Crafting an engaging brand

It's a word we like very much at Engage Brandcraft as well and we are constantly revisiting what that means not only for our clients, but also for ourselves.

If we can't answer "What did I do differently today?" then we need to boot ourselves up the whatsis and revisit the word "innovation" that's arguably the most demanding word in our world.

What does innovation mean to us?

So what does innovation mean to us and how has that guided our hand over the past six years since the company was launched?

My business partner Chris Human and I started our company after working for big name agencies, both full-time and as consultants.

While there's brilliant work being produced in the industry as a whole, we have a slightly different approach when we work with clients because we start with where they want to be, then work backwards to where they are now. We're clearly not committing to producing live unicorns and rainbows, but taking the brand development and placing it on a parallel stream to the business development strategy is absolutely critical.

Working for clients, not peers

If the creative doesn't grow the business, then we're not doing our job. That's one of the fundamentals on which the company has been built; a clever campaign or gimmick might win us peer awards, but we're not working for our peers - we're working for our clients.

In a collaborative effort for one of our ISP clients which was launching its new Home Uncapped offering, what we brought to the table was a way to bring a strategy to life creatively (and effectively) through an innovative take on the more 'traditional' side of digital marketing: display advertising with embedded video.

The resulting series of ads came in two guises: the video being the driver in terms of noticeability/sharability with the static banners augmenting the message and bringing volume to the campaign.

The campaign revolved around the premise that South Africans were fed up with bad service delivery, playing the political and ISP categories off against each other and that it was time to switch to a crowd that could really deliver.

This key brand oriented messaging then became the vehicle through which to convey the fact that our client was "now uncapped". It was a calculated risk opting for this more complex approach to the campaign's messaging but one we felt the typical target audience would be capable of understanding and, critically, one that they would appreciate. This approach paid off by delivering spectacularly against the KPIs set.

So is our innovation the fact that we're very talented creatively? Yes and no. Yes, because we are creative and if you want an attention-grabbing brand in your field, we can do it. But no, in the sense that we try to get under a client's business skin and learn what there is to know there.

True innovation in a creative environment begins with a synergised approach of business savvy and design. Neither can work without the other if you're getting it right.
Among our top tips are:

Be a brand first and foremost

As brandcrafters, this should be a key consideration: practice what you preach.

The success of start-ups in the creative community is dependent on more than just a logo; it is also dependent on the creative and strategic thinking that creates and maintains a recognisable and relevant brand. Branding is essential to business success as it creates a personality for a business that clients can connect with on a personal level.

Through an effective all round marketing strategy for your own brand, you can establish your expertise in your industry, with the ultimate goal of building towards your businesses success.

Balance passion with business

As creative people, when we decide to open our own start-ups in the creative industry, we run the risk of often only looking at the fun aspect - focusing on our craft and not the business around our craft. Like building a house, the foundations, infrastructure and nuts and bolts are as important as the fun bits.

Considering all your and your businesses' legal and financial options before opening up shop is step one. When it's just you, a partner and a handful of clients, this may seem unnecessary, but getting that house into order (so to speak) will allow you to focus on what is most important: serving clients to the best of your ability, building your brand, and turning a profit. This brings us to our final and most important tip...

Know your limits

Going at it alone as a creative is, frankly, 50% terror and 50% exhilaration.

When we launched Engage Brandcraft, little did we know that in just a few months the entire global economy would be plunged into a crisis which left hardly any industry unaffected. Those were scary times as prospective clients decided to scale back on "non-core spending", which included branding and communication.

At the time, like any other small business, we weren't prepared to face those hardships, but it turned out to be an important learning curve and we're financially and strategically stronger for it.

We learnt that, unlike the freelance creative world where you are ultimately the one in control of what you do; in business there are many variables which affect your success or failure.

Even more importantly, we realised that it's not a matter of "failure is not an option", but rather one of grasping that in business, as Winston Churchill once said, "success is not final, failure is not fatal - it is the courage to continue that counts".