These bright, crisp days are just what we needed aren’t they?

There’s a lot happening at Flourish at the moment which we’re all finding incredibly inspiring. Team promotions, new designers, some very exciting client projects, the launch of the branding masterclass, oh, and the small matter of a nip tuck to the Flourish brand identity (which I’ll share with you soon). Because of all this bright, new stuff, I’m feeling very fired up, very creative and very excited about the future.

I think this lovely, yellow mood board just about sums up our mood right now. Optimistic and inspired. How are you feeling right now?

Recently I’ve been spending 10 minutes at the start of every day on Pinterest. It’s a tip I picked up from Elizabeth Cairns when we were recording a video for the Branding Masterclass; Elizabeth encouraged us to spend time getting into our flow at the start of the working day: doing things that inspire us. For some of you that may be being relaxed, others may like to organise, spend time outside or exercising. For me it’s about being creative. And I’m finding Pinterest the perfect inspiration tool – as long as I limit myself to 10 minutes a day.

What do you do to get into your flow?

Ps the only downside to Pinterest is that it’s incredibly difficult to track back the image sources. None of the above are my images (apart from the colour palette) all via my Spring Optimism Pinterest board

I’m often asked where we find our inspiration for our own brand and the brands we work on. The people that ask have clearly never seen our creative boardroom! At the heart of the room is a bright (flourish) green painted sideboard packed with magazines, catalogues and direct mail to inspire us.

We are also adept at using online resources: Pinterest, google images, design blogs and work from other agencies.

As well as using these resources for a bit of focused and structured inspiration, it’s also about having our eyes open at all times, because you literally never know where inspiration will strike. Packaging in a supermarket or department store, an old property, travel abroad or something as simple as the colours in nature. All of these elements have the power to inspire, it’s just about how you interpret them.

So how can you find inspiration for your own brand?

Start with your home. Most (not all) of the small business owners we work with run a business that taps into their passions; a business that is in some way a reflection of them.

If that’s the case for you, root through your wardrobe, your favourite items in your kitchen or the things that influence you in interior design. Is there a common theme?

Look at the magazines you have in your home and start to dissect them. What do you love about them? Is there anything that you can take inspiration from? Layout, treatments, typography etc.

Visit exhibitions and take inspiration from how other businesses brand themselves. Start to build up a mood board to help you articulate what you’re after.

Once you have a scrapbook or mood board of how you’d like everything to look and feel, you’re in a great position to talk to a branding company or graphic designer and they will be able to interpret this into something unique and very special

Images: All sourced via Pinterest

With less than two weeks to go until the launch of the fabulous online Branding Masterclass the team in the studio are working incredibly hard dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s on the brand identity and blogsite. You can see the brand elements below.

You’re going to see a bit of a nip tuck to the Flourish brand identity over the next couple of months as we prepare for a very exciting extension and refocus on our own brand. I’ll be sharing more about the story behind that soon, but in the meantime, this gives you a flavour for where we’re headed. The Branding Masterclass needs to reflect and work with our brand, but it’s also a brand in it’s own right, with it’s own attributes and characteristics, so we needed to keep it all similar but not the same.

The colour palette focuses on creativity, communication, logic and clarity. The graph paper gives a nod to work (yes, it will be a lot of fun, but I will be working them hard too!) and the icons give direction around the site.

The class will be held online via a password protected blogsite, so we needed to create a clean and easy to navigate design that  inspired the participants to focus, reflect and take action. Here are a couple of screengrabs:

The login page

We wanted to keep this simple – it’s about getting people to do what you want – login or register for details of the next class. For the people that aren’t registered, obviously this is all they’ll see…

And the class pages themselves

I was in two minds about whether to show you this, but it just looks so beautiful that I couldn’t resist! I am desperate to overhaul the Full Bloom blog design now (yes, I know again but there is so much I’d like to change…). There are still a couple of changes to make but what I hope you can see is how light, airy and neat everything feels. The perfect setting to the inspirational and powerful nature of the content

Registration for the masterclass will close at midnight on Sunday 5th February so if you’d like to get involved, then don’t forget to book – go on, do it now, while you remember… Full details on the website.

I love this quote, don’t you?

‘Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass it is about learning to dance in the rain’

I love it because it continues to remind me that whatever is going on beyond our control, we have the capacity to be able to choose our own destiny. None of us can stop the ugly economic times we’ve been facing for the past four years, and are likely to continue to face this year, but we can choose how we respond to it. There is literally nothing to be gained from hiding under your proverbial umbrella, waiting for this to all go away, because it’s not about to any time soon. Instead we need to dig deep and make the most of the opportunity.

