Aren’t your brand and your logo essentially the same thing? For some, they might be. But actually, they’re not.
Your logo is part of your brand (and an important one at that)
It’s your visual ‘identifier’. Think of all the big brand logos: Nike, Apple, Starbucks, London Underground, Amazon. They’re iconic. You can picture them instantly, and you feel something when you do.
But the logos didn’t achieve ubiquity on their own.
Over years, the wider brand did much of the heavy lifting, and ultimately the logo is the reminder and the reassurance. Your brand is everything about you – your logo merely represents it, and ‘evokes’ it. That’s why people often say ‘wow, that’s brave’ when a big, established brand changes its primary logo, because the association is temporarily disrupted. It’s also why brands can change subtly as they grow and adapt, but the logo rarely does.
At least not drastically, or at the same time.
In short, they’re closely connected, but by no means interchangeable. Understanding the difference can help you better understand how people perceive and interact with your business, how they remember you, and how much easier and more intuitive your marketing becomes.
When they complement each other, just like musicians in a band or actors in a play, or directors in a meeting – brands and logos achieve far more than they could on their own. The sum becomes more than its parts, so to speak. For businesses and organisations, the pairing is recognisable, reassuring, and consistent across every marketing channel – your website, business cards, signage, packaging, and even ‘how you sound’ with the words you choose to market with. It’s about looking and sounding, and feeling, ‘like you’.
Your logo only really comes to life as a brand asset when everything that sits beneath it aligns in this way – when it begins to tell the story all by itself. This is the golden egg of marketing.
How do you achieve that? You start with the brand itself…
Your brand is the experience people remember
It’s the personality your business projects. It’s how you ‘look and sound’, and how consistent you are across channels and touchpoints. It needs to be true, compelling, and ultimately recognisable.
It determines your audience’s experience during and after any interaction with you, and needs to be true and consistent across:
- written tone of voice
- visual style
- website and user experience
- customer service
- marketing and advertising
- products and services
- reputation and reviews
Your brand is what people feel. Your logo is the reminder. It evokes that feeling. It might look great, but it only really comes to life after the brand experience.
That’s why some of the most successful businesses with strong brands tend to inspire loyalty beyond simply price or convenience. Customers connect with values, personality and experience as much as the product and its price-point. If not more so.
Work backwards
For many start-ups, designing a logo is also one of the first marketing activities they undertake. That’s understandable. It lays down a marker. But even though it’s ‘just a logo’, it can define things too early on, and prevent promising brands from exploring what they truly represent to their target audiences.
Brand and logo are part of the same jigsaw puzzle. Your logo is integral, but it’s just one piece. It will likely end up somewhere in the middle of the puzzle, but it tends to be much harder to start from there and build out from it. Using the same analogy, the logo is often the final piece. You already know it fits, and it completes the picture.
How brand and logo work together
The most successful businesses – whatever the sector or niche – are consistent in look and feel, wherever they appear. They have a clear and compelling personality across all channels, and it all feels relatable, connected and reassuring. That’s branding. The logo is the identifier; the reassurance. It somehow conveys your brand, accurately and succinctly, and reflects its personality – hence it often goes through a few iterations when that brand is in its early growth stages.
But beware…
If your logo communicates professionalism and simplicity, but your website is cluttered and hard to navigate, your social media is non-existent or inconsistent, and your customer service doesn’t join the dots, the overall brand experience quickly becomes disconnected and contradictory.
Equally, an excellent brand strategy deserves a simple visual identity that’s distinctive enough to support it.
That’s why successful branding isn’t just about creating something attractive. It’s about creating a compelling visual language that’s meaningful, memorable and consistent across every platform where new and existing customers interact with you.
On that basis, here are a few simple tips for branding and logos:
- Design your logo around your wider brand strategy – not vice versa.
- Keep your visual identity consistent across every marketing channel.
- Make sure your logo works big and small, in colour and black and white, in print and online.
- Don’t expect a new logo or brand refresh to solve wider marketing challenges.
- Create your logo for your brand, not for your target audience.
- Ask as many people as possible what they think. Even total strangers.
- Treat branding as an ongoing commitment. Things change, and so will you.
The bigger picture
A professionally designed logo can help you stand out, but it’s merely a component of your brand. The brand builds trust, recognition and lasting customer relationships. Your logo might start a conversation, but your brand should hold the thread and build an understanding. Only then will the logo be the identifier.
