Chicago Branding & Brand Strategy

PR Hacker Chicago is one of the top branding companies in Chicago because we are experts at telling stories and crafting strategy for brands of all sizes.

Most branding firms just ask a few haphazard questions, throw a few visuals together, and call it a day. Unlike a typical brand marketing agency, we're also a data driven public relations firm, so we challenge ourselves every day to communicate the unique selling points of your brand for real ROI with arresting logos and continually optimize brand messaging.

Located in the heart of the city, our Chicago branding agency is a truly versatile team and is in the perfect spot to help both the smallest fintech company and the largest auto industry CPG develop and refine the message they're sending to the world—and reach new audiences every day.

 

Our branding strategy

There's nothing more valuable than an outsider perspective while evolving a brand's message, along with the audiences that should hear it and how. To cultivate this perspective, we meet with a brand's team as soon as possible to explore the brand's unique selling points and the key components of its messaging.

We lead a structured discussion that helps us define the problem we're solving, in a process we've pioneered called the "Outside > In" discovery process.

This journey has 4 steps:

  1. What is the state of the market? - We disabuse stakeholder misconceptions with a "reality-check matrix" that gives them an unbiased overview of the landscape in which the brand exists.
  2. Who is most likely to respond to you brand? - We run, complete, and analyze data from surveys in real-time. This allows us to speak directly to audiences and understand what motivates different type of consumers to take action. Then, we use this information to discover how to activate each audience segment.
  3. What promise does our brand make to users and stakeholders? How do we live up? - We look at what promises our competitors have made to consumers. Then, we use them to differentiate our own brand and develop messaging that connects to consumers.
  4. What name and narrative helps bring our brand to life for our users? - We take a deep dive into how both our users and stakeholders will spread and interact with our brand story—across both different channels (Search, Email, Social Media, etc) and different formats.

 

Chicago brand strategy visuals

After cementing our brand story, we move on to creating icons, graphics and guidelines that align with the strategy:

  1. Define visual territory. Our designs turn our brand story into visceral images and videos.
  2. Set clear brand identity guidelines.We define specific colors, fonts, and iconography that we will use to tell our brand's story.
  3. Arrive at our logo. We create a central design concept that encapsulates our brand's story and stands out.

After creating visual elements, we work on defining the voice and personality of your brand—the important, intangible factors that are at the very core of a brand.

 

Chicago location

We're located on Kinzie Street, right next to Chicago icons like the House of Blues. We draw inspiration from our surroundings all the time, whether we're taking a brainstorming walk on the Chicago Riverwalk or soaking up inspiration at the Art Institute of Chicago. Our location in the heart of the city allows us to incorporate its spirit into the brand voice and tone of local brands—or bring our unique sensibility to the voices of big brands. At PR Hacker, we're basking in some of Chicago's most inspiring history—and creating the future.

 

Let's create amazing together

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Let's create amazing together

We're hungry. We're scrappy. We'd love to learn more about how we can help.