New programme will help business owners beat uncertainty for 2021

A creative content designer has launched a new programme to help business owners get under the bonnet of their organisation, so they can get to grips with their brand and move forward into the New Year.

The Brand Confidence programme has been devised by Danny Matthews of award-winning Danny&co. It takes business owners through a step-by-step process to understanding their audience, their services, their values and their mission – all the stages which should be completed as part of a pre-branding exercise, but which are often overlooked.

Danny, who runs his branding and creating content studio near Cricklade, and who just scooped Cirencester Chamber of Commerce’s New Business Award, said: “The logo and visual parts of branding are usually the first things that people see, but in fact should be the last things that are created following a branding process.

“All too often – and for very understandable reasons – new businesses especially will reach for almost the first logo, font or colours they see without drilling down into what their company is all about. They say ‘OK, I need a logo, a business card, a website’, then go on to have them created, without understanding their goals, or targets, or how they want their business to be represented.

“My Brand Confidence programme enables business owners to take a step back. It gives them an opportunity to look at their brand and figure out all that important stuff before, perhaps, undergoing a redesign of their identity.”

The Brand Confidence programme is aimed at start-ups, businesses in their first few years of trading and even long-established businesses, which are pivoting or whose identity no longer reflects what they do. It is particularly aimed at professional services.

Danny said: “Professional services especially find it hard to differentiate themselves and work out what makes them unique over other, for example, accountants, or solicitors, or HR consultants. They don’t know how to communicate with their customers in a compelling way, which makes the potential clients pick them above their hundreds of other competitors. My programme helps them work out what is unique about them.”

Danny has also created free a Brand Confidence Scorecard, which takes business owners through a series of questions, and at the end gives them a score, for areas such as strategy, messaging and identity.

If they wish, business owners can then book on to the Brand Confidence programme. Running for eight weeks, participants can complete each module to suit their timetable. The material comprises video training and workbooks, as well as live support from Danny. At the end, delegates have a host of tools, including strategy, communication guidelines (such as mission statement and values) and a customer journey map.

Next step might then be to go through Danny&co.’s Brand Confidence Identity programme, where the visuals – logo, colours and so on – are created.

Two pilot Brand Confidence programmes have already been completed and the full programmes will be underway at the end of November.

To complete the Brand Confidence Scorecard, or to find out more about the Brand Confidence programme, visit https://dannyand.co/.