Business, From the Experts, Your Event Career
Branding Your Style
Your event business’s branding shouldn’t be just about your logo, website, and collateral. QC Event School tutor Athena DeVonne is here to explain how to expand your brand into your appearance and your surroundings!
Your appearance
The easiest way to pull branding into your appearance is through the colors of your branding. Athena talks about Shawn Cox, another wedding planner in her network. Shawn’s colors are black, pink, gold, and white, and she finds ways to incorporate her colors into her looks through her clothing, purses, shoes, and accessories.
Consistency is key. In Shawn’s profile shots, everything from her outfit to her assistants’ outfits to the color of her surroundings are carefully planned to fit her brand. She’s a wedding coordinator, and you can see how carefully coordinated she keeps all of the details of her appearance.
You can almost tell her personality just by her photos—she wants people to know who she is before they even meet her. That’s why it’s so important for your appearance to match the branding presence you give yourself online!
Coming up with your brand colors
There are a few ways you can come up with your brand colors if you haven’t picked them already.
Choose your favorite colors. This is what Athena did. Her favorite color is purple, and she loves spring colors, especially coral and teal, so she took shades of purple, coral, and teal as her brand colors, with copper as an accent. She also picked these colors because she can wear them all year round. Plus, the range of colors to help expand her wardrobe—she can wear different shades of purple, or coral, or teal, but they always fit her brand.
Choose based on color psychology. If you don’t have a favorite color, or your favorite colors don’t go together very well, go online and do a little research into color psychology to find information on the best colors to use for your industry. That’s what motivated Athena to keep purple as one of her brand colors—do a little research yourself to find out what it means!
Once you’ve picked your colors, work on extending them into every aspect of your business. Athena keeps her business things all one color, so her business handbag and planner are both purple. And remember, your appearance is more than just your clothes—it’s also the way you carry yourself and the items you carry along with you.
Your surroundings
Your surroundings can include a few places, but number one is your workspace or office. Not everyone starts with one of these, though, so your other surroundings can be where you decide to meet your clients. To the best of your ability, you need to match all of these places to your brand.
If you’re a luxury wedding planner, meeting at a Starbucks won’t cut it; instead, you’ll want to meet in hotel lobbies, hotel conference rooms, or the venue your clients are interested in (or, if they haven’t come up with a venue yet, think of a place they might be interested in based on their profile).
You always want to make sure your surroundings match the personality of your brand. Athena considers herself a more boutique-y, eclectic planner, so she originally met with her clients at a photography studio. Why? Like most photography studios, they had pictures everywhere of their brides!
Let’s go back to Shawn Cox, the branding pro. Her office continues her color scheme, but she doesn’t stop there: her booth at bridal tradeshows uses the same desk, cardholder, framed mirrors, and framed logo as in her office, as well as continuing her branding colors. She keeps her brand consistent through her website, profile shots, office, and bridal show booths.
Looking for inspiration to start branding your style? Check out this Pinterest board Athena put together for office inspiration.
