What’s in a brand?

Jay Patel, sales director at Everglade Windows, talks about rebranding Everglade after 35 years of fabricating windows and doors in London.

Over the last 5 years, Everglade Windows has had a lot of experience with branding. When we refreshed the Everglade brand in celebration of its 35th anniversary, we were able to use a lot of the skills and information we learned when we created aïr range of bifold and lift and slide doors.

We’ve found that spending time on branding has helped us to pinpoint our values and think outside the box in terms of how we present ourselves to customers and prospects.

Branding isn’t just about creating a logo for your business. Done right, it defines your business values, represents the consistent quality of your products or services, and gives the opportunity for you to resonate with existing and potential customers. It also makes sure that those values are interlinked in all operational aspects of the business.

Research is your best friend when it comes to new branding. If you’re starting from scratch, it can help you to identify a gap in the market and from that, identify your potential customers.

At 35 years young, we already knew the kind of businesses we wanted to attract, but our research helped us to see things from the point of view of potential decision-makers. The leadership team at Everglade has first-hand experience of the next generation taking over a business and we know we’re not alone.

While we wanted to refresh the brand to appeal to these new design-savvy decision makers, we didn’t want to throw 35 years of heritage away. We needed the new branding to reflect our manufacturing experience, our dedication to customer service and a fantastic product range that gives our customers the opportunity to grow their business.

A brand that resonates with your target audience will make it more appealing. Defining your values first will help to streamline the branding process and make sure that every process within the company incorporates your brand values too.

If you’ve done your research, making sure that your brand values are in-line with your customer’s expectations should be a simple task.

We centred the Everglade rebrand around the values we share with London — adapted, progressive, inclusive — so that we can deliver products and services that are rigorous, certain and legendary.

Once you have them pinned down, you can start to think about how to make it clear what your brand stands for, how it may be interpreted in the market, and how it will be depicted visually.

Creating a recognisable brand is about using visual cues consistently across all communications so that your brand becomes instantly recognisable.

Everglade’s new visual identity was driven by the new leadership team – it was centred around our ‘Made in London’ tagline and brand values. We’re firmly rooted in the capital but it’s not about being red, white and blue – it’s modern, vibrant and inclusive.

The traditional corporate blue colour was replaced with ‘roasted fig’ to reflect Everglade’s vibrancy. Long-standing capital landmarks and new London architecture represented Everglade’s combination of traditional values and forward-thinking innovation.

It was first launched to our team and they loved it. We then rolled it out to our customers and finally to the wider market.

A brand guidelines document is a fantastic tool – it’s really useful to create one so that you can make sure that your visual identity is consistent across all communications.

If you outsource any design work or marketing, a brand guidelines document gives your suppliers a good basis to work on, too.

Branding is a really important process for any company, but doing your research right at the beginning can help you to build a brand that represents exactly what you do, and stands the test of time.