Brand Story vs. Brand Logo: Their Priority & Importance

People may purchase your products or services because they are looking for solutions to their problems. However, they end up staying and choosing not to switch to alternatives only if you successfully establish a strong emotional connection with them.

This is the power of branding, as it helps you foster deeper bonds with your customers and cultivate loyalty. Having a strong brand personality is the key to ensuring lasting customer relationships and driving success in the long run for your business.

This is the reason why marketers leverage a variety of tactics to stimulate an emotional attachment and strive to grow mindshare for their respective brands. A brand’s story and its logo play a critical role here and help a company design a stellar branding strategy.

Both of these components help a company form a strong emotional connection and generate a powerful recall for its brand, helping a business get more traction. However, a question remains: which of these components is more important and should be a priority for the company?

In this article, we will explore the importance of a brand’s story and its logo to help our readers get their priorities right when working on a branding strategy. So, without further ado, let’s get started.

1. What is a Brand Story?

A brand’s story is a narrative that reflects a brand’s value and sheds light on the history of how a brand came to be. It showcases all the challenges and struggles faced by a company that shaped the brand into what it is today.

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Think of it as a brand’s origin. It strives to engage the target audience at an emotional level by creating a strong bond with them. When a brand’s story resonates with its intrinsic values, it forms a connection and makes the brand relatable to its audience.

People feel a strong urge to represent the brand. They not only purchase the solutions offered by the brand but also recommend the brand to others. It’s reported that 55% of people strongly rely on the recommendations of others to make buying decisions.

So, turning people into ambassadors for your brand is a wise move, as it helps generate positive word of mouth. And a brand’s story plays a key role here.

2. What is a brand logo?

In simple words, a brand’s logo is the visual representation of a company. It helps businesses stand out from other players in their respective industries and fosters a strong recall.

To create a fitting logo, businesses use topography, symbols, or both to come up with a memorable visual representation that enables a company to establish a unique identity for its target audience. It’s a logo that helps people recognize a brand from miles away and experience an urge to opt for the company’s solutions if needed.

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For example, if you’re walking down the road in the summer and are thirsty, seeing Pepsi’s logo may stimulate the need to grab a can.

If the brand is powerful enough, it may even bypass the need factor. This is commonly seen in luxury brands that have way more influence on the minds of people compared to the ones that offer need-based solutions.

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For example, seeing someone wearing an outfit with Gucci’s logo may lead you to assume that the person wearing the outfit is of high status. A brand’s story may lead to the desire to represent a brand. A brand’s logo is something that makes it happen.

3. The art of telling a brand’s story

There’s a story behind every brand. Yet, you are not familiar with the story of every brand that you use. What makes a brand’s story memorable is how the brand communicates its values through it to the intended audience.

It’s the story that helps brands form an emotional connection with their target audience. So, the way a story is told matters a lot and fuels the growth of a business. Here are a few things that can help brands master the art of storytelling and build strong ties with their current and potential customers.

1. Remember your origin

A common misconception is that your brand’s story needs to be fancy to help you build a strong emotional connection with your target audience. It just needs to resonate with your origin, reflect your character, and clearly communicate your values to the people.

People want to know what made your brand the way it is today and the things that you firmly believe in or advocate for.

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To figure it out, all you need to do is remember your origin and stay true to your character. The goal here is to connect with the right audience and build a community around your brand.

So, sticking to the roots and staying true to yourself helps you come up with a compelling story and tell it to your audience in the most fitting way.

2. Know your audience

Knowing yourself may be enough to create a compelling story. But to know who you should tell it to, it’s best to get acquainted with the characteristics of your target audience.

To ensure that you engage the right people, you should be familiar with their interests and preferences. It helps you convey your message in the right way and make it reach the hearts of the people.

Knowing your audience enables you to come up with personalized targeting strategies that help you get more eyeballs and foster high engagement. It helps you tailor your message to the audience’s preferences and sets the right tone for a strong emotional appeal.

3. Research your competitors

You can consider taking inspiration from your competitors when it comes to crafting a compelling story for your brand.

This doesn’t mean taking your competitor’s story and replicating the entire thing. This means understanding how your competitors came up with their stories and what sets them apart from one another.

This helps you come up with a framework for your story and identify the key characteristics of your brand. Plus, knowing your competitors makes you able to analyze your strengths and weaknesses, making it possible for you to position your brand in the best-suited way.

