The primary school magazine received dozens of pupil contributions each month and one of my jobs was to sift through them so that only the best made it into the publication. Being the 90s, this meant dozens of drawings of the Spice Girls. I was a football loving boy and therefore believed all the Spice Girls to be Scary Spice. However, even I had to allow one or two of these fan submissions through my vetting process.

The Spice Girls and the team behind them knew what they were doing. They weren’t simply creating a band; they were creating a brand.

Girl power, the logo, the loud style and louder personalities all combined to create the iconic brand and this was pushed relentlessly.

They knew their target audience and they knew what they wanted to say to them. This is what to learn from them to build a brand.

Know your audience

We’ve looked, in previous posts, at how to identify a target audience and why it is important to do so. The Spice Girls were great at this. They targeted young girls through their upbeat, poppy songs and dynamic dance routines. That was all reinforced by their limitless array of merchandise which seemed to oblige every ten year old girl to have a Spice Girls pencil case and matching lunchbox.

The Spice Girls were intentionally created for their target audience. There’s none of the moping you find in Adele’s music, nor the disturbing music videos Billie Eilish goes in for. The target audience were at the centre of everything the Spice Girls did.

As you develop the branding for your charity or business are you as focussed on your target audience as you need to be? Often organisations worry that they will alienate others by focussing so strongly on just one audience but this is not necessarily the case – my brother-in-law persuaded his mum to take him to see the Spice Girls.

Know your message

Girl Power was the Spice Girls’ message. They were a girl band and proud to be one, showing other girls that they can be whoever they want to be (Wannabe?). They were noisy and they weren’t going to ask permission from anyone. Famously, they appeared with Nelson Mandela who declared they were his “heroes”. Mandela, who had heroically stood up to racist oppression, was identified with the Spice Girls and their Girl Power message which opposed sexist oppression. In a similar way Geri Halliwell declared “Thatcher was the first Spice Girl”. The first female Prime Minister who’d had to fight to reach the very top in politics was identified with the Spice Girls who’d reached the top in pop music with the cry of Girl Power.

Of course, the band were much more complicated than just Girl Power but this straightforward messaging allowed their fans to understand and engage with the brand.

Building a strong brand for your business or charity demands you know and clearly communicate your message to your audience.

Repeat, repeat, repeat

Crucially, brand needs to be reinforced by repetition. The Spice Girls have remained recognisable by sticking unswervingly to their brand. They haven’t redesigned their logo or released new albums; they even still dress the same. They have a strong brand and they know better than to mess with it. This means that we can still name each Spice Girl and probably sing more of their lyrics than we’d be comfortable admitting to.

If you want your brand to have the same kind of impact, it must be repeated and reinforced constantly. On your website, in your products and services, and through your advertising, how prominent is your branding? If your target audience are still asking, Who do you think you are, get in touch and Aubrey can help you Holler!

Conclusion

The Spice Girls teach an important lesson in creating a strong brand. Know who your audience is, know what you want to say, and keep repeating your message until your target audience know by heart. By applying these principles, you can build a powerful brand that’ll leave a lasting impression.