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Build Your Highly Profitable Brand & Leave Your Competitors Way Behind

Persona Branding & Design makes

professional brand strategy accessible to you

with simplified, actionable systems that get

profitable results for your business:  

 

— We make the complex easy as ABC using our 

proprietary IP with 20 years of award-winning expertise, so you can 

Transform Your Brand & Increase Your Sales 

 

Be The ONE, the brand that’s most differentiated, relevant, 

credible, trusted, and commands a premium, so you can 

achieve higher revenue and leave your competitors way behind

What is Brand Strategy?

Brand strategy is the codification and mapping out of your brand in order to make it highly distinctive, different, memorable, credible, trustworthy and extremely likeable by your ideal target customer.

It’s about identifying and leveraging your brand’s distinction factors, emotional advantages and connective hooks to your ideal audience — with integrity and authenticity — so you can achieve and maintain your competitive edge and grow your profits.

It’s important to note that branding is not marketing or design. These are separate disciplines that are also essential elements in building a successful business.

The fact is, branding strategy coupled with the business strategy, provides the direction for key commercial decisions in your organisation along with culture development, marketing campaigns and design execution — so it comes first. It’s the bedrock foundation underpinning your whole business because it provides the direction for growing your revenue, and building your standout brand together with direction for how you’ll execute your growth strategy through your marketing campaigns and design application.

Branding strategy, marketing and design are separate yet interlinked disciplines and core to all high performing businesses. The question is how to utilise and leverage each of them to best effect like all the leading brands in the world.

Want to discover more about building your standout, highly profitable, №1 brand working with us?

Get in touch because we lead you through your brand building journey, whether you’re a well-established business hungry to seriously accelerate your expansion and take things to the next level or in the early years of rapid growth spurts.  

  1. Schedule an appointment — we can meet in person or online
  2. Allow us to create a customised plan for you
  3. Let’s implement the plan together  
  4. Contact us [email protected] or ring +353 1 8322724 (GMT Dublin/London time 9:00 – 17:30 Mon – Fri weekdays) 

Why Build Your Powerhouse Brand Strategy?

The truth is, when developed properly, your brand strategy enables you to be relevant, purposeful, innovative, inspiring and on-trend in the context of your market sector. It provides direction for and supports your business strategy. It influences the total operation of your business so you can achieve long-term brand relevance, consistent brand behaviours, compelling messaging that resonates and a strong customer-centric culture that attracts and retains high-performing talent and customers alike.

A strong brand strategy empowers you to build a brand with meaning and significance that attracts the right people, your ideal kind of people — a loyal community of customers and talent alike. It enables you to create incomparable brand experiences across all points of contact and channels of communication in your organisation so you can generate high-quality leads, increase market share, achieve premium price points, grow sales and close high-value deals. In a nutshell, it’s a critical and essential factor in your commercial success.

How to Build Your Powerhouse Brand Strategy

We understand why developing a brand strategy can be one of the most challenging steps for those unfamiliar with the process because there’s a lot of misinformation around what branding or brand strategy actually is. Also because brand strategy comes before marketing or design, and provides the direction for marketing and design, it’s no surprise that business leaders and entrepreneurs sometimes find it problematic.

So whether you’re building an ambitious new challenger brand, disrupting the status quo or expanding your international empire, your brand strategy is a vital step in building your business successfully, B2B or B2C, product or service, SME or global enterprise. It even ties in as a key part of developing and managing your personal brand, particularly when you’re in a leadership role and, most importantly, helps you mitigate risk.

This diagram below illustrates the key elements required in building out a strong brand strategy together with examples of the areas typically included as a core part of the implementation process — getting your brand out into the word and generating sales.

 

Build Your Brand Strategy and Foundations

BEFORE Design, Communications or Marketing Activities

FIRST
A brand must evaluate, identify, codify, map out and articulate what it stands for – to become highly differentiated, visible, credible, trusted, and much liked, so it can command a premium, give its customers a compelling reason to buy, and achieve higher revenue.

The elements listed below are the roadmap for every brand because the outputs provide the direction for key commercial decisions as well as communications, design application, and marketing activities.

