Is Your Brand Ready for 2025?

Q4 is upon us (we can’t believe it, either!), meaning 2025 will be here faster than we can say, “Who ate the last Reese’s Peanut Butter Pumpkin?”

This stretch is probably your business’s busiest, overflowing with end-of-year spending, reconciliations, holiday events, and more. You likely squeeze in some year-end reflection: What worked well in 2024? Where can we improve? However, in Hammer Marketing’s experience, most businesses won’t get around to one key business booster:

Brand planning.

What is Brand Planning?

Brand planning is the process of identifying, clarifying, and aligning your business’s identity and objectives – for the first time or as a refresh. Ideally, brand planning come before your marketing strategy or plan, for several reasons:

• Your brand identity directly informs marketing and branding, which can only be successful if they perfectly reflect your business. Outward-facing strategies and tactics (campaigns, fonts, voice, logo, color palette, ad placement) need to be consistent…and need to point back to what makes you you…in order to work.
• Brand planning prevents brand disconnect. Defined as inconsistent expression, brand disconnect sows distrust in consumers, often subconsciously. Think about the most popular brands out there: Nike, Apple, and so on. Every ad, webpage, product box, and social media post is consistent in terms of design and expression – a huge win for gaining trust and a huge ingredient in their success. Get brand planning wrong, and your audience will feel the disconnect between who your brand is versus who it claims to be. This is thin ice because – 
• Your target audience makes or breaks your brand’s success. Their feelings about you determine whether or not they’ll buy your products and services. As such, a consistent, spot-on brand identity is critical.

The enemy here – brand disconnect – isn’t just fatal to brands; it’s also sneaky. Even the most attentive business owners often fail to notice misaligned details, for a few reasons:

• Brand disconnect happens slowly. Remember the game “Telephone,” where kids whisper a phrase down a line…and it inevitably morphs into something else by the time it reaches the last set of ears? This is a good metaphor for how disconnect descends on brands. Maybe you’ve replaced a longstanding creative lead with a new hire who interprets creative briefs differently. Maybe your products or service have evolved, but marketing hasn’t. Maybe a digital asset has been changed and saved out so many times that the color has shifted, and no longer abides by brand guidelines. These are just some of the ways disconnect emerges in a manner your prospects feel, even if you don’t. Because –
• You’re too close to spot it. In the same way homeowners eventually stop noticing the scratch on the kitchen floor, when you work for a business, distortions can start to feel normal, even acceptable, making it difficult for brand employees see cracks in the branding foundation.

Brand Planning Examples

Hammer Marketing has helmed brand planning with numerous clients, helping them align their positioning and products across every touch point. A few examples:

HoverTech International – HoverTech’s website was out of date when they approached Hammer Marketing about a redesign. We brought the site up to UX and industry standards – a huge win for overall positioning and brand reputation – and are now doing the same for other HoverTech collateral including their tradeshow elements, print materials and more.

Gertrude Hawk Chocolates –Gertrude Hawk’s product photography was consistent, but underwhelming. Their stunning products and packaging were shot against a white backdrop that left much to be desired – especially detrimental considering desire is key to chocolate sales! In 2023, Hammer Marketing worked with Gertrude Hawk to elevate imagery in time for the 2023 Valentine’s Day season. We styled product scenes and created a bright, warm look that enhances all of the platforms where Gertrude Hawk uses photos: On their website, in emails, and, of course, on social media.

Lehigh Valley International Airport (ABE) – a longstanding Hammer Marketing client, ABE’s brand audit revealed that its out-of-home (OOH) advertising visuals were lagging behind larger brand expression. Hammer in turn created a campaign that allows for cohesion across all ABE seasonal campaigns, and is in sync with the brand’s larger brand expression.

Now What? Brand Planning in Practice

Hammer Marketing generally recommends a brand planning deep dive (often resulting in some degree of brand refresh) every 5 to 8 years, with a brand audit annually or bi-annually to ensure things stay on track.

A taste of what brand planning entails:

• Assess your business from 30,000 feet:
  • What are your goals for 2025? For 2030? Beyond?
  • How do your products and services compare to years past? Have they evolved this past year – in terms of size, price, look, feel, or even the product itself?
  • What’s performing well? Where is growth needed?
  • Has anything changed within your vertical? Any seismic industry shifts in language, ethics, culture, or best practices?
  • Is your brand identity aligning with all of the above?
• Next, assess your brand’s reputation:
  • Check online reviews.
  • Ask for customer feedback.
  • Review any customer grievances you received this year.
  • Conduct an internal audit with employees across all departments. Sometimes the best insights come from inside the company. Bonus: Internal audits are a great way to let employees feel heard, which can boost retention and recruitment goals. 
• Now, shift your focus to branding and marketing. Look at what you’ve done in the past year or two. In emails, video and written content, ad buys, on your website, and in social media posts:
  • Visually, do elements look cohesive?
  • Does messaging have the same tone, i.e. does it all feel like it was written by the same brand voice?
• Now, bring business and marketing observations together:
  • Does your marketing reflect who your brand is in 2025 – or are updates needed?
  • Is your marketing keeping up with industry competition?
  • Even if brand elements are beautifully aligned with your business and industry – do they need to be more consistent among themselves?

Put Brand Planning in Expert Hands

You can “DIY” brand planning. Or you can give it the expert touch it deserves.

Mid-sized businesses in particular benefit from Hammer Marketing’s expertise. We define and align brands, then design a leading marketing strategy that flows from it. Whatever your resources, timelines, or business goals – let’s talk, ideally before the end of Q4!

Contact us today to get started.