Think about your favourite book on the bookshelf, and the impact it’s had on your life. For our clients, we ask them to think about the impact their brand book will have on their brand, and their business.
We can all agree on the benefits of reading, for the enjoyment factor, and from the perspective of cold hard fact.
Like every other muscle in the body, the brain benefits from a regular workout and reading helps keep it active. Reading also helps to improve your memory, vocabulary, knowledge, focus and writing skills. Quite the impressive list, isn’t it?
We might be biased, but we think the most important book on our client’s bookshelf is their brand book…
Brand is a look and feel, an emotion, a personality. A brand book is a business’s brand guide. It covers everything from audience and objectives right through to challenges, values and brand proposition.
Through our active branding workshops, DS.Emotion gives brands a core essence, key messaging, a logo and an overall personality. This helps define a clear vision. We don’t send brands away with a generic PDF or a verbal promise. Our unique books are the ideal takeaway for stakeholders to share with the wider team to really cement the ideas discussed in the workshop.
What makes a brand book a must-read?
- It’s personal
We don’t churn out brand books using the same old buzzwords. We craft each piece to suit our clients’ individual personality, from core values to the all-important brand essence.
How often can you flick through a book and know it’s all about you, from the very first page?
- It matters
Our active brand workshops bring together key stakeholders within the business. We really get to know the brand, going beneath surface understanding to truly discover what defines the business. As Richard Ingham, Partner at our client Genr8, says: “they take you on to understand the essence of a development and the importance of creating the connection with the target audience through brand, tone of voice and marketing.”
The brand book is a summary of this discovery – a brand bible that will stand the test of time.
- It affects the business and its team every. single. day.
Marketing collateral, internal emails, a wall mural, a tweet. A brand essence should be reflected throughout the whole business and its communications. All team members should have a well-read copy of the brand book sitting proudly on their desk. Kurt Mueller, Director of Corporate Affairs for Grainger Plc, said: “We needed an agency who could work across all on and off-line materials including internal and external communications. With more than 250 staff we needed a partner that could help us educate internal audiences as to our unique brand proposition. Following the excellent results, we continue to work with DSE on not only our corporate materials but on external projects and corporate tenders.”
The power of an effective brand book
We put our DS.E heart and soul into every brand book we work on. Over twenty five years we’ve delivered hundreds of brand books – each as individual as a fingerprint. While we’d love to list every single one, here are some examples demonstrating how effective our brand books can be…
Our Dukes Lane brand book has been at the foundation of our ongoing work with the Brighton-based retail and leisure destination. The impressive book features the ‘Brightonian Heartland’ brand essence. We are particularly fond of this as it has run throughout the brand’s activity, from tone of voice right through to pop-up events.
As part of the 10th anniversary of Bracken Business Centres, the brand needed a refresh to compete with the competition. The brand book evaluates motivation, values and role, culminating in a brand essence to ‘progress partners’. This is further supported by the brand proposition: work space that creates a supportive environment and allows its occupiers to thrive.
Our brand book for BrewFresh developed a core brand identity and developed key points of differentiation. We recognised the brand’s unique values and innovative, premium approach. This allowed us to create a sleek and stylish brand book that represented the brand to a T (or coffee).
Some of our brand books take a more visual approach. This involves selecting the images that represent a brand’s personality or values. A great example of this is our brand book for Frank Rostron – the images form an immediately eye-catching and relatable collage of words, qualities and individuals that represent the brand’s key values. This gives the Frank Rostron team a visual demonstration of their brand’s personality and key essence.
As everyone knows, good intentions count for very little unless they’re progressed. However, our clients, with our support, really embrace the values and “lessons learned” from the brand workshop. The effectiveness of our brand workshops, and our brand books, is certainly reflected in our clients’ ongoing successes.
Finding inspiration
Our own DS.Emotion bookshelves are a creative mix of marketing books, our Export magazine, newspapers, dictionaries and design files and a whole host of client brand books. We use our reading time as chance to reflect, and to be inspired by our own work and the work of others.
Is your bookshelf missing a brand book? Get in touch to speak to our team about your vision.