If you are creating a new website, establishing your brand’s presence on social media, or updating your branding, it’s important to FIRST understand what your target audience responds to the most. At DMA, we’ve found that one of our “secrets” to moving through these processes successfully from the start is to identify a few brands that you’re inspired by or that you’d like to emulate in your marketing. This is essentially what we call a “brand idol” – another brand that your company identifies with, feels inspired by and has the qualities that you feel are important for your audience to connect to with your own brand. Typically this brand is another food or beverage brand.

Here are 3 ways that identifying a brand idol(s) can help you direct your marketing team and designers before embarking on a website, logo or social media strategy project:

It Gives Your Team a Starting Point

The ability to identify design elements from other websites and logos that you want your brand to model is a great foundation to begin your project. Providing these examples to your marketing team or designers will give them a visual starting point to move forward with. And if you find a brand idol whose “voice” and tone of writing you love, this can really help those who are writing your content start to develop a personality that’s right for your brand.  

Your Creative Team Can’t Read Your Mind

Concrete examples will help bring your ideas to life when they may be hard to explain otherwise. Sometimes we have something in our heads but we have trouble leading the designers down the right path to getting that on paper. A brand idol helps them see what you’re visualizing. This can help with copywriting and photography, too. For example, you may like the way a brand tells its sustainability story, or the feel of a certain photo on their website. Explain these elements to your writers, photographers and creative team- they should be able to create something similar that is still uniquely yours.

Inspiration- But Not Imitation

Use brand idols to see things from a different perspective, but don’t let it cloud your own vision. The important thing to remember when identifying and utilizing brand idols is not to blur the line between imitation and inspiration. Pointing out things you think your audience would connect with from another brand can shape the direction you want your brand to go, but avoid explicitly copying them. No two brands are exactly alike- and your branding shouldn’t be either. The brand idol should give your team the freedom to get inspired to create an original idea custom-made for you!

Are you struggling with your own branding? We’ve guided several fresh produce companies through this process and would love to help you discover what’s uniquely yours! Contact us for more information on how we can help.