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MILTON AND CROSS
CONSULTING
Suite J179, Ikota Shopping Complex, Adjacent Victoria Garden City, Lekki, Lagos
Tel:+2348036258312; Email:miltoncrosslexng@gmail.com
Web: www.miltoncrosslexng.com

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HELLO_________________________________________
Customers face an abundance of choices in the modern marketplace and brand
distinctiveness is more important now than it has ever been.
Distinction is vital for business success, and the object of this toolkit is to help you
make informed and inspired decisions for the creation of your brand. It addresses
strategic and creative challenges you may come across during the early stages of
your venture. In addition, branding plays a significant internal role, because it
clarifies and sharpens the idea, identity and value of your organization.
You will find this toolkit helpful in building your brand and your business. However it
is important to note that a brand is not built overnight; success is often measured in
decades, not years.
Thisissupposedtobean
interactivedocument,sofeelfree
to printitout andwriteanywhere
on thedocument

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A Brandisa MentalConcept
The goal of brandingis the creation of a distinct and attractive mental representation of a product, service or
organization. Brandingfocuses relevant information about the product or service being offered, helping the
prospective consumer to recognize and select the branded product from the multitude of alternatives
available in the marketplace.
A strong brand is generally one that people can easily recognize and recall, and for which the hold strong,
favourable and unique associations.
Branding IsVITAL!
People build perceptions of your brand every time they have an experience with your organization. Your
brand develops a meaning with your audience, which is strengthened by every additional encounter they
have with the brand. It is consequentlyup to you to shape these perceptions or face the consequences of the
wrong perceptions being developed.

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By defining and transmitting a set of clear and consistent signals each time your audience encounters your
organization, you can transform a vague idea into a stable understanding of what you do and why it should
matter to them that the product or service they desire to purchase is provided by you.
How do Brandscome to life?
TheToolkit

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Establishingandmaintaininga relationship with customers today has become difficult. A multitude of offers
compete for the attention of customers who are more media savvy and economically literate than at any
point in human history.
This toolkit, if used properly, should enable you create customer experiences that serve needs, and are
immenselypleasant to users of your product or service whilst promoting brand encounters that consistently
deliver your brand idea.
TOOLKIT OVERVIEW:
1. Brand Positioning: How to formulate your brand positioning statement for the market?
2. Brand values: What promises are you communicating to your customers?
3. Brand Personality: How should your brand look and feel?
NamingBriefingTone of VoicePersonalityBrand ValuesBrand Positioning

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4. Tone of Voice: How does your brand reflect in your communications?
5. Briefing Designers: How do you work with external designers to project your brand?
6. Naming: How do you select a business name that adequately communicates your brand?
We live in a culture which is overwhelmed by too many choices, a well-positioned brand helps
your audience understand what services you provide and why they should choose you.
A well-positioned brand is visually appealing and memorable, communicates essential
messages clearly and consistently and focuses on value and benefits to the target audience.

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Your brand positioning should be articulated in your Brand Positioning Statement (BPS). From
your BPS you can derive other decisions about your brand, such as your brand values and
personality.
BRAND POSITIONING STATEMENT WORKSHEET
You cancutoutthisworksheetandpasteitonawall
foreasyreference
,
FOR:
Our Target consumer:
,
Our Brand name
Our Product or service type/category

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VISUALISING YOUR BRAND
POSITION
Visualizing your competitive position in your target
market is useful in giving your team a solid
understanding of your organisation’s uniqueness and
relevance, relative to the competition.
Stepsto visualizing yourposition
Step 1: Identify the attributes your target consumers
use to understand the differences between competing
brands in your current or target market. The attributes
WHICH GIVES
IS THE
Our brand Promise/ Consumer Benefit
BECAUSE
Reason to Believe our promise
General ideas for labeling your positioning axis
include:
High Quality Low Quality
Prestige Budget
Broad Choice Narrow Choice
Stylish Functional
Modern Traditional
Innovative Conservative
Exciting Modest
Luxury Basic
Complex Simple
Fun Serious
Specialist General

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should be structured as opposing pairs (e.g. ‘High Quality’ and ‘Low quality’).
Step 2: Add the pairs of attributes as labels to the horizontal and vertical axis of the template graph below.
Step 3: Score your organization and your competitors on each attribute axis by using a scale from 1 to 9
(1=very complex, 9=very simple). Place your organization on the graph using markers.

