What Is Branding?
The idea of branding has evolved in the modern era to include advertising and interaction strategies that help distinguish a business or goods from rivals, with the aim of creating a lasting impression in consumers ‘hearts and minds.
Key components that form the toolbox of a brand include the identity of a brand and brand messaging (such as a logo design or trademarks).
Most businesses claim that, in the 21st century, there is often little to distinguish between several product types, and therefore branding is one of a few remaining ways of product differentiation.
We offer a full range of branding services including brand strategy, integrated campaigns, digital, social media, content marketing, media and TV advertising, web design, identity design, direct marketing, mobile, apps, SEO, media buying and much more.
The Value Of Branding for Organisations
Your brand is one of your most precious assets. Yet working in a company is also one of the hardest things. Yes, you can create beautiful brand manuals, missions, values and assets, even though your brand lives in your customers ‘hearts and minds’.
We will give your brand a strong sense of purpose, using market-leading resources and years of experience.
The Benefits of Investing in Branding:
- Helping you maximise the value of your brand
- Unlocking the power, potential and value of your brand, by managing, reviving, reimagining, repositioning, creating or extending it
- Allowing you to connect and respond back to prospects in real-time
- Building your brand on behaviour and customer experience
- Can attract new target audiences through developed brand positioning
The Growth of Branding for Visual Identity in Recent Years
When people think of branding, they would typically think of big commercial TV adverts and billboards. But that’s now expanded and branding has grown more in importance – with so many more digital platforms and rivals to compete with.
For brands, quick points of sales aren’t achievable anymore. Branding across all offline and online marketing activities needs to be cohesive and represent value, this includes projects such as web content, digital ads, and leaflets.
In branding, even the small details such as colour palettes make a difference to the eye, and branding has never been more important to build a brand’s personality; 88 percent of consumers say that authenticity is a key factor when deciding what brands they like and support.
Our Branding Agency Experience
Prohibition is a branding expert. We have in-house brand strategists that can implement every step of the creative process from ideas to storyboarding, to filming and digital design, right through to campaign implementation.
In the last decade, we’ve worked on projects with a number of scale businesses from start-ups to challenger brands, to some of the country’s best-known brands – including Goldsmiths, Interflora, and Yorkshire Cancer Research.
We work with our clients to build stronger brands and establish their brand identity to make them market leaders.
Brand Names That Trust Us for Creative & Branding
We’re Not Afraid to Stand Out From the Crowd
From launching the world’s first poo-powered pub for Yorkshire Water, to driving footfall with City Beach for The Light, to running an “unmissable” influencer event for C4 Energy – we’re the award-winning difference between getting your brand talked about online.
The market is saturated with brands competing to own their share of the market share online – our big ideas will set you apart and drive relevancy for your target audience at every stage of their digital experience.
Breakdown of Our Branding & Creative Services
Video production services
-
- Cooperate
- Brand videos
- Conference/event videos
- Videos for social media as part of PR campaigns
- Promotional videos
- TV adverts
- Animations
- Demo/educational videos
- Influencer campaigns
PR & Marketing communications
-
-
- Media Relations
- B2B PR
- Social Media
- Paid Social Media
- Crisis Management
- Influencer marketing
-
Graphic design services
-
- Social media assets
- Out-of-home advertising
- Event promotion
- Digital adverts
- Logo design
- Print design
We have designers and video editors in-house that will work to brand guidelines to deliver all brand activity.
Our approach to Branding
Video Marketing To Bring Brand Concepts to Life
As a marketer over the past few years, you will have noticed a shift towards video marketing growing ever more popular with social media platforms such as TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram dominating the scene.
The type of content is dependent on your campaign objectives. What are you trying to achieve? For example, short-form is great for product shots and long-form is great for testimonials to build more trust behind that brand.
Video marketing is a powerful way of bringing brand concepts to life and reaching target audiences through branded content – with even some major social channels favouring accounts that regularly post videos.
Video is one of the many ways to appeal to the algorithm and exponentiate brand awareness, our creative services can help you achieve that!
The Important Role Social Media Plays in Branding
If social media isn’t already a part of your brand strategy, then you should re-consider it.
In this digital era, before purchasing, there’s a high chance a potential customer will interact with your brand’s social media channels.
And with the image and video capabilities of these platforms, there’s many ways to build up a brand’s profile and customer base. Through social media you’re able to connect with digital communities and build a loyal fan base, that will keep users engaged for a lifetime.
This is especially useful for attracting a younger demographic; according to research the 20-29 age group uses social media the most. Making an impression on this age group early will inevitably drive brand advocacy and awareness through shared media – meaning more chances of going “viral”.
Paid Activity to Subject Your Creatives to Unique Audiences
We can support your social media efforts with paid activity to reach and convert select audiences. This could be users in a certain location, of a certain age group, or taking an active interest in your industry.
With paid media we can also limit your brand activity to set budgets, meaning a higher campaign ROI – that other channels can’t match. In addition, analytics and paid social reporting offer insight into your brand strategy that you might not have had before – which can help to define your brand’s strategy long-term.
This is a way to really grab your target audience’s attention through truly striking visuals and messaging, whether it be an animation or a social case study – it’s a great way to drive hype around a new product launch or drive awareness around a key message.
