“My business needs a branding project, in other words, a brand and visual identity”. Maybe you’ve already come across the term branding. But what does good branding really mean? Means that your company has a cool name and a beautiful visual identity? The truth is, branding often comes up in conversations about brands, and because of that, it sometimes gets mistaken for visual identity. While the two are definitely connected, they’re not the same thing. And understanding this difference is important for your company to communicate, position itself, and connect with people.
“Being aware of branding and visual identity principles is essential to build a brand that stays in people’s hearts and minds.”
Ana Couto
We graduated in graphic design and have a lot of experience working with naming, logos, and visual identities. But back in 2015, when we dove into the world of branding, everything started to make more sense. We brought in new tools and a deeper look into each business we worked with. That’s when the projects we now call Beloved Brands were born. In this article, we want to share what is branding and how it can help your business. Because branding absolutely matters for your company, whether it’s micro, small, or medium-sized.
1 – So, what is branding, really?
Branding is a multidisciplinary field with a clear goal: to create emotional connections between companies and people. You know that brand you love, trust, buy from, and recommend without hesitation? That’s the ultimate goal of branding work. To achieve this, there are actions and tools that place the brand at the center of everything. The idea is to make people feel what the brand wants to communicate and remember it. As a result, it becomes the preferred choice among so many other options. This kind of emotional connection isn’t built overnight; it’s the result of careful work, with consistent decisions and actions over time. That’s why branding is not just a beautiful name or a well-designed logo, it’s something much bigger. At the end of the day, branding is about shaping how your brand is perceived. And that applies to companies of all sizes, including yours.
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“Branding is the art of aligning what you want people to think about your company with what people actually do think about your company. And vice-versa.”
Jay Bear
2 – Branding Tools
Branding offers a set of resources that help organize from communication to product, from customer experience to positioning. Some tools are more well-known, like market research or defining personas. But branding also helps put on paper deeper aspects of your brand, such as purpose, promise, benefits you deliver and value proposition. Additionally, elements like tone of voice, name, verbal and visual identity are part of this process. Even the customer journey can be thoughtfully reconsidered so that every experience causes delight.
This more complete perspective is exactly what we brought when Tartiner invited us to redesign their packaging line, a brand we had created a few years earlier that had grown quite a lot since then. Before thinking about the new look, we reorganized the offerings, grouped products into lines, reconsidered the names, and analyzed the competitive landscape. During this process, it became clear that Tartiner had changed its positioning: from smooth spreads with a French accent and Brazilian soul to a proposal centered on nuts, healthy snacks, and the clean label principle. This shift allowed for new products like granolas, which wouldn’t have fit the previous strategy.
With this redesigned strategic foundation, we were able to highlight important brand differentiators, such as the pleasure of enjoying something naturally sweetened without missing sugar, and the enjoyable, practical habit of snacking on spreads and snacks that are good for you. Only after all this structure was built did we start creating the labels. The visual gained even more strength because it was built on a solid base: the brand strategy. And this care did not go unnoticed by experienced judges: the project was shortlisted for the ABRE Award of Brazilian Packaging and the 15th BDA – Brazilian Design Award, in the Packaging Design category.
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Before creating Tartiner’s new labels, the brand’s strategy was restructured. This project was recognized as a finalist in the ABRE and BDA awards. Photo: Amanda Nunes. See the full project.
3 – Branding Is Not Visual Identity
Maybe you’ve used the word branding thinking it meant visual identity. And it’s easy to understand why: both branding and visual identity help create emotional connections with people. They both work to make your brand feel closer. But there’s an important difference: branding is much broader. It acts like an umbrella covering many aspects of the brand, from the day to day brand management to customer experience, including, of course, the name and visual elements. In other words, you can change the visual identity without having a structured branding process behind it. Just as it’s possible to take care of your company’s branding without necessarily changing the visual identity. One doesn’t replace the other, but when they work together, the result is much stronger!
