‘It’s just a picture and some words’ was the response we got recently from a prospective client, in regards to the quote sent across for the rebranding their corporate identity.

Here at the Absolute office, we’ve had a lot of Branding work coming through the doors recently. So we thought it was about time we shared the actual process that goes into designing and creating a brand, and why that comes at a price.

A brand is what you as a customer sees first, when you land on a website, when you receive a company’s letterhead or even just the footer of an email. This is the way that a company communicates with you, and basically, it’s why you as a consumer spend your hard earned money with them, as opposed to their competition.

In the Absolute Studio, before we start work on branding, we need to define the company. WHY they do what they do? We already know WHAT they do, and we already know HOW they do it, but The ‘Why’ is the most important question of all.

This isn’t a simple answer such as ‘to make money’ or ‘to increase profits’ this is WHY customers choose you, WHY are you different to your competition, it’s getting to the bottom of your company ethos and values, and moulding that into a brand tone of voice. This is ‘Positioning’ and without it, it’s an almost impossible task to create a brand.

Once we have defined the WHY, we start by fully researching the clients industry. We always try to get our clients to stand out from the crowd, and to push the limits. We create a range of concepts each time for clients. Bearing in mind that each of these concepts can take days of non-stop creative work to finesse. And it’s usually the ones which look incredibly simple, that are in fact, the hardest to perfect.

A famous example of this would be Nike. It’s a tick (or swoosh) with the strapline ‘Just do it’. Now to someone who doesn’t work in the creative industry, that strapline could have been created in 10 minutes. This in fact, was a calculated, creative, expensive and time consuming project. However, THAT slogan took Nike from an $877 million turnover to $9.2 billion turnover in worldwide sales from 1988 to 1998. Those 3 words, and that campaign have underpinned the whole Nike brand ever since.

We take an enormous pride in our work here at Absolute, and we like to think that our work and our client’s financial figures speak for themselves in terms of Return on Investment. Take a look at our portfolio to find out why.