SECOND
Design, visual content, text, sales scripts, campaigns and marketing activities and brand collateral are created to communicate the brand’s offering and attract its ideal customers to close the sale.
They all take their direction from the outputs in the first column — encapsulated in your Master Brand Strategy Document.
The messaging, visual language expressing the brand in a meaningful context is created once the factors that make it different, credible, trustworthy and likeable to its ideal customers and stakeholders have been identified in stage one as listed.
Your cohesive brand strategy growth plan is then implemented to increase visibility, credibility and profits.
Psychology of InfluenceBrand and Sub-Brand Naming
Brand FundamentalsTaglines
Brand PurposeVisual Identity & Graphics
Brand VisionLogo Design & Fonts
Brand MissionSignature Colour Palette
Brand ValuesWebsite/Social Platforms
Positioning (relative to customer perceived competitors)Copywriting Style and Signature Language
Brand PromiseCore Brand Graphic Elements
Product/Service Productisation and HierarchiesPhotography/Illustration Style
Purchaser Personas / Customer AvatarsVideo and Music Style
Signature Language and Tone-of-VoiceBrand Collateral e.g. Packaging Design, Brochures
Brand Personality (archetype, not mascots or VIPs)Advertising, Direct Mail, Lead Magnets
Brand StoryBrand Sales Scripts
Brand CultureMarketing Campaigns
Customer Journey and ExperienceThought Leadership, Blog, Newsletter
Value PropositionCo-Branding & Partnership Collaboration
Master Brand Strategy DocumentBrand Style Guide
Management Brand Induction and Leadership DevelopmentStaff Brand Induction and Training, Brand Champion Training, Culture Development

Note: Your Brand Style Guide can only be fully developed after all your brand assets and brand collateral, as listed in the right-hand column above, have been created because a brand style guide is a tool to manage and protect your brand assets after you’ve been through the full creative process, developed and produced your brand identity assets.

A brand style guide can’t be produced until the creative process has been completed because the fully developed assets make up the guide content. They are compiled in the guide after they’ve been generated from the creative process — the same way you can’t produce a film or promotions without first creating the script and casting your characters.

Building Your Long-Term Powerhouse Brand

Done correctly, your brand strategy provides the direction for key aspects of your business including customer needs, emotional drivers, pain and success points, product or service structures, brand collateral and competitive challenges.

The outputs from building and developing your brand strategy are then used to direct implementation, the action plan for putting your brand to work — the communications system that provides structure and guidance for all points of contact within a business, both internally and externally with your stakeholders and customers.

Your brand will engage in countless communications, small and large, repeatedly on and offline, in multiple ways throughout the life of your business or organisation and that communication must be consistent and congruent in all its forms — all of which comes from your brand strategy.

Why is brand consistency and congruency so important you might ask? Because if your brand interactions, messaging, customer experience or internal culture, for example, are inconsistent it breeds distrust. When trust is undermined customers do not buy and your talent, the backbone to your business, looks for more attractive alternatives elsewhere.

 

As Featured In

Branding Strategy

 

Build Your Standout Brand Strategy With Us

Part of a successful brand strategy is defining what is immutable and what is flexible. Execution may change while the brand strategy remains the same. Tactics may vary but the core brand strategy and its DNA remains constant. To build out your brand strategy we use the Persona Brand Building Blueprint™ system, which is also used on The Economist Group platform tried and tested to ensure you get the perfect solution to fit your specific needs at the right time.

We know that sometimes it’s a struggle to develop a brand strategy and build your business successfully to achieve the greatest return on investment, so we’ve developed three different ways of working with us to help you build your standout, powerhouse brand.

Depending on your preferences we have the perfect branding solution for you:

  1. We can build your brand for you – Discover more here or get in touch [email protected] or ring +353 1 8322724
  2. Enable you to build your brand – Check out the Persona Brand Strategy Leadership Programme here. This is a live, interactive programme online where you work on your brand with us codifying and mapping out your brand strategy for business growth. Alternatively, join our half-day Branding Accelerator Masterclass for a fast-injection of brand building essentials. Ask about our Personal and Corporate Leadership Brand Alignment Masterclass
  3. Want a DIY solution? Check out our ‘How to Audit Your Brand’ eprogramme here and How to Build a Brand eprogramme here

 

Your Persona Client Satisfaction Guarantee

  1. When you work with us we’ll create a customised brand building plan and strategy with clear investment for you tailored to your specific requirements and preferences
  2. You’ll know each step of your brand building journey before we start because we’ll discuss it, document it and agree on it with you before work commences
  3. You’ll have timelines, key milestones and deliverables to evaluate and approve for each stage and part of your brand building process
  4. Because we know the unexpected sometimes happens we can make adjustments along the way if you need it and if something extra is requested we’ll ensure you’re fully appraised about what that entails before committing
  5. As we achieve pre-agreed objectives you’ll be able to evaluate your brand building work and strategy in progress, coupled with the outcomes to ensure return on investment
Get in touch today because we’d love to get started helping you build your standout, powerhouse brand so you can increase your profits and leave your competitors way behind. Email us [email protected] or ring us +35318322724 (GMT 9:00-17:30) and ask about our VIP Leadership Brand Strategy Re-evaluation.

Got a question or need some help with your brand?

