“Is this Google-y enough?” – This is a phrase that is said in the halls of Google frequently. When vetting a new project or venture, the question is asked to make sure that what the team is working on is within Google’s primary brand goals and guidelines. Branding is past the days of just a logo, colors and your slug line. Your business Brand, has morphed into the heart of your organizations operations.

Your Brand is who you are. What you stand for. What your goals are. Who your employees are. Who you want to be to the public eye. It could be your mission statement, your business description or your CEO’s favorite life lesson. Your logo and color scheme are extremely important and you want to make sure those are functionally pleasing to the consumer. However, it’s what the consumer doesn’t see – the heart of your brand and what you stand for that makes a company rise above the rabble.

In our day and age of companies striving to be the next culture of Google, the next Apple, the next Amazon, we need to look at how their brands operate and what we can glean or emulate from them to make our own brands successful.

What comes to mind when you first hear the word Apple? The company or the fruit? In most cases, it’s the Company. Because they’ve created such an engrained vision of their brand into people’s minds, it is always a foremost thought. Apple uses clean lines, clean imagery and minimalist theories in their marketing. But that’s just marketing. Who they are as a brand is much more. It’s innovation, it’s progressive, it’s problem solving.

When considering your own brand, make sure you are taking into account your own strategic vision for the company, or even as you build your own personal brand. By doing this, and incorporating the design elements to go with it, your brand can help you stand out amongst the rest.

For help with brand strategy and alignment with Social Media and SEO, contact Grindstone Consultants for a consultation.