LENSHOOD was one of those names that once we thought of it, it just seemed so obvious, why hadn’t we thought of it sooner, as it brought together the very essence of what we are trying to achieve perfectly PHOTOGRAPHY + COMMUNITY
We spent weeks staring at a white board covered in scribbles & postit notes, then one afternoon an aha moment as my eye travelled from a list of community words to another of photographic terminology & phonetic spellings, the word “lens” caught my eye… lens+neighbourhood sat side by side in my head & LENSHOOD was born
Some of us have spent decades in the branding & marketing industry, auditing numerous aspects of our clients businesses, interviewing employees & their customers, outputting reams of documents, that in turn end up as scribbles & posit notes, before distilling those findings into something that represents their businesses. It’s one of those things that’s quite difficult to do on your own business, ideally you need someone from the outside that can give you an unbiased & new point of view, to often ask the hard questions you can’t or dare not too
One thing we already knew from day one, an unwavering mission “create a photography community for those with a passion for quality photography to connect & share their skills & experiences”
So it was gratifying when we struck upon LENSHOOD, especially as we’ve only had positive feedback from everyone we’ve run it by, they all think it sums up what we’re trying to achieve perfectly!
For anyone interested (incase you find them useful for yourself), below are 10 steps we use when developing brands for our clients (& yes generally in that order)
1 Mission: goal, purpose
2 Vision: strategy, how you do it
3 Core Values: your compass, what’s left when you strip away everything else
4 Unique Selling Point: (USP) competitor differentiators
5 Emotional Selling Point (ESP): how you make your audience feel
6 Brand: how you’re perceived by others, how you make them feel & what they really think & say about you when you’re NOT in the room!
7 Tagline / Strap: re-enforces / explains your vision to your audience, a call to action
8 Name: whatever works, it can be descriptive or abstract, as long as it’s memorable & distinctive!
9 Identity: visual, audio, tone of voice
10 Logo: like the name, whatever works, descriptive, abstract, but must stand out amongst your peers & be unique
