We started this week by looking at what we needed to cover in our blogs and some useful tips to keep them up-to-date and achieve the best marks from them.
We then moved on to look at how we could start to use all the elements we had created so far throughout the semester to rollout our brand and make it come to life as actual products people could have contact with, known as touchpoints. We discussed all the different types of touchpoints we might have as part of our brand and started to look at creating mock-ups that we could present and use to to demonstrate how our brand could work in the real-world. We also looked at what we needed to consider as part of these touchpoints and what they needed to convey as part of telling the story of our brand.
The first half of this week’s lecture was a recap, as well as some tips and guidance on how to conduct suitable research and write it up in each of these weekly blogs. We looked at the area of self-reflection the most, as it can be challenging to reflect effectively on the work we do and spot areas for improvement. I feel I do reflect on all of my work and am always looking for ways to improve, whether that be in terms of technical skills or knowledge. However I know that I can sometimes struggle to put my thoughts and ideas into words, so I found this part of the lecture very helpful as it gave me a structure that I could work with. It means I can look through my blogs up to this point as well as moving forward to ensure I am always reflecting on my work and pushing myself to improve.
We also spoke about and clearly defined each of the key deliverables for the module, including our bank brand’s brand guideline document, a prototype app, a website landing page as well as two specific five-hundred word blog posts. One to be on a specific part of the branding process that I found interesting and/or challenging, this is to really look at this aspect in some detail and really think about it, and how to go about it, for me I feel at this stage I want to look at something I found challenging as I believe looking at something that I struggled with will give me the most benefit moving forward and help me to improve on this area. As for the specific area, so far I found selecting a name and creating a logomark the most challenging aspects so I will most likely pick one of these as my topic for the blog post. The second is a self-reflective piece on the overall module learning experience, as this is currently only week 6, half way through the module this is not something I am ready to write at this moment. However, at the end of the semester, I feel this will be a really useful exercise to consolidate my learning and to pick up areas for me to improve on, potentially over the summer prior to the start of second year.
The definition of a touchpoint according to Oxford Languages is:
“a point of contact or interaction, especially between a business and its customers or consumers.”
Touchpoints are where a brand comes to life and starts to interact with customers and develop. Before it was a set of different elements now those elements must come together to create actual interactions with customers and these interactions need to accurately represent the brand, brand mission and brand values.
Touchpoints can be different depending on the brand, some brands will have lots of physical touchpoints, e.g products, shops, offices, vehicles etc. While others will have more digital touchpoints e.g. website(s), an app etc. Traditional bank brands will have a mixture of both, with physical branches and offices as well as a website and app. Banking brands such as Monzo and Revolut however have disrupted the banking sector by not having physical branches at all and working entirely through an app, website or phone.
To look at all the possible touchpoints for a brand, I found a list online outlining all of the possible touchpoints where someone could interact with a brand: