If brands are built through consistent messaging and an internal dedication to keeping the brand’s promise (we refer to it as “Brand Crafting”), how do you start?

Through Brand Central Station, you have access to marketing and branding expert Mike Bawden’s knowledge and skills in defining a brand’s core values and envisioning what it can become. He uses a variety of “tools” to help brands build their own vision for the future.

Those include:

Brand Anthropology

By conducting a historical and cultural analysis of a brand, Mike is able to construct context for the that brand within the market and social environment. This kind of study provides insights that are extremely valuable when crafting a strategic vision for a brand or its sponsor.

Touchpoint Analysis

Brand Central Station will look at how a brand is presented at every level (from online to the showroom floor) to identify the inconsistencies, obstacles and opportunities that need to be addressed going forward.

Brand Mapping

For clients with multiple brands (a “house” of brands), they often find there is no organization or structure – causing confusion among internal managers and consumers. A brand map created by Brand Central Station idnetifies a client’s brands and sub-brands and then organizes them in a way that makes management easier.

Strategic Visioning

More important than a brand’s logo is developing a clear vision of what that brand is to become.

This excercise is usually conducted as a kind of “workshop” with key stakeholders. During the process, Mike leads the team through the journey of evaluating a brand’s past, its strengths, the threats it faces and then a vision of what it can (and should) become.

Logo Development

Logos can be the most difficult and contentious project a marketing team can take on – and it’s often one of the first assigned to a new agency or design house (setting them up for almost immediate failure). Mike has the experience needed to rationally walk a client through the logo development process, providing you with multiple options to consider once a clear strategy and message has been set.

Identity System Curation

Graphic continuity for logos and collateral material is important. But when it’s combined with the market research, historical context and clarified value statements created as part of this process, an identity system does much more than giving you guidelines for logo use.

Brand Guide

When this process is completed, the client is presented with a Brand Guide that serves as a cornerstone for future marketing efforts.

A project like this typically costs $20,000 – $30,000 and takes 75-120 days.