To effectively guide clients through my intuitive and strategy-led brand process, I developed a number of questions that I ask them. These questions bring clarity and intention into building their brand, so that everything is deeply aligned with their values, vision and their business goals.
When we look at intuition through the lens of building a brand, it’s about creating a human to human connection. Intuition is the innate ability that we have, as humans, to understand or know something without rational thinking. And it’s this emotional connection and response that communicates what your brand is, and what it isn’t.
Now, this doesn’t mean you focus only on making brand decisions based on how something feels. In my work as an intuition brand coach, I’ve found that the best branding outcomes happen when we explore both the strategic AND intuitive approaches.
A brand that feels intuitive nurtures the human connection.
When it comes to branding, these initial, intuitive perceptions can influence whether your customer chooses your brand over another. Integrating intuition into your branding process and brand discovery is necessary for ensuring that the final result resonates with your customers on an emotional level. The intuitive approach to the branding process and brand discovery allows your dream customers to feel understood and connected to your brand message. It creates a relationship that is honest, empathetic and built on trust - between your customer and what your brand stands for.
Intuitive branding creates:
- a cohesive, high-impact first impression
- an emotional or sensorial experience
1 . Intuitive branding creates a cohesive first impression
Intuitive branding considers how the emotional energy of a brand comes across as a first impression. By making your messaging and all the visual elements that make up your brand intentional and simple to understand, you will create a strong first impression. In other words, your customer won’t have to jump through a series of cognitive hoops before “getting” what it is that you stand for.
“If your audience doesn’t understand your position instantly in that first communication, you’ve lost them.”
~ Lee Hunt, brand strategist and thought-leader, in this interview with Billy Sobel
Ask yourself and your brand these 3 questions to create a crystal clear first impression:
- What is the one thing that you want people to understand when they first see your brand in context?
- What is the initial impression that people have about your brand at various touch-points?
- And is this cohesive across the board? If not, how could you make it more cohesive and fluid?
2. Intuitive branding focuses on creating an emotional experience
As humans, we are more likely to remember how an experience has affected us emotionally rather than the cognitive decisions and thoughts that came before it. Emotions have the ability to stay with us, long after the experience is over. For your customer, branding that has been intuitively conceptualised and designed has the ability to connect from an emotional place to be memorable and impactful.
Ask yourself and your brand these 3 questions to create a stronger emotional connection and response:
- What emotions do your customers feel when they experience your brand offering, product or service?
- How can you serve your customers in a way that helps them cultivate the feeling that they want to feel?
- How can you create a stronger, memorable emotional experience for your customer?
Intuitive branding doesn’t have to be complicated. The goal, at the end of it, is to get your customer to understand what your brand stands for and how it can resonate with them.