Amanaki came to us in a new phase of their brand. Years before, we had created their visual identity for a line of comfortable women’s sneakers. Now, with new products in their portfolio, like boots and loafers, the goal was to deliver a memorable experience. They were thinking about including a gift, maybe chocolate or coffee powder, as a kind gesture in the boxes. That’s when we suggested looking more deeply at the customer journey. From there came another idea: why not something related to foot comfort? So, we created a new brand strategy for Amanaki with the promise “comfortable and stylish in every step” and recommended treats like foot soaks and moisturizers. The logo didn’t change, but positioning and the experience transformed.
Before thinking about the gift, we mapped Amanaki’s customer journey to create moments of care aligned with the new promise. See the full project.
4 – Branding in Small Businesses
Large companies take branding very seriously! They have entire departments made up of diverse professionals dedicated solely to managing their brands. In small businesses, the scale is different, but certain brand-centered actions can make a huge difference. It’s common to see small businesses communicating in a confusing way. Sometimes, every social media post looks different, customer service speaks in one way, and the brand’s visual style shows another. This can end up pushing people away, even if your product or service is amazing. In these moments, it’s common to think, I need to change my visual identity. And you might need to, yes. But without first organizing what’s inside, the decisions, positioning, and how the company should be perceived, that change risks being only aesthetic, with no real effect.
That was pretty much what happened with Le Petit Chéri. They reached out to us to redesign the brand of a café and ice cream shop. But looking more closely at the numbers, we realized the ice cream hadn’t been the main attraction for a while. What really stood at the center of people’s preference were the artisanal breads. This explains why the current communication no longer made sense. If we hadn’t looked at this carefully, a new visual identity would only keep the same misalignment. It was only after adjusting the positioning and recognizing Le Petit Chéri as an artisanal bakery that we could create a visual style consistent with this new phase. With everything in order, sales increased, growth came, and moving to a bigger store was just a natural consequence of that alignment.
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Before creating Le Petit Chéri’s new visual identity, we dove deep into the business to understand what truly made the company stand out. Photo: Mariana Werner. See the full project.
5 – Beloved Brands
The deeper we dive into the world of branding, the more we realize that small and medium businesses could have access to this tools as well. That’s how we started adapting our creative process offering only what made sense for each company, whether in naming, identity, or the brand as a whole. We started to see companies gaining clarity, visibility, and new paths. Some grew, others won awards, and others still attracted investments. And yes, in many cases, revenue increased too. We witnessed firsthand the impact of defining a brand strategy before working on the visual side and how this transforms everything. That’s why we call our projects Beloved Brands: because they are brands built with an strategic base, from heart to heart.
This way of seeing and caring for brands pulses through our brand manifesto: “Passion is a powerful and intense feeling. But winning people over is a responsibility. To reach the heart, it’s necessary to be real, to be visceral. Everyone wants a beautiful brand and an interesting name. We want more: we want to spark passions that create real connection. For this, it’s necessary to make your company’s authentic personality visible and shining. Beloved Brands give vibrant life, provoke emotions, and transform people. The result is the beginning of a love story for life between real people, from heart to heart.”
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Conclusion: What about your small business?
In a market crowded with companies competing for attention, branding can place your brand in a coveted spot: in the hearts of people. To achieve this, there are many tools and visual identity is just one of them. It’s common that small businesses still face some lack of knowledge or even a bit of disorganization around these topics. But just by getting this far, understanding better what branding is and beginning to reflect on what makes sense for your case, your business is already a little closer to those hearts and minds.
Remember: creating a new brand, name, or visual identity is not only about making everything look prettier. Before this step, it’s necessary to dive into the heart of your company, have a diagnosis of how it thinks, feels, and presents itself to the world. This will be the strategic foundation for the visual identity to truly reflect what it is. If you want to better understand the unique universe of your company and transform it into a Beloved Brand, we can help you.
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Tell us: had you heard about branding before? How do you feel it shows up in your company’s day-to-day? Let’s chat in the comments! Does your company need a brand that truly captivates people? Then, let’s create it together, request a proposal!