We’re thrilled! Send us a short note and we’ll be in touch.
We do our best to read every message within 48 business hours. We’re kind of obsessive about customer care so if you don’t hear back, that means we didn’t get your message so please do send it again.

    “I recently organized a large Business Forum for business owners and stakeholders entitled ‘After the Storm – New Business Opportunities’ to highlight the challenges and changing face of doing business in 2013. I was delighted to engage Lorraine Carter to speak at the Forum as I have seen first hand her expertise in Branding and Design.

    More importantly I know Lorraine as a Professional Speaker who delivers not only excellent content but is passionate about the positive financial impact of great branding and design.

    Lorraine’s talk entitled ‘Brand Your Way Out of Recession’ was extremely well received. Her clarity, eloquence and use of storytelling evoked clear examples of how both big, medium and even small businesses have reached the top with successful use of effective branding and design.

    I’d recommend Lorraine as a Speaker at your next event or conference. She is an expert in what she does but more importantly she is an expert who knows how to speak about it!”

    Sharon Cahir | Author Solicitor Lawyers and Leaders Coach and Trainer

    “I have had the benefit of working alongside Lorraine Carter with mutual clients and will happily do so again.

    Lorraine understands the power of brands for businesses in a way that makes practical sense to businesses. Her dedication to her craft is a great credit to her along with her attention to her clients and the details that matter.

    Lorraine understands how to work with people who don’t work with brands on a daily basis and above all Lorraine has a bottom line value orientation. I look forward to continuing working with Lorraine and her team at Persona Branding & Design.”

    Dave Gribben Enable Better Business

    SHS-500px

    “The Maguire & Paterson brand was established in 1882 and therefore the rebranding and new packaging had to be managed in a very sensitive and caring manner.

    Persona Branding & Design worked very effectively with the M&P management team ensuring that the findings of consumer research were correctly interpreted and factored into the brand revitalization and new range designs. We found their ability to steer us of significant benefit.

    Persona Branding & Design also ensured that we kept our focus on core objectives and diplomatically challenged us at various stages on our thought process, ensuring that any brand preferences did not stray from the core objectives.

    We would have no hesitation in recommending Persona Branding & Design and we would be very pleased to speak with any potential client(s).”

    Neil ScaifeHead of Commercial Control | SHS Sales & Marketing Ltd

    Rubicoin-500px

    “Lorraine Carter creates meaningful and immaculately designed brands based on a deep subject matter expertise.  She, through Persona Branding & Design, provides a world class professional services for all sized enterprises.

    Her understanding of target markets results in memorable and distinctive work that empathises with end customers. Lorraine brings a uniquely positive energy to every meeting that leaves her clients engaged and delighted.

    Emmet SavageFounder and CEO | Rubicoin

    “Lorraine Carter is a true marketing professional. She is highly creative and has delivered impactful, innovative brand solutions for my business for almost a decade.”

    Rita AhernManaging Director | Food Matters

    Connemara-Seafoods-500px

    “Persona Branding & Design supports our company with an excellent level of creativity in all areas of branding, design and marketing. They listen, understand and interpret our needs perfectly with a formidable proficiency in execution. It is only fair to say that our company expectations of original briefs have always been exceeded.”

    Andy MulloyManaging Director | Connemara Seafoods Ltd

    Caterhire-500px“I have worked with Persona Branding & Design for more than 8 years. They have become an invaluable extension of our team, working with us in a flexible, intelligent and pragmatic way.

    Once commissioned, they became part of the business extending their expert opinion and brilliant creative solutions in total harmony with our requirements which has achieved great results. This is important since it is often the detail that can make or break a business relationship.  Their work philosophy is the best contract a client can hope to receive.”

    Gavin DivillyManaging Director | Cater Hire Ireland Ltd

    Wavin-500px“Persona Design successfully applied their extensive branding experience from consumer goods directly to an important industrial B2B product range within our organisation. This was pivotal in the formulation of our brand communications strategy which also included design, packaging, point of sale material and brand promotional plan, all of which contributed to a very successful commercial outcome.”

    Michael O’DonohueCountry Director | Wavin Ireland Ltd

    “Lorraine is an excellent start to finish project manager with tremendous creativity and ability to work budgets and timelines effectively.”

    Kelley SpillaneSenior Vice President | Castle Brands

    Country-Crest-500px“I can’t say enough about the excellent work that Persona Branding & Design has done for us. They didn’t just look at our design requirements but challenged us to really look at the fundamentals of our brand and our target market.

    They fully engaged with our team and questioned our thinking, providing strong guidance when needed to keep us all on track. Not only is their work exceptional but it’s an absolute pleasure to work with them too.

