Why An Honest Brand Vibe Matters For Kaleidoscopic Thinkers
This will take around 7 minutes to read
TL;DR: An honest brand vibe is one where the visual branding in your marketing, sales and client experience all make sense together. When kaleidoscopic thinking clients come along ready to work with you it’s important that they are a part of a cohesive experience because of their tracking skills, need for belonging, desired to know what is expected and to show rather than tell. You can hire support or create something from what you already have.
Humans love familiarity. That’s why branding is so effective. If people have seen your logo with consistent visuals and an overall consistent story they start to love you. If your serving up something they’ve never seen before it takes a little extra time for them to develop that trust. (Worth it!)
Creating an authentically polished vibe that builds trust, is within integrity and brings in income is an ongoing process that involves a whole lot of testing and tweaking and trying again. I have a whole course about this if you’re interested in learning more.
Today we are going to talk about why creating a visually clear vibe is so important for kaleidoscopic thinkers and intuitive leaders as the clients and as the CEOs.
What’s aN Honest Brand Vibe?
Let’s chat about what I mean by “honest brand vibe.” It means that your way of interacting with your community is the same in the marketing, sales and client relations. Basically, being yourself and providing your service from integrity.
A lot of people think of branding as the visuals (logo, graphics, fonts, colors, textures, etc) and that is a big part of it. Your branding will be most consistent if it speaks to ALL of the senses (Sounds, sights, feels, taste, etc).
At Illustrative, we focus mainly on the visual sense. It’s the one people notice first online, though the taste they have in their mouth when you’re selling to them and the way you speak to them matter too - especially making sure the visuals match the rest of the vibe.
For example, we don’t want images of all different kinds of people from all kinds of lived experiences in the marketing and then for someone to sign up and find out that the leader knows nothing about their struggles, joys or culture - and doesn’t care to learn about it. That’s a yucky taste and totally dishonest vibe.
The main ways to avoid this is:
learning from diversity, equity and inclusion teachers
taking time to get to know more people
learn the art of listening
be super honest with what you do and don’t know yet.
Having an honest vibe is important for everyone, and this article will walk through why it’s very important for kaleidoscopic thinkers.
Reason #1: they are excellent trackers.
People with less reliable access to their cognitive brain (or who think from the gut) are often very good at feeling the slightest changes in their surroundings. They can sense a direction to go and pickup cues about where they are needed.
When a kaleidoscopic thinker lands within your brand they can very quickly detect outliers, inconsistencies and misalignment. The tricky part is they don’t always have the words for it, they simply feel it.
If our brand vibe isn’t real and our client experience doesn’t match the marketing experience - intuitive creatives are going to spend a lot of time and energy trying to articulate what feels out of place rather than collaborating and communicating with you.
Often times they assume that THEY are the ones who are off a bit and will try to compensate or “get organized” to make it work.
We don’t need to have a perfectly spotless brand vibe. It’s actually most important that the vibe is one you can consistently show up in as yourself so you’re not pretending and then coming across as someone different once a client signs up to work with you.
Reason #2: they aren’t used to belonging.
Kaleidoscopic thinkers are often told through words or body language that we don’t belong. We are used to trying extra hard to do things “right” without even realizing that we are doing a whole lot of extra work. Often we think that the inconsistency in a dishonest brand vibe is our fault or that we just didn’t understand well enough.
When a kaleidoscopic thinker sees your brand and resonates they are most likely expecting that it will go wrong along the way. But if you keep your vibe consistent once they start working with you they will be more likely to relax, feel creative and bring you some awesome results!
This means that mistakes are welcome and that we just handle them the same way we would in any other place in the journey - in your own style with a desire for the client to feel connected and help them understand.
If you have an off day or somethings going wrong - be honest and adjust. Give them an updated visual calendar, offer them some extra time to get their work done while you take a break if needed. Your client will really appreciate the humanity of it all.
Reason #3: They like to know what’s expected.
A lot of creative people work best within set perimeters. Restrictions and boundaries allow us to come up with innovative solutions and give us space to let our ideas run wild. So while we may push against boundaries, it’s because we are feeling around to create a picture of where those edges are before we can create within them.
Being consistent and visually clear with your brand boundaries and what you do and don’t do will actually free up kaleidoscopic thinkers. If we don’t have them we are just like a scared sheep standing there wondering “Where the f*!% is the fence?!”
One of the biggest mistakes I’ve seen with intuitive clients is “giving in” too much with your process because the client is asking for “too much.” The client is asking because they want to know where the boundary is and they need to know you will hold it for them - that’s what they are paying you for.
Reason #4: Often we struggle decoding written words and numberS and prefer to show rather than tell.
First of all, it takes SO much of our energy to translate our knowings, inklings and rapidly moving visual thoughts into words. And secondly, kaleidoscopic thinkers are usually multi-passionate. So they have A LOT of ideas happening at once.
As an intuitive creative leader it helps so much to have a consistent brand vibe to work in. Once you have that framework (remember that need for boundaries!?) then you can create and serve in all of your lovely ways and people will get it, because it fits the vibe.
I started this business as an Etsy shop with self care and parenting activities for mompreneurs. And that evolved into so many things but my audience has stayed, even if they aren’t moms, even when they already had their branding and even if they have a product business currently…. because they dig the vibe. And I LOVE it. I have the freedom to pivot and offer the huge myriad of things that I offer and people share about it because they trust me and they know I get them. So all these seemingly not-a-fit amazing humans hanging around are my champions and are there for the moment I suddenly decide to offer something for them. It’s the vibe that has strung through every pivot and leap my business has taken - even the leap into new names and brand designs.
For every launch and product I create, I have one specific person in mind who it would help the most but the brand has a very diverse fan base - and that is freeing for us kaleidoscopic thinkers.
That’s all thanks to a consistent vibe.
Actions you can take:
Find a Brand Designer.
If you’d like to hire a Brand designer to have someone create a cohesive visual brand vibe for you check out the Resources page. I list a lot of Brand designers I trust and love who will create great work for you!
That same resource page also has links to a mini challenge I created called “Get Creative” that helps you hire creative professionals and run successful projects with them.
Create a cohesive vibe from what you currently have.
I’ve created a Do-It-Yourself course that is delivered in bite-sized 5 minute video lessons. It’s all about creating a brand design that’s research backed, authentically polished and cozy for your community - and it comes complete with digital tools to help you get there. You can preview some of the lessons by clicking this link.
Have questions about this article? Leave a comment below or email me at laura@illustrative.us.
AUTHOR | LAURA MATTESON
Laura is a neurodivergent artist, mother, wife, founder of Illustrative with fancy drawing skills and a huge bucket-full of hope and love for humanity.