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Your brand values are the pillars of your organizationandthe substance of your promise to consumers. They
outline what is most important to you in doing what you and things that you will never compromise on.
Formulating your brand values helps to ensure that your team members share a solid understanding as to
the core of what you are trying to achieve with your product or service. These defined values become more
important once you hire new colleagues, expand your business, or work with external contractors.
As your organization grows, brandvalues provide a basis for deciding whether a new product, service, advert,
or any other action will suit your brand.
There are two categories of brand values you should define for your organization, points of parity (POP’s)
and Points of Difference (POD’s). Your POP’s are values you must possess to be considered by consumers of
your product or service. Without these qualities, your product or service will not succeed in the market, no

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matter how compelling your POD may be. In contrast, your POD’s are your organisation’s attributes or
benefits relevant to consumers, which they cannot find to the same extent with a competing brand or
product.
CONSUMERRELEVANCE
POINTS OF PARITY POINTS OF DIFFERENCE

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BRAND PERSONALITY
Your Brand personality defines the way you project the substance of the values of your organization. It is
beneficial to develop a consistent brand personality, which your target consumers can recognize and relate
to as congruent with their own personalities.
Your brand personality may be defined using visuals, because the human brain processes more information
when contained in pictures than when contained in text.

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USING VISUALS
STEP 1: A projective and enabling technique for finding your brand personality attributes is to compare your
organizationwith famous personalities. If your brand were to come alive as a person, who would it be
and why? Think of how that person behaves, how they dress, how they live, and how they achieve
their objectives. In doing this, keep in mind your target consumers point of view and how they relate
to that person.
STEP 2: Compare your organization with other categories such as drinks (coffee, champagne, whisky?), animals
(lion/monkey/dog), sport activities (Martial arts/football/Tennis), Architecture
(Skyscraper/Terrace/Bungalow?), fashion items (Suit/sneakers/white tie?)
STEP 3: Cut out the pictures you think best reflects your organization and write down three adjectives which
best summarise each image you have chosen.
STEP 4: Compare, explain and discuss the attributes you have collected with your team. Some attributes may
be similar and some may be more relevant to your business and target consumers than others. Try to
narrow them down to a list of three to five words.

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STEP 5: Think about how you can translate your chosen attributes into your visual and verbal communication.
for instance, if your brand personality is energetic and refreshing you may want to use saturated,
bright colours and short, active sentence structures. On the other hand, a personality that is more
gentle or traditional can be portrayed through eloquent language and more subtle colours.
COLOURS AND THEIR MEANINGS
Red
Red is the color of fire and blood, so it is associated with energy, war, danger, strength, power, determination as well
as passion, desire, and love. Use it as an accent color to stimulate people to make quick decisions; it is a perfect color
for 'Buy Now' or 'Click Here' buttons on Internet banners and websites. This color is also commonly associated with
energy, so you can use it when promoting energy drinks, games, cars, items related to sports and high physical
activity.
Orange
Orange represents enthusiasm, fascination, happiness, creativity, determination, attraction, success, encouragement,
and stimulation. Orange is very effective for promoting food products and toys.
YELLOW
Yellow is the color of sunshine. It's associated with joy, happiness, intellect, and energy. Use yellow to evoke pleasant,
cheerful feelings. You can choose yellow to promote children's products and items related to leisure. Men usually
perceive yellow as a very lighthearted, 'childish' color, so it is not recommended to use yellow when selling
prestigious, expensive products to men.
Green

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Green is the color of nature. It symbolizes growth, harmony, freshness, and fertility. Green has strong emotional
correspondence with safety. Dark green is also commonly associated with money. Use green to indicate safety when
advertising drugs and medical products. Green is directly related to nature, so you can use it to promote 'green'
products. Dull, darker green is commonly associated with money, the financial world and banking.
BLUE
Blue is the color of the sky and sea. It is often associated with depth and stability. It symbolizes trust, loyalty, wisdom,
confidence, intelligence, faith, truth, and heaven. You can use blue to promote products and services related to
cleanliness (water purification filters, cleaning liquids, vodka), air and sky (airlines, airports, air conditioners), water and
sea (sea voyages, mineral water). Blue is linked to consciousness and intellect. Use blue to suggest precision when
promoting high-tech products.
PURPLE
Purple combines the stability of blue and the energy of red. Purple is associated with royalty. It symbolizes power,
nobility, luxury, and ambition. Light purple is a good choice for a feminine design. You can use bright purple when
promoting children's products.
WHITE
White is associated with light, goodness, innocence, purity, and virginity. It is considered to be the color of perfection.
You can use white to suggest simplicity in high-tech products. White is an appropriate color for charitable
organization. White is often associated with low weight, low-fat food, and dairy products.
BLACK

