digital landscape constantly evolves and we keep a pulse on those evolutions to keep your brand in a good position. 

Brand Messaging Architecture

Like building a house, a successful brand messaging strategy needs a solid foundation. Your messaging architecture outlines the key components of your brand messaging, reflecting extensive research into your brand, industry, and audience. This internal document, born from the workshops, interviews, and information-gathering stage, supports your external brand messaging and is designed to scale as your brand evolves and grows.

The core components of your architecture include:

  • Mission Statement
  • Vision Statement
  • Positioning Statement
  • Competitive Positioning Statement
  • Target Audience
  • Brand Essence
  • Brand Personality
  • Brand Voice & Tone
  • Elevator Pitch

Brand Identity Development

It’s the strategic fusion of messaging and identity that strengthens a brand, and our brand identity services help develop all touchpoints from your website to digital or print content and collateral. We deliver a comprehensive set of brand guidelines to ensure consistency across all branded executions.

Your brand’s visual identity helps you stand out and be easily recognizable, supporting your brand messaging. We conduct industry and competitive research in conjunction with collecting input and feedback from your team to create a unique visual identity that can be applied consistently across all brand assets and collateral and will scale seamlessly with your brand as you grow and the industry evolves.

Here’s a breakdown of what you can expect from our brand identity services:

Logo/Wordmark

A brand is more than a logo, but a logo or wordmark is an important part of your brand’s visual identity. Applying our research into your brand and the digital landscape, we’ll develop logo or wordmark options to serve as a unique identifier for your brand.

Typography & Color Palette

A consistent look and feel is critical to establish recognition and trust in your brand. We’ll develop a typography style and color palette that reflects your brand’s messaging and gives it a unique visual identity that establishes consistency across all touchpoints.

Brand Imagery

Using the agreed-upon color palette, we’ll develop a style of imagery to visually support your brand’s story and bring your brand’s story to life. Whether using stock photography, professional photography, or a combination of both, we’ll select and treat your imagery to reflect your brand at every touchpoint.

Visual Brand Extensions

Your brand’s visual identity goes further to include extensions like patterns and iconography that can enhance the user experience and bring additional visual differentiators to your brand identity.

Physical Brand Assets

Beyond the digital experience, we’ll create physical brand assets like business cards, packaging, and event support so your target audience can engage with your brand in a tangible way. All physical assets will reflect your brand’s messaging and visual identity to provide a consistent experience with your brand.

General Brand Development Tools

copy

Persona Development

The only way to truly generate quality leads and achieve conversions is through meaningful content that resonates with your audience. Developing target personas to achieve these goals is two-fold: we conduct digital research to understand content consumption habits, search behavior, and current audience engagement with your brand, as well as brand research to understand your interactions and service with existing customers and prospects.

Brand Guidelines

Your brand guidelines are, quite literally, the complete guide to your brand messaging and identity, which ensures you have alignment on how you talk about your brand and how your brand is visually represented. This alignment is critical for consistency among your internal employees and staff and as a reference for external vendors or third parties. 

Brand & Competitive Positioning

Where does your brand fit in the industry and among your competitors? We examine the brand messaging and visual identity of your top competition, as well as digital activity going on in your space. When you understand how your target audience is behaving, what’s working for your competitors, and what’s not, you can identify opportunities to differentiate and get found first.

Go-to-Market & Launch Strategy

A lot goes into the preparation and planning for taking your product or service to market. We’ll help you create a solid launch strategy to ensure your target audience is aware and excited before your offering officially becomes available. We’ll also support a post-launch strategy to continue the momentum and drive successful, continuous performance.

Growth Opportunities

Brands must continuously evolve to keep up with industry trends, consumer demands, and changes in the market. When developed properly, your brand can easily grow and scale, and we’ll help you seize those growth opportunities with strategic tactics for staying ahead in your industry and above the competition.

80% graphic

Color improves brand recognition by up to 80%

*Forbes

Transparency & Authenticity: The Cornerstones of Modern Brand Development

In today’s market, honesty and transparency are more than just buzzwords — they’re essential to a successful brand. Authenticity not only reveals a kind, moral, adaptive, and accepting side to your business and staff but also builds lasting trust with your audience.

With buying power increasingly shifting to younger generations, catering to your audience has never been more important. These consumers value open and genuine brands, and they can quickly discern when a brand is not being truthful. By committing to honesty and transparency, you foster a genuine connection with your customers, showing them that your brand is trustworthy and aligned with their values.

Purposeful Brand Development Strategies Backed by Data

The right marketing technologies can provide relevant data about your audience, your competitors, and the digital landscape at large to inform brand development and creative solutions. Now more than ever, brands are using digital in novel ways and have adapted their business strategies to keep pace. That adaptation is continuous, and your brand should be positioned to evolve as needed.

Portrait of Sean
quote icon

As creators, brand development allows us the best opportunity to craft or drive a brand’s message and visual aesthetic from the beginning, which makes consistency much more achievable across all brand assets.

Sean Reusch
Director of Design

Recent Blog Posts
A brand messaging architecture informs and governs nearly everything you do. Learn how we help clients structure strong ones.
Case Study