The importance of branding ahead of launching a fashion brand online.
Why invest time in branding?
Your branding is a fundamental element that attracts new customers and makes current customers stay with you.
Uniformity in branding communication is also extremely important in the digital world. You will have a lot of marketing assets in public view at one time; make them uniform with clear branding.
Branding is often thought of just a logo; it is so much more. It’s a defined way in which you communicate with your audience.
- How do you want to be perceived by a stranger that has never heard of you?
- How do you want to communicate with a customer?
Your brand consists of;
- A voice
- A vision
- A visual style
- A personality
When all 4 work in unison, your audience knows who is talking to them and why they should buy from you. That is why it is important to create your fashion brand branding ahead of launching online.
“You’re a fashion brand, not a label. You are more than just the product!” — Carley.J.
Knowledge from Anna Wintour (conde naste) regarding branding.
- Build a vision others can believe in.
- Own your vision.
- Build excitement and think about how you engage the widest possible audience.
- Be thoughtful about what your choices say about the message you want to communicate.
- Make your mark, especially when starting out.
- Believe in your instincts and execute on them.
- People expect to change.
The 4 branding methods explained.
Ahead of your fashion brand launch, you need to decide and create your; brands personality and colour palette to inform your brand’s name, font and logo.
Why?
As all of these 4 end results will be essential for your website, social channels, product meaning back neck labels, prints designs etc Anything related to your business needs to be branded, so again thing email signature, WeChat / WhatsApp, Linkedin …
Now let’s cover each branding method in greater detail.
"You’re a fashion brand, not a label. You are more than just the product!"
Unzipped
Brand personality.
Define your brand’s personality by deciding which side of the spectrum you lie. For example, is your brand more fun or serious? Accessible to all or upscale? Spontaneous or careful thinking? A leader or an underdog? Urban or outdoorsy?
Once you have a pool of attributes – words, you will visually be able to understand your brand’s personality which will now inform all other choices.
Colour palette.
The simpler the pallet the better. A rough rule of thumb; dont go beyond 4 colours in your pallet as it starts to dilute the brand and makes it hard for a prospective and new customer to recognise your brand quickly.
2 + 1 Rule = 2 primary + 1 accent = the optimal colour pallet
Brand name.
Firstly before going any further I want to point out that before deciding a brand name there are a few conditions that must be met first:
- Can I trademark it?
- Can I get a good relevant domain name of it?
- Will a stranger understand what I do from it?
- Can I build a loyal customer following with it?
As a starting point, I suggest you start with a word brainstorm. Dump all the words you like into a sheet then categories them, look on https://www.thesaurus.com/ & https://wordassociations.net/en to find word alternatives to your words. Then take a step away and keep refining this list until you have only a few left. To learn the last critical steps check out Fashion brand name generator guide.
Font.
The font(s) you choose need to be used across all text communications; emails, website, lead magnets, ads (where possible), proposal documents, etc. They each use different software, so you need to choose a font that is widely available.
Logo.
To create a logo you really need to create a design brief to really answer what you’re looking for. For example; list your brand personality words found above. Answer what are your brand values (max 3). Answer these along with your colour palette and this should be enough information to start the design process.
Tip: find other fashion brands online where you love their logo and use these as inspiration.
DIY or hire help?
You need to decide if you will DIY the logo, hire an international contractor, or a local agency. They each have their own merits and cons. Whichever you choose, use the next slides to create a design brief for yourself or the hired designer.
You get what you pay for with design services. I do not recommend using services like Fiverr as you will get a copy of another logo; it will not be unique. Depending on your budget, use a local design agency or hire a designer for a project on one of these services:
Easy branding next steps ...
- Buy Fashion brand name generator & gain instant access to all the branding documents you will need pre-launch.
- Enrol in 6-steps to launch course and learn every step and task you need to complete to launch a fashion brand online!
