Interview with Creative Director Reagan Burns

When starting a new business one of the first things that needs to be done is to create a brand. Branding establishes the first impression that your target audience has of your business. Existing businesses sometimes need to re-create their brand.

I once asked an attorney “why does the public perceive you as the best personal injury attorney?” And he simply replied “because we told them in our advertisements.”

So if you’re starting a new business or you own an existing business and your look is getting old and you need to upgrade or simply change and you need a fresh set of eyes to look at the situation where do you go?

I found Reagan Burns the owner and creative director at Lime Creative. Reagan and I had a nice conversation and she answered a few questions for me regarding marketing and branding issues.

What are some things a new business should be aware of regarding branding?

So when you’re starting a new business you need to create advertising material, packaging, and trade dress of your actual place of business that says “this is who we are.”

• Branding
• Advertising
• Marketing

Branding equals “look and feel of the company.” The logo operates to allow consumers to identify with the company. We help determine what the company needs such as a logo, slogan or tagline.

How do you come up with new ideas without stepping on other people’s legal rights?

When coming up with new ideas we have to be aware of trademark issues and copyright issues. This is where it’s important to find a trademark attorney to perform a trademark search and file an application for trademark or copyright registration. Our company will pass clients onto patent and trademark attorneys to determine whether or not a federal trademark has previously been registered.

How do you come up with new ideas?

Our job is to determine what theme you’re looking for. For example, a modern versus traditional look in which the target audience can relate. What is the look and feel of the company? How do you present yourself to the world?  Who do you want to become?

You can worry about efficiency while we worry about branding. In fact, not only do we love branding, but we also love worrying about advertising, and marketing, and designing, and inventing creative ways to add a little pizzazz and flavor to your business.

What do you do as far as following up with your branding plan?

Once we come up with a marketing plan it’s important to implement it with consistency. Advertising should be memorable and uniformly consistent. Things like color codes and JPEG pixelation’s should be consistent throughout the branding. Everything should have a unified feeling and the marketing plan should repeat the trademark over and over.

What rights does the branding company maintain?

Our client maintains all rights to use their logos as they see fit, whereas we maintain portfolio rights in all our work. Portfolio rights allow our company to maintain examples of our work to promote our business.