The brand personality of a company is the feel, perception, and impression that it leaves on its customers. This personality characteristic can be expressed through the brand's colours, fonts, logos, and other design elements. Treat is here to help you make choices that underpin and express your brand voice. In this blog, we'll show you how to transform your brand to make it digital first. As a case study, we'll explore the story of developing the Treat brand - the distinct logo, colours and fonts that set Treat Marketing apart in the competitive field.
Why does your brand need to be optimised for digital?
You simply cannot beat digital marketing when it comes to effective, innovative, and active marketing communications with measurable outcomes.
The market is crowded, even in Torbay
Digital brand exposure is the best way to position your brand for success. In a crowded market, you have to find ways of standing out from the crowd and grabbing attention - but that's not always easy when brands are fighting for every customer. Digital marketing has opened up new possibilities when it comes to developing brand awareness through brand storytelling.
Sales tell the tale
When brand awareness is strong, so are sales - in fact, studies have shown that increases of brand exposure can lead to a jump in revenue by as much as 19%. The most effective way to achieve brand awareness and engage customers with your brand personality is through digital marketing channels like social media, email campaigns or online advertising.
Digital performance tracking
A strong digital presence is better than traditional marketing because it is more measurable - brand awareness, brand recognition and brand recall can be tracked to see an increase in sales.
The impact of customer retention
While brand awareness is not the only factor that determines brand success, it does play a huge role in being able to build brand trust and loyalty - which are essential factors for customer retention.
Creative brand storytelling
Digital marketing enables you to share your brand personality with customers on an increasingly personal scale through storytelling by means of images or video.
Digital first
Treat has always been a digital marketing agency, and as an agency that supports and advises businesses in Torbay, we provide leadership in digital marketing first and foremost. Everything we do must be suitable for web and social media platforms. As a digital agency, our company name needed to be:
Short
The digital space is sometimes confined to character limits and image dimensions, and our name needed to have high impact in the least amount of space. We originally wanted "Sweet" because the word had a flexible meaning, but upon researching the Sweet brand, found other agencies that got there first. The Treat brand is a natural extension of sweet - with five letters - meeting the short characteristic without losing any impact.
Multiple meanings
Sweet and Treat had a similar meaning but Treat takes on a different dimension with a dual meaning as both a noun and a verb, and not with purely one flavour profile! The noun provides stability, and verb usage provides excitement and energy - and allows a lot of flexibility in how the word is used. Customers can treat themselves with special offers and freebies that gives us the dual purpose of customer incentives while supporting our brand values. Treat is a strong brand for social media platforms as you must have clever, catchy ways of communicating the human characteristics of your brand's voice across platforms.
Standing proud
Treat as a word can stand on its own, but in digital marketing, you need more assets for each platform, working hard for your business. That's why we developed the big T avatar, to make a symbol with a high impact, that can stand on its own as instantly recognisable and reminds customers what the brand is about - Torbay. We wanted to create the Nike swoosh for digital marketing in Torbay with our big T - it's a brand that can go anywhere with a bold and distinct font, colours and shape that suits a huge range of digital platforms.
Our brand colours
Digital marketing must be eye-catching and clever, with the purpose to stop the social media scroll and influence customers to take action. We wanted to share with you a little bit about why the colours were chosen and what they mean to us.
Our hero is plum perfect
Our brand hero colour is Plum, #850D4C. It's a dark shade, (but not our darkest) and it's meant to be quite rich with a cranberry tone to it. Our company was founded in the last days of autumn, and this colour reflects the season of falling leaves, rich berries, and the tidings of December. Our brand colour hero is not red, it's not purple, it's irresistibly juicy, bold, and distinctly plum.
Bonbon adds sweetness
This is a very light shade of pink, that can be used to soften and lift delightfully where white may be needed but would be too harsh or bright. There is a very sweet colour about it, like a candy floss. Bonbon #FFE3F1 is on the same spectrum as Treat plum, but in a lighter tone of the plum colour, perfect for eye-catching digital campaigns.