And yes, I really do think there is an opportunity to be had here. When times are tough, many businesses batten down the hatches and stop marketing. It’s counter intuitive but we do it because we think it’s safe. And yet what happens is quite the reverse. We stop communicating with our customers and so they forget about us and go elsewhere. We start the nasty cycle of cutting prices. And our business retracts.

By contrast, if you continue to market your business when others are holding back, your message is amplified, your business will grow and you can use these tough times to propel your business ahead. I know which route I’d rather take!

To continue to grow you need to invest in your business. And that takes balls I know, but that’s why we’re in business isn’t it? Because somewhere, locked away in the deepest recesses of our soul, we have balls.

So come on, let’s get inspired, think big, get out there and make the most of the opportunity. And let’s focus on dancing in the rain rather than waiting for the storm to pass.

Image:  ’Learning To Dance In The Rain’ Print by Hello Monkey, NotOnTheHighStreet

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve shared with you some of the brands that I love, and the reasons why. We’ve also looked at some of the learnings you can take into your own business and I hope that I’ve started to inspire you about how you can make your brand more engaging, more fun and perhaps more sticky.

But how do you make those lessons your own? Aside from the legalities of copying someone you admire, it just doesn’t make good business sense. Branding is all about differentiating yourself from your competitors, making yourself irresistible to your ideal clients and communicating in a way that makes people ache to work with you.

There’s a concept in design that no idea is ever new, that we’re constantly taking inspiration from what has gone before and building on it to create something fresh and new.

I think there’s a lot of truth in that.

Great design doesn’t just happen. Inspiration is all around us, and being good at what we do is about opening our eyes to what’s out there and creating a mental scrapbook of ideas, ready to call upon when the time is right.

The skill, for me, is in being able to make the appropriate links to inspiration and creating something that is inspired by, rather than slavishly copying, one or a multiple of trends. I often see ideas that are ‘inspired by’ something that just doesn’t fit with the company’s brand. And you know what? It doesn’t work, it feels awkward. Wrong somehow.

If you’re opening your eyes up to your branding then you need to take your inspiration from much of what’s around you. But then you need to put your own twist on it. If you don’t, it won’t be authentic. I was watching a video for Creative Live which Jasmine Star was presenting and she said something really powerful:

(I’m paraphrasing here)

“I’ve shown you how I did me. Now you need to work out how to do you.”

You can see the full video here.

And that for me is the essence of a great brand. Don’t put illustrations on your website because you like ours and you want a piece of it. Don’t wear (as Jasmine puts it) flare white jeans because she does. Don’t use that font because you’ve seen someone else using it and it seems to be working for them. Put your own spin on it, work out how you’re going to do you.

And so as you look through websites and cuttings of the brands that inspire you, look at what they do, what appeals to you and ask yourself why it works. But most importantly, ask yourself what your take is going to be.

You have to put your spin on things, and be able to walk away from an idea that you love because it doesn’t work for your brand.

So embrace the inspiration, keep your mind open to ideas, but know when to say no as much as yes.

Shameless plug alert! We have some wonderful business owners signed up to join me on 6th Feb for the Branding Masterclass but as the Early Bird Offer ends on Sunday I thought I’d give you a quick reminder of the reasons you need to book your place if you haven’t already:

1. Staying ahead of the game. You can never, ever say that your brand is “done”: markets move on, competitors spring up out of nowhere, your skills grow and develop and customer needs change. You need to be able to respond to that quickly and I’ll show you how in Week One.
2. Developing your brand identity to keep it fresh and inspiring. Whether you have a lovely logo and website or not, you’ll gain oodles of value from our forays into colour psychology and the mood board session in Week Two.
3. To ensure you get maximum bang out of this year’s marketing buck. This year is going to be tough, no doubt about it, but that doesn’t mean you need to slink back into the undergrowth and wait until it all passes. Get yourself out there and take advantage of the fact your competitors are shrinking away! We’ll create a powerful marketing plan in Week Three.
4. Because I’ll help you blow your clients away with every communication. We’ll map out your customer journey from the first enquiry to the last invoice and make sure you create a wow at every stage. You’ll love it!
5. Ratcheting up the effectiveness of your website. Because unless you have created your website in the last six months and you know there is nothing you can do to improve it you’ll get loads of value out of the website planning/ overhaul sessions in Week Four.
6. Reconnecting with your business and inspiring you to really get out there and make the most of this year. So it’s going to be tough? Well then let’s get focused and get ready to flourish! We’ll give you a number of exercises over the course of the four weeks to help reignite your passion for your business (even if you don’t think it’s waned), re inspire you and build your confidence.
7. It will help your business thrive this year. Not just grow, not just get your name out there. But really thrive. I’ll help you identify how to attract more of the profitable clients, communicate with flair and passion and inspire people to want to work with you.

