We recently launched a new in-house brand called Alpha Pak, specializing in quality dog gear made for outdoor adventures with your pup. There was a ton of work behind the scenes leading up to the launch, but the most important first step when building a brand is defining a brand. What do they stand for? What’s the voice? How about colors, fonts, spacing, and logos? These were all questions we asked ourselves as we were creating this thing from scratch.
The Goal
Our main objective in this phase of development was to determine who Alpha Pak is, who their audience is, and what their personality is. We needed to build an awesome website, get the social channels going, create photo and video content, and invite users to subscribe to the lifestyle of the brand- all while being consistent.
The Process for Defining a Brand
When you’re building a brand from the ground up, you have to start with the fundamentals. We look at brands from a Brand Archetype standpoint, so we took the time to determine which of those 12 archetypes we wanted Alpha Pak to be. Noted by psychologist Carl Jung, each archetype represents values, traits, and motivations that are intrinsic to human nature. Determining what you want your brand to be in the beginning helps guide the personality, style, and voice moving forward.
For Alpha Pak specifically, we chose The Explorer archetype. The Explorer finds inspiration in travel, risk, discovery, and the thrill of new experiences. They love adventure and escape from the mundane. They avoid the mainstream. Other brands within this archetype include Jeep, Red Bull, and REI. We felt this was the perfect archetype for growth in the dog gear category, and who we want the brand to be.
After determining the archetype, we used that to develop colors, key phrases, tone of voice, fonts, and brand descriptors. This allowed us to create a style guide for Alpha Pak to ensure consistency across all platforms. The style guide provides a roadmap for any and all elements of the brand. We looked to that document for guidance on everything from designing the website to planning content shoots for photo and video assets and copywriting for social. Read more about building out the visual brand of Alpha Pak.
To sum it up, a few key elements to consider when defining a brand include:
- Understand your audience
- Research
- Establish your brand’s theme and voice
- Strive for consistency with a clear style guide
- Image and video quality
The Results
Even though the Alpha Pak website is fully branded and the social channels are active, there is still much work to be done. From here, it’s all about being consistent in messaging, humanizing the brand, and getting our content in front of the right people. We went live with the website and launched on social last week, and we’ve already garnered an audience of nearly 1,000 people. Growing a brand requires a great deal of optimizing, refining, and out-of-the-box thinking. As we continue on this path, nothing excites us more than seeing fellow adventurers use our gear for their dogs all over the world. If you’re interested in taking a look at our gear for your adventure pup, check out the website!
To see more on defining a brand and our creative capabilities, check out our work on Triumph Pet Food!
For any branding needs for your new or established brand, give us a call! We love this stuff.
