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Branding

At Harvest, we tend every brand the way you would cultivate a fertile field: we analyse your values, ambitions and market, sow strategic ideas, then grow powerful visual and editorial concepts.

Our approach blends strategic thinking and fertile creativity: storytelling, visual world, tone of voice and customer experience are designed as one consistent whole.

The fruit of this work is a brand that does more than exist: it grows, it attracts, it inspires trust and it reaps its customers’ engagement. In practice, branding at Harvest includes concrete steps: brand audit, definition of DNA and values, building the visual world, creating key messages and content, then support in rolling it out across all materials. The result: a living identity, ready to flourish in all your projects and in every interaction with your audience.

Branding at a glance

Branding means building everything that makes a brand perceived the way it wants to be: what it stands for, how it speaks, what it looks like. At Harvest, a communication agency in Lyon, France, a full branding project, from strategy to visual identity, usually takes 2 to 3 months.

What a branding project includes

The brand platform, built with you in workshops: mission, vision, values, positioning, personality.
The tone of voice: how the brand expresses itself, its vocabulary, its key messages.
The visual identity that turns this strategy into signs: see visual identity and logo design.
The brand architecture, when your organisation has several brands: group and subsidiaries, product ranges, sister brands.
The roll-out across your materials, supported by our art direction.

Branding, visual identity, logo: what is the difference?

The logo is a sign. The visual identity is the complete graphic system around that sign. Branding covers both and starts before them: it first defines what the brand wants to say, to whom and in what tone, then gives it a form. A good logo without a brand strategy is just a nice picture; with one, it becomes a landmark.

Our approach

Audit. We analyse your current brand, your market, your competitors and how your audiences perceive you.
Brand platform workshop. With your leaders and teams, we set out the brand’s mission, values, positioning and personality.
Tone and messages. We define how the brand speaks and the key messages it carries.
Visual identity. We create or evolve the brand’s signs, starting from three creative routes.
Roll-out. We apply the brand to your materials and support you as you put it into practice.

When several brands live together

Groups and companies with several subsidiaries or product ranges face a tricky question: one single brand, independent brands, or a system of linked brands? We help you choose the architecture that serves your strategy, then make it clear to your customers, partners and teams.

That is what we built for Serf, an orthopaedic implant manufacturer: one parent brand and four sub-brands, Serf Knee, Serf Hip, Serf Extremities and Serf Excellence, linked by a shared signature, the S of Serf, Santé (health) and Savoir-faire (expertise).

A few brands we have built

Serf: a brand built around the S, for Santé, Savoir-faire and the infinity symbol.
Zadig Avocats: a rebrand that balances modernity and expertise.
Telya: business telecoms where technology becomes simple and approachable again.
PRS Healthcare: a sustainable vision of medical innovation.

Frequently asked questions

How long does a branding project take?

Allow 2 to 3 months at Harvest for a full project, from the audit to the identity roll-out. A project limited to tone of voice or a brand evolution can be shorter.

What is a brand platform?

It is the document that sets out the brand’s core identity: its mission, vision, values, positioning and personality. It then serves as the reference for every communication decision, visual and editorial alike.

Who takes part in the brand platform workshop?

Your leaders and, ideally, a few people who know your customers and your business well day to day. The more varied the perspectives, the more accurate the platform.

Do we need a new logo when we rework our brand?

Not necessarily. If your logo already enjoys strong recognition, we can keep it or evolve it slightly, and focus the work on strategy, tone and the rest of the identity.

Can you organise several brands within the same group?

Yes. We work on brand architecture: the relationship between a parent brand, its subsidiaries and its ranges, and how to make it visible in each one’s identity. That is what we did for Serf and its four sub-brands.