4. Leverage value proposition

Once you have researched your competitors, see what makes you stand out from other players in your respective industry and come up with a way to showcase those distinct traits in your brand’s story.

This is an era of cutthroat competition, and leveraging your value proposition is your best bet to set yourself apart from your competitors. So, focus on areas that bring your brand into the limelight and resonate with your target audience.

5. Create your story

Now comes the part where you create your story. Your brand’s story should reflect the mission of the company and showcase the values that the company lives by.

From what inspired you to start a company to what drives you to keep the needle moving, your story should sum up all the details and inspire your audience to connect with the brand.

It’s a unique yet clear narrative that defines your brand in a nutshell and answers the top questions in the minds of your audience when they hear about you.

6. Tell your story

Once you’ve come up with a story for your brand, now is the time to tell it to the world. And you should start by sharing it with your internal stakeholders first.

The core objective of telling a brand’s story to the world is to form a connection with your target audience. The narrative is extremely important here, but so is the visual representation of your brand.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. And it’s a fact. Our brains are wired to process images 60,000 times faster than text. So, your brand shouldn’t just have an emotional appeal but also a visual one. This is where the logo of your brand comes into play and makes it possible for you to create a unique visual representation.

4. Creating a logo for your brand

A logo is something that makes your brand recognizable and helps you connect with your audience by visually communicating your core values and ideas. Creating a logo for your brand is a strategic process that often poses a great challenge for brands to get things right.

You must have a clear understanding of the company’s values and buyer personas to come up with a logo that tells your story and serves as an optimal visual representation of your brand. Here’s how you create one:

1. Know your story

The first step to designing your logo is to know yourself. This means having a clear understanding of your brand’s values and its story. So, it goes without saying that your brand’s story is the prerequisite for initiating the logo design process.

The core objective here is to communicate your brand’s values and showcase your emotions through a visual representation. And that won’t be possible unless you know your story.

However, infusing your brand’s story into your logo is easier said than done. It’s a sophisticated process that can be mastered through trial and error. This is the reason why you see brands change their logos from time to time, as mistakes are inevitable.

Plus, you should also consider that a brand’s story evolves with time. So, that may also be the reason you see brands changing their logos.

2. Pick a brand name

The next step is coming up with a fitting name for your brand and carefully selecting words that resonate with your brand’s values.

It’s best to stick to a single word, but you can consider using up to three. Anything more than that would be overkill.

You can consider multiple options to see which one best describes your company’s ethos and then proceed with the logo design.

You must also check that the name is not already taken in order to avoid any legal problems in the future.

3. Prepare a rough sketch

Keeping in mind your brand’s story and the words you’ve chosen to represent your brand, come up with a blueprint for your brand’s logo.

This will not necessarily be your final design; more like putting your ideas on paper and giving them a physical form.

Don’t strive for your sketch to be perfect. You can refine it down the road. Just initiate the process and come up with a concept art.

4. Design your logo

Once you have prepared a few sketches and selected the one that resonates with your brand’s identity, the next step should be designing your brand’s logo.

Remember, your logo is the visual representation of your brand and an advocate of your company’s values. You create it to make your brand recognizable and generate a powerful recall.

Hence, it’s good to be unique. However, you should refrain from making it overly complicated. So, strive for the right balance.

5. Choose a fitting font style

Once you’ve chosen the name for your brand and designed its logo, the next step is selecting an appropriate font style.

Here, you will be combining the text with the image that represents your brand. So, the selection of the typeface is extremely important. Your preferred typeface reflects your brand’s characteristics and helps you pitch your solutions to a particular audience profile.

6. Choose a color palette

The color of your brand’s logo has a strong impact on the message you want to convey through it. It has a strong psychological impact and helps generate the desired stimulus.

For example, if you want people to recognize your brand from a distance, the use of the color red in your logo is highly recommended. The same goes for other colors, such as green, which represents stability and consistency in doing things.

The color blue represents ambition and is best suited for ambitious brands that strive to disrupt growth. Each color has a different meaning and stimulates a different emotion. So, choosing the right color for your brand’s logo is an essential part of the process.

Final Words

The story of a brand and its logo plays a key role in helping it engage the intended audience and pitch its solutions to the right people. So, with respect to importance, one does not have any supremacy over the other.

However, it goes without saying that the story of a brand is the prerequisite for designing a logo that’s capable of generating strong recognition and better recall.

A brand’s story helps you translate its values, and a logo helps communicate them to the world. So, both hold equal importance and collectively help you build a strong brand.