Power Search and Conversations Online Through PR
Through branded PR campaigns you’re able to control the company messaging that goes out to the public, media sources, and B2B businesses that you may want to connect with.
With PR, messages can be used in many ways to build up a brand’s reputation, authority, market position, or audience through press releases and creatives. This can also be conveyed on different online and offline channels, such as radio, social media, digital advertising, and much more.
Using Influencers to Build Brand Advocacy for New and Existing Brands
Influencers are a great way to build credibility for your brand. Consumers offer a personal experience, that consumers value highly over salesy adverts.
Influencers can be used as part of marketing strategy to reinforce brand messaging or subject brand creatives to their audience, as well as yours. Influencers have a loyal and dedicated audience, especially nano influencers, who are niche in their industry and actively engage with their audience.
If you want your brand building on a global scale, we can also integrate celebrity endorsements as part of your strategy – which will subject creatives to their hundreds of thousands or millions of followers. Using individuals of this magnitude can power your brand message but remember influencers typically with this following will have lower engagement rates due to the size of their following.
Shifting Your Target Audience through Branded Campaigns
Struggling to reach a certain target audience? Branding can shift your audience from one demographic to another.
We did this for Black Sheep who wanted to appeal to a non-core cask consumer base, who are more engaged with sustainability and environmental issues.
We launched their new carbon-neutral beer “Respire” through audience research, having discovered a growing trend for unusual pop-up bars and restaurants. So, we decided to launch “The Breathe Inn”, a pop-up bar situated in the heart of the Yorkshire Dales, with only one beer on tap – Respire. This campaign was a success, with 85% of engagements via social media coming from “non-core” cask audience.
Showcasing Your Brand Values through Events & Creative Campaigns
Are you wanting to promote a certain issue or brand value that’s topical in your industry? Branded campaigns can reinforce brand identity and messaging.
For fashion-sustainable retailer British Wool we created an online and offline campaign to educate audiences on the environmental impacts of purchasing fast fashion, as well as build brand awareness of British wool as a sustainable material through media coverage, social content, and an influencer partnership.
To drive further impact, we hired a pop-up stall in the bustling and highly popular City Centre location of Manchester Piccadilly Gardens, to catch and educate retail shoppers during a busy time frame. The event was also attended by recognised influencer and fair-fashion activist Aja Barber to build further brand reputation.
Our team can help to implement every stage of the project, whether that’s sourcing locations for pop-up stalls, influencers, or driving excitement on the ground or online through promotional content.
The Power of Visual Identity for New Brands
For emerging brands, becoming a key figure in the industry is especially important.
You need to set yourself apart, right? Branding is the way to do this, by setting a new brand identity different from your competitors and emotively triggering your audience.
The great thing about branding is that you can be bold and break through the status quo or create a personal campaign concept.
Branding for Individuals – Personal Branding Agency
We’re not just a branding agency that helps clients, we also help individuals such as influencers, celebrities and CEOs manage their branding.
We can help you to develop your tone of voice and interact with digital communities to reach customers, whichever platforms they’re on. For individuals, interacting with prospects before they interact with your company, enables them to have a more personal interaction with your establishment – therefore building stronger customer relations.
Remember when posting about your company as an individual, you’re also representing them, so communications shape the overall brand image and need to be aligned.
This is crucial to growing reputation, as individuals they don’t have ecommerce websites or a range of products to build up more authority. Their personal brand is their way of acquiring customers.
Managing Brand Communications in the Public Sphere
One PR crisis can ruin all your branding efforts. The way you communicate in your branded content affects the way audiences engage with your brand.
So bad communications shape a negative image of your brand and opens your brand up to a PR attack from the public that you may not be able to recover from – affecting public popularity and crucially sales.
Don’t be caught in the firing line. Our 10+ years of reputation management experience will help you to master your tone of voice and support brand development.
We can also use tools to report on sentiment in real-time and monitor the conversations around your brand online – to prevent crises before they happen.
What Industries Do We Work In?
Whatever the campaign is, we will bring bold ideas and key insights to the table.
Our team has worked on branding projects for a range of companies across Health and Beauty, Public Sector, Luxury, FMCG, and Technology – plus many more!
We can help to bring your vision to life no matter what size business you are and where you are located in the world; from London and beyond.
Why Prohibition?
Creative and Marketing Communication Specialists
We don’t just apply our creative and strategic approach to branding.
Our creative process applies to projects across offline and digital content to make other areas of your digital marketing activity work harder. And we’re not all talk, we’ve been around for 10+ years and established ourselves as one of the North’s Best Agencies by Prolific North.
So, if you want an agency that can do more and make you more, that’s us.
We Can Work On A Project Basis
No need to source expensive freelance designers or be stuck in contracts, we’ve got all your branding needs in-house.
We will work to brand guidelines and can work on a project basis, to cater to your business needs; whether you’re an existing brand or a new brand.
So whether you’re wanting to go viral, need help with brand positioning, or promote your brand values – then look no further.
Results Driven Creative Marketing
It’s only right that you want to partner with a branding agency where creativity comes as second nature. We’re exactly that.
Prohibition is a multi-award-winning and branding agency based in Leeds that helps to build brands of all sizes across the UK.
Our team has won more than 45 industry awards for its branded campaigns, so you can trust that you’d be hiring one of the top PR and branding agencies in the North with industry-recognised results to match.
