How will your brand stand out from your competitors? In this episode of BBTV, cofounder Franziska Iseli shares the best thing you can do to create a kick-ass brand that is consistent, engaging and iconic!

(0:52) Pick a theme

(2:05) Naming products

(3:38) Make it iconic

(4:13) Visuals, copy & naming


Franziska: Hi and welcome back!

I am finally back here in the studio again with Steffi behind the camera and the team here at our headquarters, and it‘s so good to be back. I just spent quite a few weeks in Europe for a wedding and in Los Angeles for some speaking engagements. So what I thought I would do quickly right now is share one of the tips with you that I shared in one of the talks that I gave.

One of the talks was all about branding. Of course, it‘s something I‘m really passionate about. One of the tips that I thought would be most useful for you to know is that when you build your brand, so when you build your business‘ brand or image, one way to go about it, one way to differentiate your brand, is to pick a theme.

Now, I will give you one example of a company that we have branded is our branding agency. It‘s called The Business Hood. Now the theme that we have picked for our agency, just to standout, to differentiate ourselves from the competitors is we picked a theme that is sort of across between street, sort of gangster theme, street theme and ocean. So it‘s working really well for us because the name is The Business Hood, so we can play on that.

So when you pick a theme, you then use this across different channels and different ways of communication. So we use it across the visuals and the photos that we choose, also some of the graphics on our website are reflecting different neighborhoods. You can see a map of a city with different neighborhoods that is displaying our horizons(?).

Also, you can use the same theme across the copy, the text, the words that you use. We use words like “banging brands” and “badass” and just words that again reflect a similar sort of style. Of course, you can also use then the same theme across how you name your products or services. So rather than giving your products or services very boring names like diamond or gold or boring names, you can go with your theme. So for us, we have different branding packages and we call them “The Huster”, one is called “The Boss”, one is called “Mr. Big and it‘s all part of the same theme that we‘ve picked.

Now, you can pick any theme, really anything that you‘re passionate about, anything that you can identify with. One of our customers here at Basic Bananas, and also the branding agency, has a company called Ultra Journey. It‘s a fantastic business, so unique, with beautiful people and he went with a theme of mountains and peak performance. So if you look at his visuals, again, they are all around sort of mountains and journey. His packages are called “Peak”, one is called “The Summit”, and one is called “The Journey”. So it‘s all fitting in with what he does and it‘s different to what his competitors are doing.

So you can pick anything. You can pick an 80‘s theme..

I actually went to a bit of a “biker bar” when I was in LA. I hired a motorbike and I went around all the canyons in Malibu. Then I came across this biker bar where all the bikers talked. The bar was so cool, it was in the middle of one of these canyons and the theme was all about western style. So you walk in and everything was wooden, the food on the menu was super western style of food and they have musicians there playing western music. So again, it was one of these western restaurant/venues that picked a theme and they made it so iconic and it was really busy because it was different to what anyone else is doing.

We also have a social media agency, one of our businesses called Yours Socially. Our theme that we picked when we first started the company is all about pop art. It‘s sort of Andy Warhol pop art, contrasting colors and again everything that we do fits in to that image. So you can really pick anything you like and anything that you connect with, anything you‘re passionate about and see if you can apply a theme to your brand to make it different and to be more creative when it comes to visuals, copy and naming.

Now if you know a business owner who is maybe struggling a little bit with branding or would like to reinvigorate their brand and give it a bit of a refresh, maybe you can share this tip with them. Because, as you know, for us here, our whole purpose, our whole vision is to create ripple effects of awesomeness. The more people that we can help, the more business owners we can help on this journey of entrepreneurship, the more excited we are here at Basic Bananas. So we would love for you to help us create more ripples.

Thank you so much! Thanks for watching and I‘ll see you next time.