Industry Insights

Branding is so much more than just a logo and color scheme. 

Scratch the surface and you’ll understand that branding is a voice, a point of view, a tone and an approach to set a company apart from its competitors and the rest of the market. 

As a recruiter, you want to help your clients find strong creative digital marketers who will understand and enhance their brand, not just treat it as something to be designed around. 

Here’s how best branding practices will help you give your clients better marketing candidates. 

1. Buying into the concept.
   A brand is a company’s identity. It establishes everything: The way the company sees and views itself as an entity and within its market; how it speaks and shares information; the way it looks; how it stands out. With that in mind, you’ll be able to go through resumes and applications to see whether candidates have enhanced brands’ identities in their work or tried to recreate the wheel, or maybe tried to push too hard for a reinvention that came across as ineffective or tone deaf. 
   
   
2. The importance of consistency.
   Branding is only effective if it’s reliable, dependable and always used in the same way. Strong branding will make a company synonymous with its logos: think the golden arches, a red and blue domino, the curved soda bottle, etc. There’s a consistency of product quality that is upheld and expected when those logos are viewed. The same is true for branding language: as a recruiter in the digital marketing world, you know that marketing is all about stories. Your clients have a story to tell; will these applicants understand the story and continue to utilize it in new, creative ways that remain true to the core of your client’s vision? 
   
   
3. There’s still a need for creativity.
   When you’re reviewing candidate information for your clients, keep in mind that even the golden arches have changed things over time. Consistency does not mean being stale or boring! There’s room to grow and develop and change with the times in order to stay ahead of the curve and relevant. Being able to find digital marketers with a flair for blending old and new, established parameters with new trends and the ability to speak with new customers without driving away old ones, those are the abilities of a strong candidate who can help your client shine. 
   
   
4. The ability to understand the target audience but also see room for growth.
   Remember when a video went viral last year on social media of a guy on his skateboard, drinking cranberry juice, with Fleetwood Mac in the background? The star of the video wasn’t out to make a name for himself, nor was he out to market the product or the band. And yet, sales of the juice went up, the song returned to popularity on streaming services and countless parodies and homages were launched.
   
   The power of a viral video is the ability to help people see or hear familiar things in a new light and reinvigorate not only the target audience who buys a product out of loyalty, but to pique the curiosity of the unfamiliar. When looking for a new candidate for your client, you want someone who understands that engaging with an audience isn’t linear but can branch out in many directions, sometimes all at once, while remaining true to the company’s established brand and welcoming in newcomers. 

Contact Method Recruiting Today

Branding is the foundation upon which good marketing is built. Strong logos, consistent voice and presentation, an expectation of quality all must be respected and utilized because that’s how your clients are known. Your job, as their recruiter, is to find talented, creative people who will nurture and care for that brand, work within and around it, and understand why it’s important. Looking for more advice on best practices in marketing, branding and recruitment? Contact Method Recruiting today! Our experts are standing by and ready to help.