Strong
verbal identity is a key to success, as a new generation of consumers seeks out brands that reflect the ever-changing marketplace and world. A company’s messaging should be aware of and respond to these evolving cultural shifts in and outside the company, which include:
• Gender equality
• Cultural and racial biases
• Equality of opportunity leading to the social and economic well-being
• The challenges of people with disabilities
• Climate change and environmental activism
How do you create a
brand identity that builds a sense of trust, loyalty, and confidence among employees, investors, shareholders, customers, and the media? That’s where we come in. At Odgis + Co, we design creative solutions and verbal playbooks that will help you formulate or adopt consistent and clear brand messaging strategies that all internal and external stakeholders can embrace.
The Matrix concept for the animation below was adapted from Harvard Business Review Jan-Feb 2019
What Does Your Brand Stand For? by Stephen A. Greyser and Mats Urde
Messaging Matrix Explained
Core brand – what you stand for
Mission and Vision – your guidance and inspiration
Culture – the attitudes and behaviors of your company
Competencies – what you do better than your competitors
Expression – the distinctive way you express yourself
Personality – the human characteristics and character of your organization
Value Prop – the distinguishing benefit you offer customers
Relationships – the trust you have earned with your customers
Position – how you’re viewed in the hearts and minds of your stakeholders
Our Verbal Identity Process
While messaging may seem like an abstract concept, we have created a multifaceted approach to establish and maintain a consistent and effective verbal brand identity. First, we conduct an extensive audit of your branding efforts and a series of stakeholder interviews. This discovery phase is designed to refine the positioning of your brand and outline opportunities for both clarification and differentiation.
We then perform what we call a Brand Story Workshop, the goal of which is to curate a compelling brand story in line with your corporate culture. As we work on brand strategy, we create “voice” guidelines with real-life examples and best practices to ensure consistent verbal communication both internally and externally. The voice is gradually evolved into a brand personality with character attributes that extensively describe your business or product. And we collaborate with you continuously in this process to assess feedback and challenging ideas.
To bring our recommendations to life and help you better visualize real-world implications, we’ll show you prototypical applications – a sample web page, email newsletter, book cover, piece of marketing material, etc. After the foundation of the verbal identity or Brand Platform is finalized, we develop a Creative Brief to guide and align the visual and verbal representations of your brand with your new strategy.