When I've asked clients and business colleagues the question - 'What is the key element to promoting your brand?' I generally get the same few answers, 'Logo / Brochure / Website' and so on.

There is nothing wrong with those answers but there is one thing that I believe comes before any of those and without it these other things would have no focus.

In the following video I explain what I believe the key element to your brand is and why.

Transcript of video:

Hey folks, today I'm going to start by asking a really simple question. What is the most important thing that you have that promotes your brand? That one thing, what's the most important thing? I think I'm pretty confident that I can guess what the main or most common answers would be. May be things like it's my logo, it's my brochure, it's my website. Might even be a simple thing like, it's my business card.

Would it surprise you to learn that you, you are the most important thing in your brand. You control the brand, you're the one that decides its journey, you're the one that decides the aims and objectives of that brand. So often, I meet with a client who wants a logo or a brand identity, and they haven't a clue about what that core message is that they're trying to convey with their brand. If you don't know what your brand is trying to say, then how can you expect your website, or your brochure, or even your own staff to convey your brand's message to the wider world?

When I work with clients on a brand project, the first thing that I do is arrange a half-day workshop. This helps us get to the guts and get to the core of what the brand is. Only once we have that can I move on to the concept stage and start to draw up and draft up some designs for the branding. If you want to create a successful brand identity, make sure that you've got your aims and objectives absolutely nailed, or what you're going to end up with is a really wishy-washy run-of-the-mill poorly constructed brand. Really, nobody wants that because all you're going to do you're just wasting budget, you're wasting your hard-earned cash on something which really isn't going to achieve anything for you.

I would suggest that you speak to the designer and have them go through that journey with you so that you can get all detail done before you start any design work, or if you'd rather, you could do it on your own, there is a lot of resources out there. You can head over to my website, pixelsink.com, and I've got a few blogs there which will help guide you on what you need to do to create a successful brand identity.

I hope you've enjoyed today's video. If you have, make sure you subscribe to my channel on You Tube, give it a thumbs-up, share it with the wider world. Until next time, stay creative.