A masterclass to inspire, motivate and reconnect you with your business

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you probably can’t fail to have noticed the meteoric rise to fame of Jasmine Star, Californian photographer for “fabulous people”. Jasmine’s story is a great example of how talent matters, but not nearly as much as powerful marketing.

I’m always completely wowed by Jasmine’s website: high energy, high style and highly aspirational. I love Jasmine’s photography, but most of all, I love the brand she and her team have created for her business. They’ve worked incredibly hard to create something that feels effortlessly chic, glamorous and high end. And although the way she has chosen to market her business and her personal brand is a little marmite, you can’t deny that it has worked – with bells on.

Jasmine knows that standing out is key to creating a powerful brand. That blending in just doesn’t cut it. Her videos, magazine style blog and super glam website are super powerful. I do think it’s important to note that if she wasn’t a great photographer then her brand wouldn’t have longevity, she couldn’t back up what she promised and she wouldn’t still have a successful business. But what’s made a huge difference is that she has bags of self confidence and the ability to stand out.

And Jasmine does do a lot to promote herself as a celebrity which may not be right for you. But ask yourself: what inspiration can I take from Jasmine Star?

Lessons small businesses can learn from Jasmine Star

Be confident and believe in yourself it’s the starting point to getting that confidence from your clients

Create a brand that’s aspirational and you’ll attract the right sorts of clients who really value what you do and are prepared to pay a premium to get you

Use video – and I don’t mean staring into your webcam chatting (yes, I’ve tried that too – bad move!) – I mean use video to get people really excited about your business

Make it happen, don’t just wait for it to happen. Sitting about waiting to get “spotted” doesn’t guarantee success. Hard graft and powerful marketing seems to do the trick very well!

Be bold and stand out. Being brave takes courage, it means going against the grain and doing things that other players aren’t doing. How can you bring a piece of that into your business?

I LOVE Joules. I love their sense of fun, their style and their quirky touches that bring everything to life.

I blogged last summer about how inspiring I find the Joules brand and whilst they’re not everyone’s cup of tea, I think they’re fabulous! This seems to be a common theme in branding doesn’t it? The concept that you can’t be all things to all people. It’s one that small businesses would do well to take on board I think. The bolder you can be, the more passionate your fans.

I know that it’s easy to think that they’re hanging on to the Boden coat tails, and they’re certainly in a similar marketplace, but to me they are incredibly different. For me, Joules is Boden’s younger, funkier sister! What do you think?

A strong brand identity, a clear style and plenty of direct mail has enabled Joules to catapult themselves to success over the past few years. And it’s their strong sense of design that has helped them to get noticed. At a much smaller level there are plenty of smaller businesses that embrace great design that have also got noticed: I’m thinking Poppy Treffry (more on her later!) amongst others. There are plenty of others that sprang to mind, but their websites were too disappointing to share on this blog ;-( (quick aside – reputation is crucial in branding and shouldn’t be overlooked, but don’t make life difficult for yourselves by having a design that lets you down – you’ll make it much harder to win business).

What can small businesses learn from Joules?

Attention to detail. Joules put enormous attention to detail into their brand – it’s one of the reasons I love it. How can you inject the same attention to detail into what you communicate?

Creativity matters. I posted last year about the impact powerful design had on the Joules brand. Do you think we’d notice them quite as much if they didn’t have the confidence to stand out? Those quirky, creative touches are what get people in the gut and the heart. They matter. And if you want your business to stand out then you need to start thinking big and thinking about creativity.

Don’t be afraid to change your proposition for the sake of commercial success. It wasn’t so long ago that Joules was a niche equestrian retailer, but they’ve completely revolutionised their proposition (and last time I checked, there were very few riding clothes available to buy) and in doing so, opened themselves up for growth. I’m not saying it’s right for everyone, but it seems to have worked for them.

What else is there in the Joules magic that you could inject into your own brand?

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while it’ll probably be no surprise that I’m a big fan of Cath Kidston. Between Dani (our lovely Account Exec) and I we must own half the shop. And whilst I accept that she’s not everyone’s cup of tea, I can’t get enough of her cheery colours and fun patterns.

That’s the point about powerful brands isn’t it? They divide people. Cath Kidston isn’t about ‘blending in’ (although design snobs might argue that she’s so mainstream that this is exactly what she does). Whilst some may respond in a ‘couldn’t care less’ fashion, others fall completely, utterly in love. And for me, that’s the sign of a powerful brand. Creating something that people respond to with their hearts and their guts is a sure fire way to success.

