There’s a story about Michelangelo that speaks to his extraordinary talent as one of history’s most renowned sculptors. One day, someone asked the artist how he created such exquisite sculptures out of giant, raw blocks of stone. Michelangelo is said to have responded, “I just find the truth and remove everything else.” When a company is building a brand, the same tenet is true. Great brands are built on authenticity. You start with truth, remove everything that’s not genuine to what the brand is or wants to be, and then build on that foundation. As a branding agency Dallas TX clients and other companies around the country have trusted to create, reinvent, and revitalize their brands, The LOOMIS Agency has spent more than 20 years uncovering truth, stripping away the unneeded, and energizing brands to build their stature, sales, and profits. We are the country’s leading challenger branding agency. When underdog brands need help fighting the category giants, we are the branding agency Dallas TX calls.
Branding Always Has Two Sides
When you think of your favorite brands, what do you think of? The logo? The tagline? The brand voice, both literally and figuratively? Maybe you think about the brand’s promise to you. Its values or its story. Branding is complex. Every brand has dozens of elements that have to work in concert with each other. Sometimes they don’t. But when they do, brands connect. They get sticky, and memorable, and meaningful. For any branding agency in Dallas TX or beyond, that is the goal.
Whether we’re building a brand from scratch, or reimagining a brand that already exists, the branding process has two sides: the identity side and the projection side.
Identity Branding
On the identity side, we focus on the core elements that give the brand its look and feel – its name, its logo, its color palette and typography, its voice, tagline, and brand music. Once we establish how the brand looks, we shift our attention to who the brand is.
Projection Branding
This is the projection side of branding – the brand’s story, its identity, its promise, culture, values, and positioning. There’s the inbound side of what people see when they look at the brand, and the outbound expression of what we’re telling the world the brand represents. It’s a fascinating process and one of the foundational capabilities that’s helped us build a branding agency that delivers.
A Branding Agency Dallas TX Companies Know Will Help Make That First Impression
Humans are visual, meaning-making creatures. The second we see something, including brands and people, we make judgements about them based on what we see. Yes, we further inform those judgements later once we learn more, hear more, and see more. But our first impression is a big deal. Encountering a new brand is just like meeting a person for the first time. Make a bad impression and it’s over before it gets started. Make a great impression and Louie, this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
As a robust branding agency in Dallas TX, our purpose is to help make those first interactions spectacular. Admittedly, every branding agency would say the same thing. But there are some very real reasons why The LOOMIS Agency is the branding agency Dallas TX challengers trust to help them get their branding right. Let’s start with names, logos, color palettes, and typography.
NAMES
Names have meaning. They can be simple and smart. But names can also be goofy, unnecessarily abstract, and difficult to pronounce. What seems like a fun mashup of words one day is a disaster the next when customers can’t spell the name trying to type it into Google. Coming up with the perfect name is an art form and crucial to the success of the brand. After more than 20 years, our team knows how to dig deep and find names that connect.
LOGO
Exceptional logos are literally beyond words. Apple. FedEx. Nike. McDonald’s. Coca-Cola. They are bold, clear, and instantly recognizable. At LOOMIS, we have an entire division that specializes in logos and brand design. Today’s consumers are in a very big hurry, and every day they are bombarded by tens of thousands of brand messages. A great logo stands out and grabs attention. Those are the kind we design.
COLOR PALETTE
Can you imagine Coca-Cola being blue, of Home Depot being purple? Like names and logos, the palette of brand colors used for communication matters. This is the artistic side of branding and when we built our branding agency in Dallas TX, finding extraordinary art directors and designers is where we started. Our team could teach a Master Class in the psychology of color and their designs reflect it.
TYPOGRAPHY
We saw a great example of the importance of typography once using a cardboard square and some handpainted type. One side was painted in squiggly, imperfect letters that said, “Fresh Eggs.” On the other side, written in the same squiggly, imperfect letters were the words “Flying Lessons.” Same exact typography. The first feels authentic. The second feels like disaster. Choosing the right fonts to represent a brand is critical to the first impression it will make. It’s a decision that could and should last for years or even decades and our expert art directors and designers are masters of the craft.
Now that we’ve looked at the more visual side of brand identity, let’s focus on the words and sound.
In Marketing, BRAND VOICE matters
Every brand has a voice. Sometimes literal, sometimes figurative. Often both. Brands have personalities and the tonality of how they communicate should reflect that personality. Disney and Liquid Death Sparkling Water should not have the same brand voice or delivery. For brands that lean on broadcast media, there is often also a literal brand voice. Sometimes that voice shifts between the actors and actresses who represent the brand. But often, it’s a specific actor or actress whose voice is heard every time the brand is communicating. Bryan Cranston for Ford. Will Arnett for Reese’s. Josh Abbott for Texas Dairy Queen. Crafting and finding the right brand voices are critical for how the brand is perceived. We have two decades of experience getting those right.
