The Art of Contemporary Branding

Marketing and branding are central to every company, organization, and business. Brand means identity. What values, mission, and personality form the company? Beyond this, consistent visuals, fonts, and colors come into play. Effective branding sets a company apart, building credibility, trustworthiness, and purpose. Marketing drives awareness, engagement, and growth. Advertising, social media campaigns, and content creation communicate the company's value to its consumers. The effective combination of branding and marketing not only shapes and influences the minds of consumers but is essential for relevance and long-term growth.

HubSpot identifies evolving branding strategies, including the important identification of branding pillars. These pillars define points and values that set one brand apart from another. 

Knowing the pillars, how will you start building out yours? Whatever is included, make sure the audience clearly understands the messaging and identifies their emotional motivation. This article intends to identify the five brand pillars for getGFTD,  supplemented with media from the website and social media.

Purpose answers questions like “Why did you start the company?” and “What are you hoping to achieve?” also referred to as the mission and foundation. Purpose identification guides decision-making, builds brand loyalty, and differentiates in specific markets. At getGFTD, spreading tokens of gratitude, sympathy, support, and congratulations through the app is at the forefront of our founding. With the creation of the app and brand, Nina Guise-Gerrity adds to the personalized gifting world, designating a platform to streamline online individual giving.

Perception centers on the audience's view. For newer companies, identify characteristics that should be associated with the brand, beyond that, how does the audience perceive the brand? What characteristics do they use? getGFTD is notable in Loyola University Maryland’s student community and broader Baltimore. Known for a majority women-run team, each semester Guise-Gerrity selects a group of interns to produce a variety of content, giving them firsthand marketing experience in a startup environment. In Baltimore, getGFTD was selected as part of the Baltipreneurs Accelerator program, run through Loyola, a program that provides funding and mentorship for Baltimore’s innovators, including Loyola students, faculty, and staff. Last year, getGFTD was selected for the Hustle Award. getGFTD is widely known to be an app rooted in personalization and integrated with 

Identity is company personality from brand voice and visuals. Personality and interactions with the company also form identity. Joy, appreciation, excitement, nostalgia, and inspiration take the lead for branding emotions. At getGFTD we want each social media post, blog, marketing video, and personalized transaction to evoke at least one of these emotions. Gift-giving does not have to be designated around holidays; it can be an easy and everyday practice. For brand visuals, getGFTD is identified by a gradient blue present icon with the name below. A pastel group of three blueberries and a variety of platypus icons build into brand visuals overall. After writing for getGFTD for about three months, I would classify brand voice as conversational, inclusive, and personal.

Values communicate the company's position to the audience. The actual getGFTD app platform is quick, secure, and personalized. Social media posts are humorous, engaging, and relevant. These media values translate into the website as well, communicating ease and personable qualities.

Brand Experience promotes products and services into the market. People continue to buy and support services that they like and enjoy. Advertised as a platform for personalized wishlists and instant surprises. Since its launch in 2018, getGFTD is still growing with over 2,000 users. Personalized wishlists that ensure wanted gifts set us apart from other gifting and money apps in the market. Successful marketing to our 18-25 demographic and consistent branding have allowed getGFTD to grow beyond the Loyola community and set up a future stronghold in the app market.