Cath Kidston inspires me to create brands for our clients that are confident in their style and fun in character. In colour psychology terms Cath Kidston is pure Spring. Fun, creative, warm, inspiring and young. It’s about adding a splash of colour and vintage charm to your day. And I love it!

Design is a core part of Cath Kidston’s brand: from the vintage inspired patterns through to the colour palettes they work with and the stunning shop interiors. But the brand is about more than that. Walk into any Cath Kidston shop and you’re engulfed in the experience. It’s the same with the website and all of their printed communication. You can just feel the essence of the brand oozing out of every pore and if you’re a fan, it can be intoxicating.

So what can small businesses learn from Cath Kidston?

Be bold! Build a business around something you love, something that inspires you and something you’re passionate about and stay clear in your focus.

Develop your product range beyond one pattern! Build a range that complements and contrasts rather than looking too samey. My house is certainly not head to toe Cath Kidston, but I get away with using quite a lot because of the vast range of pattern and product. Which leads me nicely on to…

Be open minded about the product you sell. Cath Kidston is a lifestyle store. You can buy almost anything for your home, children or yourself. The broad product range maximises the brands appeal and means that it works for both gift and personal purchases. I think many small businesses could think much bigger about their product range in order to broaden their market and make shopping with them more exciting.

Don’t think that fun and bright means that you won’t be taken seriously. The Cath Kidston brand is fun and doesn’t take itself too seriously, but that doesn’t mean that consumers don’t take the business seriously. By allowing the brand personality to shine through the brand identity (colours, typography etc) Cath Kidston is a brand consumers can fall in love with. And given their stratospheric success in the past few years, it seems I’m not the only one to think so…

Powerful branding is something we could all use a bit of within our businesses. Powerful brands really add a tremendous amount of value to your business, make your working life a more fun (and frankly, profitable) place to be, and mean that you don’t have to be constantly looking over your shoulder at what your competitors are up to.

Businesses that have powerful brands find it easier to win business, they are able to charge what they’re worth (often more than competitors with less appealing brands) and their customers are more forgiving if things go wrong. In short, it’s a good place to be.

Let me give you an example that’s close to home.

Over the past 18 months my own business has gone from being a local design agency with an enthusiastic following to a branding and digital agency that’s attracting clients from all over the country and across the world. The quality of our work has a lot to do with this, as do the happy clients that are talking about us. But these clients from Canada, Cardiff and the Wirral (amongst others) haven’t come via recommendation. They’ve come to us because they’ve seen us online and been inspired about what we’re doing.

That’s a powerful brand isn’t it? And it’s something that I passionately believe all small businesses need to have a piece of.

Having created a number of powerful brands for both my own business and many of my clients, as well as being an avid student of big powerful brands, I like to think I have a pretty good idea of what it takes to create a powerful brand. And the great news is that it boils down to doing a few things incredibly well.

Powerful branding: the difference that makes the difference

Powerful brands dare to be different: think about the brands that inspire you, that resonate with you, that you’d move heaven and earth to do business with. Are they bland, mainstream and almost invisible? Thought not – they have the confidence to stand out, to be different and in doing so, create an impact that leaves their competitors for dust.

Make use of great design: focus matters, a lot (see my next point) but you’ll never truly reach your brand’s potential if you don’t start taking your design seriously. Some of my favourite brands: Cath Kidston, Joules, Fired Earth and Dorset Cereals rely on powerful design to keep their customers engaged. If you’re serious about creating a powerful brand then you need to do the same.

Stay focused. Powerful brands are focused on what their messaging is, who their ideal clients are and how they want to communicate. At a small business level this means being utterly ruthless about what you spend your marketing time and money doing, because if you don’t, you’re just going to confuse people.

Create an offering that’s broader than the widget: Sofa.com (who I’ll introduce later this week) sell comfort, Dorset Cereals promote simple pleasures. By broadening their offering to something that’s bigger than just what they’re selling, they are able to bring their brands to life, create something much more aspirational and create a brand that you can engage with. How could you do this in your business?

Communicate with flair and style there are loads of inspirational brands out there (do share your thoughts below won’t you) but the ones that truly get us excited do so because they’ve put effort and attention to detail into the way they communicate. You just can’t pull this sort of thing off well without it. And it starts with a great brand identity and website, but in my eyes it goes further than that. It’s about making an impact at every stage of the communication with your clients – mapping out your customer journey and thinking about how you can truly make an impact.

Get their message out there powerful brands don’t just sit there and hope that people stumble upon them. They work hard to get their message out there. They have a marketing plan (and a marketing budget) and they put it in to action!
What else do you think powerful brands do? I’d love to hear your thoughts!