Your brand is not a logo —
When people think of a brand, a logo is often the first thing that comes to mind. This isn’t wrong, your logo is a big and important part of your brand. However, a well thought out brand includes so much more than just a logo.
At JAC&, we break brands down into two components; the invisible parts and the visuals. We focus on the things you can’t see first and foremost. This helps us design with purpose and ensures our clients are thinking of their whole brand before getting caught up in visual details. Our process covers:
The invisible parts
- Your brand story
- A clearly defined offering
- Audience profiling
- Brand character and tone of voice
- Purpose exploration
- Your position in the market and point of difference
The brand visuals
- Your logo
- Supporting graphics or imagery
- Typography selection or creation
- Colour scheme
Once these things are finalised, we sum everything up for you in comprehensive brand guidelines and work with you to create a launch and marketing strategy. We work this way to ensure our clients are well-equipped and confident when they take their brand to market.
There are varying takes on what makes a successful brand and everyone has different levels of depth in their process (hence the wide discrepancy in brand pricing between studios). We believe a successful brand is one that not only looks great on the outside, but on the inside too.
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Adapting —
One of the benefits of being a small business is the ability to adapt quickly.
At JAC&, we start our branding process with a thorough pre-design phase which entails a workshop that – amongst other things – explores purpose, defines audience and clarifies offering. We think this is a hugely valuable process for a business of any size to go through, at least once. For a small business, revisiting the process regularly can help considerably with improvement and growth. We find brainstorming the following regularly can be very helpful:
- Revisit your purpose. Why are you doing this? Why did you start?
- Understand your audience. Are your audience who you thought they’d be?
- Clarify your offering. Does your offering appeal to your actual audience?
Recently we went through this process ourselves and thought it would be valuable to share the journey. After announcing our new offering, JAC& Brand Workshops, we took some time to reflect and adapt.
We started with purpose, brainstorming why we created the offering and uncovered the following:
- To help small business owners understand what a brand is and how valuable it can be to business.
- To help new business owners build the invisible parts of their brand and gain clarity around who they are.
- To help existing business owners revisit and strengthen their brand.
- To help people with lower budgets build a brand with depth and substance.
To better understand our audience, we:
- Reviewed all data and insights available to us.
- Assessed all enquiries received for underlying concerns/hesitation.
- Asked questions of as many people as we could.
After going through the above steps, we realised we knew who our audience were but not what they needed. We spent considerable time assessing how we could achieve our purpose while balancing the business’ needs at the same time and landed on a compromise. Increasing participants slightly and reducing ticket cost invites our intended audience back in and allows us to help the people we want to.
Going through the above process can lead to so many different outcomes – financial or otherwise – if your business or offering isn’t doing what you thought it would, ask questions of yourself and others then, adapt.
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Introducing JAC& Brand Workshops —
We’re incredibly excited to announce our new offering – JAC& Brand Workshops – designed to help small business owners add value to their business through a thoughtful branding and marketing approach.
Working in small groups we will explore what makes a successful brand, giving you the tools needed to speak clearly to your ideal client or customer. We will help you define your place in the market by clarifying your point of difference and establishing your brand character and story.
You will walk away with the knowledge needed to create a strong brand and a marketing strategy that fits your individual needs.
Workshops entail:
- Presentation, guided exercises and discussions in a comfortable environment
- Workshop tools supplied inc. notebook by Supply Paper Co.
- Refreshments by Antipodes Water and lunch by Goldilocks
- Post-workshop advice and resources
Workshop Schedule:
10.30-11.30
Defining your purpose and clarifying your offering
11.30 – 12.30
Developing brand story and character
12.30 – 1.00
Lunch by Goldilocks
1.00 – 2.00
Understanding your audience, position in the market and point of difference
2.00 – 3.30
Creating a realistic brand and marketing strategy
3.30 – 4.00
Questions and group discussion
If you would like to take part in a workshop, please contact Jac directly on jac@jac-and.co or 0450 189 308.
43D Presents Basic —
Last week, along with the team at 43 Derby Street, we hosted our very first event in the flexible space – Basic – a monthly talk series that encourages open and honest discussion about business.
We had Maryanne Moodie as our guest, who was wonderfully open and generous with her life/work story. We found the chat really insightful and thought we’d share a few take-aways from the night:
- On being asked about growing her business and a very healthy social following, Maryanne reinforced the importance of building community, stepping out from behind the screen and just asking for what you want. We love the simplicity of ‘just ask’ and have been giving it a go ourselves since.
- When questioned about balancing family and a successful business, Maryanne offered up some great advice on being selective in what you choose to pursue. We think this message is so important, it’s okay to do less. It’s okay to prioritise yourself and your family, we don’t have to do everything in a hurry.
- Questions on creativity, originality and having your work copied got a really interesting conversation going. Maryanne had some beautifully simple tips for starting the creative process that stemmed from her days as an art teacher. Having had her work copied multiple times, Maryanne was a strong advocate for moving forward. She had some great thoughts around working on bettering yourself rather than focussing on someone trying to imitate you.
The evening really went to show how much we can learn from each other, we had a diverse range of industries represented in the audience and everyone said they found real value in the discussion.
Basic is held on the last Thursday of every month. The next speaker is very special to us, we recommend coming along! Tickets and further information are available at www.43derbystreet.com/upcoming.
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Our word for 2018 —
We’re not into resolutions, our wonderful business mentor suggested a great concept that we love though. A theme word, something that captures the feeling you want to experience in the year ahead.
Our word for 2018 is calm.
2017 was a very exciting and rewarding year for JAC&. We were joined by Sara, did some beautiful work for clients, refined our process and offering, launched 43 Derby Street and collaborated with some very talented peers and suppliers.
We’ve achieved a lot behind the scenes over the past few years and while we will continue to refine and improve our offering, this year we’re looking forward to slowing down and giving more to our clients.
Last year we put some thought into our purpose and uncovered our greatest satisfaction comes from helping build businesses that improve the lives of people who run them.
We love helping people launch and grow businesses in a calm and considered way. We want to help people get more from the branding process, realise their potential and create a business they enjoy working in and on.
We’re looking forward to leading by example and helping our clients approach their branding and marketing in a thoughtful and collected way. Through our relationships with our clients, we hope to help them build a better relationship with their working life.