    The end product has evoked huge comment from customers and buyers alike as to its thought provoking branding, design and uniqueness, thus putting Country Crest into a whole different zone of marketing.”

    Tony Doyle Commercial Director | Country Crest

    “Lorraine Carter from Persona Design recently presented at our Dell Social Media Event on the importance of Brand for Corporate and Self. Lorraine provided great tips, many of them thought-provokingfrom her vast experience in developing brands, as an individual, for customers and the importance of building relationships.

    I would highly recommend Lorraine as a trusted advisor on Brand Development and Management.”

    Joan ByrneSaaS Portfolio Manager EMEA | Dell Inc

    Zed-Candy-500px“Persona Design has always exceeded the objectives of our briefs. Their level of interaction and creative rigour offering a range of fresh concepts is brilliant.

    Apart from being great people to work with, Persona Branding & Design offers an unbeatable combination in their level of service, lateral thinking, attention to detail, strategic focus and commitment to all projects undertaken. They are a key asset within my company and I would be delighted to personally recommend their services.”

    Donal KavanaghSales & Marketing Director | Zed Candy Ltd

    “Persona Design are very talented brand consultants and packaging design experts. They are knowledgeable, creative and highly dependable. My company has hired them for a number of projects and we have always been very pleased with the results.

    In fact, several of their projects for us have won prestigious awards. I highly recommend Persona Branding & Design.”

    Mark Andrews IIIChairman of the Board | Castle Brands Inc

    Robert-Roberts-500px“Persona Branding & Design has adroitly managed several of our most important brand design briefs over the past couple of years and in doing so brought a high degree of creativity plus in depth knowledge in dealing with packaging and print suppliers that was vital for the completion of the successful end product.

    Their attention to detail and open book costing consistently ensures no surprises on design or origination quotations.”

    Gerry MurphyMarketing Director | Robert Roberts Ltd

    “I was delighted to be a participant in Lorraine’s Master class on Branding, Packaging and Design. Lorraine has extensive experience is this area and her third party examples of clients she has worked with really drove the message home on the importance of one’s brand and how powerful it can be.

    She is passionate in her message and delivers it with conviction. I strongly recommend her as a trainer, speaker in the area of branding, packaging and design as she is truly an expert.”

    Margaret Hoctor Personal Coach | Trainer | Mentor and Facilitator

    Wavin-500px“Persona Design has worked with Wavin on the creation and development of the new branding and marketing collateral for the launch of a new range of premium products.

    They worked closely with our commercial team during this period to deliver a fantastic launch, on time and within budget. I would highly recommend Persona Branding & Design to anyone who is looking for a company that adds value through innovative ideas.”

    Brendan MurphyCommercial Director Wavin UK & Ireland | Wavin UK Ltd

    “Lorraine is a highly experienced and expert marketing professional. That’s just one way of putting it. She is an expert public speaker and her passion for subject matter shines though when she presents on a subject that is obviously close to her heart. Highly professional and credible, she is always looking for the best way to apply her talent for her clients best interest.

    Her firm is highly successful in delivering strategic marketing projects for their prestigious client base. I have no hesitation in offering my highest recommendation for Lorraine and her team at Persona Branding & Design”

    Paul C DwyerGlobal Cyber Security Expert

    “Lorraine’s depth of knowledge in branding is immense. I have attended some of her courses and also see first hand the benefits Persona Branding & Design can bring to a business. I am always happy to recommend Lorraine.”

    Ruaidhri PrendergastTechnology Sales Engine | Tech Marketing | Sofware | SaaS | FinTech | Hardware | 10x Return on Investment | Co-Founder | Ingenuity

    “I have known of Lorraine’s high quality work for a number of years and in late 2008 I finally had the opportunity to work with her in developing a brand and marketing strategy for an upcoming awards ceremony.

    Lorraine patiently guided the team through the process and was excellent in identifying the nuances, do’s and don’ts of our target market. We started out thinking a brand was just a logo but now know better!

    Before this however, Lorraine had sat down for coffee on an number of occasions with my colleague and I on a different venture and was very generous with her time and sharing her knowledge. I aim to call on Lorraine many times in the future and look forward to it.”

    Ian Lawlor New Business | Lotus Investment Group

    “I’d be happy to recommend Lorraine Carter and her company, Persona Branding & Design, to any client who wants an enthusiastic and passionate business partner to produce compelling brands built on a sound strategy.”

    Tim HealyMercator Marketing Research

    “Lorraine is both highly creative and strategic. Her professional and flexible approach combined with her attention to detail resulted in exceptional work which perfectly met the clients needs. A pleasure to work with. I’d happily recommend her for any brand project!”

    Alayne RooneyMarketing Consultant

    How to Rebrand

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