THE 7 BRAND ELEMENTS – WITH EXAMPLES!
The true value of a brand lives in the heart and minds of customers. This is a powerful sentence, exciting but scary. The exciting part of it is related to the idea of connecting, giving meaning to something, and being able to impact and create a brand army literally, now… the scary part of it is something that marketers can’t avoid: we’re not able to control it in 100%. If the true value of a brand lives in the mind and hearts of customers, how do we as brand managers build it?
This post presents the 7 brand elements that are fundamental to creating this connection that will lead to what we call brand equity. Below you will find a brief explanation of each of these 7 elements and real examples to inspire while designing your own or client’s brand.
Brand elements are the most important part of your brand identity. They support all your communication strategies, from visual to text or any other type of exposure. It is important to mention that defining your brand elements is an important step to understanding the value of a brand, however, it is not the first one – before defining your brand elements, you must think of
- Your brand positioning
Your target market, your benefits, and your unique contribution to it
- Your brand personality
If your brand was a person, how it would look like? Physically and mentally
Positioning and personality defined? Now it is time to put them into action while defining the 7 brand elements. There is one rule to keep in mind while defining any of these elements and it is that they must be: (1) memorable, (2) transferable, (3) adaptable, (4) meaningful, (5) likable, and (6) protectable.
ELEMENT #1) NAMES
Defining the name of your brand is like giving life to it, making it real. It is delicate and strong brands use their name to talk about the history behind the brand. A good example of it is AMAZON. There are so many analysis we can do just by the name of this brand and my favorite ones are:
- Starts with “A”: this was proposital, as this letter being the first of the alphabet.
- Transferable: amazon is nature, known all over the world, does not matter the language.
- 3 syllables: easy to say and remember, not to small not too big, just enough.
ELEMENT #2) SYMBOLS
Not all brands use symbols and let’s say that we could “skip” this part, however it really helps for simple recognition and it is a trend nowadays. Let’s say your name is not as transferable as “amazon” – however, people can rely on your symbol to recognize you by what comes with it. For me, the best example for symbols is Apple.
It does not matter what part of the world you are, what language you speak, if you are just a little tech savvy, you’re able to recognize this symbol. The power of symbols is to strong that Apple actually does not write “Apple” anymore, it is just the symbol itself.
This is becoming a trend for brands that aims to go worldwide, another example is Mastercard, they recently removed the name “mastercard” of their official logo, jusing using their symbol.
ELEMENT #3) SLOGANS
I have a preferred slogan and it is: just do it. Honestly, this is so symple and powerful! Slogan is a memorable phrase or motto intended to be a repetitive expression of a purpose or promise and in case you don’t recall the “just do it”, it is from Nike.
This slogan represents the band as it is, full of energy! No excuses, just go and do it! This slogan is so powerful that people are able to connect in different ways, from facing their fears and moving forward to even removing the excuses and buying the product!
ELEMENT #4) LOGO
It is common to ask the difference between logo and symbols, hence some famous brands are actually using their symbols as the logo itself. However, this is just a trend – logo is a combination of text and images to recognize a brand. A good example is Spotify. As as app, we all see a green rounded shape with 3 curved lines but the logo is this symbol followed by the brand’s name:
Logo Symbol
ELEMENT #5) CHARACTERS
Characters (or mascots) are friendly representations of your brand. The idea of having a mascot bring so many creative option to communicate with your audience, you can give this character a different name, voice and it can become the most important piece of communication of your brand. Choosing a character is extremely delicate not just by creating it, having a character requires good management skills, you’re giving life to your brand and you don’t want it to mess up, right?
One of the most famous characters is Donald McDonalds, a happy clown representing the most famous fast food brand. However, not everyone likes clows, right? How do you differentiate the thriller character from a fast food brand? Just an idea of how complex it can be!
ELEMENT #6) COLORS
I love this element because it has a strong connection with psychology. Have you ever heard that colors are related to emotions? Our brain gets triggered for some colors to think about hungry, happiness, reliability and even fear. It is not by occasion that most of the fast foods have red as part of their brands. Red is a color that according to scientits, can rev’s up people’s appetite. Have you ever noticed this color on fast foods?
ELEMENT #7) FONTS
Remember when mentioned before that it is important to define the brand personality before choosing the elements? Fonts are a great example of it. Of course that symbols and colors are also related to personality but in my opinion, fonts are the strongest ones to showcase it. There are so many different font styles and if you google it, you can see that to describe a font style, adjectives are used. Examples of font styles to look for: fancy, urban, serious, heavy, light… If you have your personality defined, try using one of those words to look for a font or guide your designer in creating your own.