Taffy adds tone
This colour is a medium pink with a touch of grey and is a little bit more serious than the soft candy pinks. We use this in presentations where a grey tone is more visually appealing, and where the audience is expected to read copy. We chose the taffy name as throwback to our summers on the boardwalks of the East Coast of America - and Taffy #E1AEC8 is a soft pink heritage colour within the Treat brand personality.
Sweet shouts it out
We wouldn't be true to our brand history without calling one of our colours Sweet. We use this sweet hot pink to highlight, to draw the eye, and to make a point. It's perfect where the colour red is needed but would undermine our brand as too harsh. Sweet #FF437B is a lovely candy-coloured alternative that supports our brand personality.
Soft as a dove
This flannel grey #83787E is simply called Dove. We use it in marketing collateral for consultancy, accountancy, and solicitors’ firms. This added flexibility in our colour palette means we are always ready for monochrome advertising when it's needed. It's important to have a range of tones available when working with the wide range of businesses in Torbay. For example, the medium pink colours are for working with Torbay restaurants, hotels, experiences and tourist attractions. We use Dove grey for working with professional services organisations. This gives us greater flexibility when serving our clients in Torbay, without losing our brand appeal.
Feathers of down
The baby sister of Dove, this very soft grey Down #D6D6D6 is the similar tone to bonbon pink, but it's just the softest whisper of a grey colour to use when you don't want to have white or pink and need a touch of colour.
Time for elevenses
This gorgeous, buttery coffee colour is called Biscuit, #927764. This accent colour is the creamiest rich brown tone that perfectly complements all the pink, grey and plum colours without being harsh or conflicting. Biscuit makes our greys stand out and our pinks blend in - the perfect medium shade on our brand palette.
A nod to our heritage: Remember, remember
Our black substitute is a deep, rich burgundy colour, nearly the colour of black coffee - called Bonfire #430726. We use this shade to soften where black tones would normally be used, and it's named Bonfire to recognise the founding date of our company on the 5th of November 2018.
Simple and sweet
Our white is #FFFFFF and we've named it Sugar. Because sometimes you just need it! And why not name it as part of our brand library of colours - after all, it's part of our brand personality!
A flexible approach
By having a large managed colour library, we are ready for any trend, any platform, and any use we need to communicate our message with impact.
Commemorate special events
A diverse brand library is always evolving as your company grows. To commemorate our move to new premises on Beacon Quay on Valentine's Day 2022, we added a new colour to our brand palette, Beacon #FAB59E. The colour evokes the soft candy-coloured sunsets reflecting off glorious Torbay. One part millennial pink and one part coral, the shade is a perfect complement to our rich biscuit, dove and plum tones.
Our brand fonts
We chose a super clean and fun font for the website and our advertising materials in Poppins. This font comes in a range of weights, which we needed to communicate our messages clearly across digital platforms. Poppins is a sans serif, web safe font that is widely available, and can be uploaded to a range of apps and creative platforms. We don't italicise anything - it just makes things harder to read!
Our hero
Our big T avatar is Chennai slab, a serif with a big heart, and a distinct, classic look that is the iconic hero of our brand. As a digital agency, we needed one powerful voice - suitable for a circle or a square, that can stand alongside or instead of our Treat logotype. One-part T for Torbay, one-part American university, one-part Herbie the Love Bug, and one-part circus ringmaster, big T is our icon, our seal of authenticity, and the hero of our brand personality.
Digital first
So that tells you a little bit of the story, around the basis for our digital brand - and why we made the choices we did under a digital-first principle.
Treat is your digital marketing agency in Torbay
Treat Marketing wants to stand out and be unique and different. We're your digital marketing agency in Torbay, and we want to make a big splash with a unique brand personality that is instantly recognisable. We want to help you do the same with your business and your brand. As seasoned and experienced marketing specialists, we can help you transform your marketing programme into a digital-first platform, to attract and retain customers with high-performing digital marketing campaigns.
Interested to learn more?
Book an appointment to talk about your brand and how to optimise your position to leverage digital channels, like web and social media. Use the form to view our diaries and book a chat or call us on 07513 472371.