TAGLINE
Just do it. You’re in good hands. 15 minutes could save you 15 percent or more on your car insurance. The best taglines tell you everything you need to know – and feel – about a brand in just a few words. Like logos, writing great taglines is an art form. One taste and you’re golden. That’s what I like about Texas. Smokin’ the good stuff. Our writers love crafting language. Turning it. Twisting it. Bending it until the right combination of words hits like a hammer and sticks in consumers’ minds. Every great branding agency in Dallas TX or elsewhere needs writers that can inspire, surprise, and deliver. We do.
BRAND MUSIC
Signature brand music is often one of the most overlooked elements of branding. Shocking, because it’s also one of the stickiest. In any other branding agency Dallas TX offers, brand music is often an afterthought and a third-party endeavor. But not at LOOMIS. Our branding agency in Dallas TX grew out of a music production company and to this day, we still leverage our in-house music capabilities to create signature music and sound design that drives our client’s brands. Music is memorable. It’s emotional. And when created specifically with a single brand in mind, it’s ownable. Great signature music becomes a connective brand attribute that keeps people humming and your brand top of mind.
Getting the Message Right and Clear Is Where It’s At
Once the brand’s look, tone, and feel are set, the other half of what our branding agency in Dallas TX does is clarify and/or create who the brand is. This side of branding is all about storytelling and capturing imagination.
STORY
Every brand needs a story. For some, their origin story is so compelling that’s all the story they need. For others, their story is more about who they hope to be and the difference they’re committed to making in the world. Like every great story, brands have characters, plots, intrigue, and action. The key is telling the story with clarity and consistency in a way customers can follow and embrace. Yes, we’re a branding agency in Dallas TX. But at heart, we’re storytellers.
IDENTITY
At The LOOMIS Agency, we specialize in challenger branding. And for challengers to succeed, they have to know who they are. Challenger brands are built on an inarguable truth that’s not for everyone. Challenger brands know who they are for, but just as importantly, they know who they aren’t for. We help underdog brands crystalize their identity. Brand success is built on authenticity and congruence. First, know thyself. Then, do what you say, and say what you do.
Competing with Empathy and Authority
To succeed, challenger brands have to make promises not easily duplicated by their competitors and those promises have to be grounded in real differences. Brand longevity isn’t built on fabricated promotions or gimmicky come ons. Challengers make real brand promises grounded authentically in who they are. Finding those takes time, experience, and hard work. As the country’s leading challenger brand advertising agency, we’ve spent more than two decades helping underdog brands find their center and make genuine promises that set their competitors on their heels.
CULTURE AND VALUES
People pay attention to and connect with brands that reflect what’s important to them. To that end, customers want to know what the companies they patronize value. Consumers want to know that a company that espouses honesty, integrity, and diversity to its customers actually delivers that on the corporate end as well. At LOOMIS, we place extraordinary value on building great company cultures. We even wrote a book about it. In the crazy cancel culture and electronic era we’re living in, brand success hinges on cultural consistency and being who you say you are. We help brands identify and live into their values so sales and profit will follow.
POSITIONING
As we mentioned before, challenger brands know who they are for and who they are not for. Positioning is all about understanding where there is open water in a category for a brand to play. One of the biggest reasons LOOMIS is the branding agency Dallas TX trusts is because nobody understands challenger branding and how to position underdog brands better than we do. Challenger brands cannot afford to fight on multiple fronts the way category leaders do. We excel at finding tactical angles of attack, positioning our clients, and then giving them what they need to leverage that strategy to fight and win.
IT’S ALL ABOUT BUSINESS
When it comes to branding, there are many recipes for success. One branding agency in Dallas TX may give you five hard and fast branding rules you cannot break while another gives you a 20-point plan. Of all the branding definitions we’ve ever heard, our favorite comes from author Joe Calloway. In his book, “Becoming A Category of One,” Calloway says, “your brand is what people think it’s like to do business with you.” Simple. Elegant. And Smart.
Branding is all about building a relationship – with your customers and with the people who help you deliver your brand to them. Whether we’re building a brand from the ground up or taking an experienced brand and giving it new life, at LOOMIS, we help brand challengers and we help underdogs win. That’s what we do and that’s ALL we do. If you’re a challenger brand looking for a branding agency in Dallas TX, we’d love the opportunity to meet you and see if we’re a great fit.