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Black is associated with power, elegance, formality, death, evil, and mystery. When designing for a gallery of art or
photography, you can use a black or gray background to make the other colors stand out.
Imaginative or realistic, humorous or serious, chatty or reserved. What you say and how you say it in your
written or spoken content on your website in your emails, or even in your business plan shapes the
perception of your organization andtherefore your brand. A consistent language, or Tone of Voice, can make
your brand recognizable and memorable.
Defining your Tone of Voice in the early stages of your organization can become helpful for ensuring
cohesion and consistency once external contractors begin to create content for your organisation. You can

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derive your Tone of Voice from the brand personality attributes defined for the organization. The goal of
your Tone of Voice should always be to portray your brand personality.
DEFINING YOUR TONE OF VOICE
STEP 1;
List below the brand
personality attributes you
have identified.
E.gClassy
STEP 2:
Translate your personalityattributes into a general textual style and
choosinga style that best captures your personality.
Formal
Modest
Serious
Composed
Complex
Informal
Bold
Humorous
Edgy
Simple
O O O O O O
O O O O O O
O O O O O O
O O O O O O

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STEP 3
Using your personality attributes from Step 1 and the general writing style from Step 2, think of positive
examples of your Tone of Voice and a rationale that shows the tone of Voice you want to establish.
We write like this:

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The briefing process is crucial in creating your brand identity: your logo, website, mobile,
stationery and corporate communications. The designer is expected to create a tangible
identity from the often intangible ideas in the mind of the entrepreneur, thus a precise briefing
can save you costly design revisions, speeds up the overall design process and gets you closer
to your aspired brand identity.
We do not write like this
Our reason for choosingthis Tone of Voice

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Textual and pictorial descriptions of your defined brand personality attributes provides
designers with a description of the look and feel that is sought to be achieved. Tools like
Pinterest are of great value in the production of design briefs.
BRIEFING DESIGNERS WITH VISUALS USING PINTEREST
Step 1: Create a free Pinterest account on www.pinterest.com, you can also sign in using your
facebook account
Step 2: After setting up your account, go to your profile nd create a new secret board, which
will enable you to pin images privately.

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Step 3: Start by searching for specific design terms such as ‘colour palettes’ or ‘Typography’ and
pin all pictures that you feel will be relevant to your design idea. These will give the designer a
good feel for the overall tone and style you are looking for.
Step 4: Once your board is finished you can simply save it as a screenshot or print it as a PDF
document. You can also invite your designer to collaborate on your secret board by sending its
URL.
The name of your organization is probably one of the earliest elements of your brand. Your
name is often the first thing your customers come in contact with, your most used and most
visible brand asset and the most distinct identifier for your products and marketing material.
Search Ideas
Blog Design, Business Card, Colour Schemes, Branding, Brand Identity,
Corporate Identity, Logo Design, Packaging Design, Typography, Website
Design, App Design, Corporate Design.

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With hundreds of millions of domain names registered on the internet, your challenge is not
only finding a name that fits your business, but one you can actually use both as a domain and
for potential social media profiles.
FINDING A DISTINCTIVE NAME
1. Brainstorm root words that represent the core of your business or its product/service
category as well the functional and emotional benefits you offer.
2. Create compound words by combining the words you have collected so far (e.g
face+book=Facebook).
3. You can add to your compound words short prefixes or suffixes

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4. You may increase your chances of finding an unused name by misspelling words through
changing or removing letters, typically vowels where it does not affect the pronunciation of
the word (e.g Flickr).
General Tips and Criteria for Choosing a Good Name
1. A good name is one that is simple and easy to pronounce. People should be able to
pronounce it after seeing it in written form. Simplicity reduces your efforts in educating
people on the pronunciation and spelling of your brand name.
2. A good name should create a reasonable fit with the character of your organization and
your brand personality.
3. A Good name should stand out from competition as recognition depends on consumers
ability to discriminate between brands.
4. A good name should be available for all legal purposes (Website, trademarks, domain
name) it should not contradict any existing names or intellectual property.

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5. A good name should be tested and well received by the target group. This may be
achieved either through field research, surveys, and focus groups. You can show your
preliminary names to brand customers, relatives, friends and other entrepreneurs and
assess how much people like it and if it elicits associations that fit the brand of your
organization.
NAME SELECTION WORKSHEET
Root Words:
Synonyms, related emotions, objects:
Compound Words: Prefixes and Suffixes:

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YOUR BRAND ON A PAGE
What Market are we in?
What attracts us to this
Market?
Who are we aiming at
providing services to?

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What is the most
Compelling thing we offer
our customers?
What do we never
compromise on?
What is our personality?
What is our tone of
voice?