Brand Development

“Brand” – from the Norse, “to burn”, via the cattle ranches of the Wild West to the boardrooms of the twenty-first century world. At its very simplest, to describe (the essence of a service or product) and to distinguish (from competition). Brand is who you are, how you’re perceived.

Great brands build a special relationship with their stakeholders, based on intangible qualities that produce emotional responses, as well as tangible characteristics and benefits. A logo alone isn’t going to produce this engagement, but certainly a logo, a general look and feel, a tone of voice, the way the organisation interacts with others – all these things contribute once the brand, its values and its architecture have been established.

We believe that the health of your brand and its relevance to current conditions is a critical underpinning of your institution. We also believe that, rather like shares, brands are not for buying and then locking away and forgetting – they require constant reviewing, nurturing, and, if necessary, changing. A strong brand reflects a strategically-sound, dynamic, forward thinking organisation, in tune with the wishes of its stakeholders - at its best, caring about, measuring and understanding how others see you and adopting what you do to take account of that, without of course abandoning what you stand for.

A moribund brand indicates the opposite.

At 360 Education, we have a number of tried and tested bespoke planning and brand development methods at our disposal, including some specialist tools for the creation of employer brands and education advertising. Our methodologies are based upon establishing the current reality, ideally via research, and then concentrating on articulating and encapsulating the brand vision of the institution, and doing so in the way best calculated to ensure consensus and buy in from key internal stakeholders.