What is a Touch Point?

The term “Touch Point” is used in marketing to describe any place or circumstance in which the customer makes contact with your brand. It is important that a brand’s visual identity is therefore distinctive and consistent, ensuring that the target audience can easily recognise your product or service and the message which it is expressing through the touchpoint using these visuals. I started this aspect of the branding for my mobile banking app by observing how other companies ensure that their touchpoint’s successfully portray their brand identity. I decided to focus on the banking group Santander, which I had studied earlier in the project.

Santander had several diverse touch points which varied from products and literature to interesting advertising opportunities in which the company was able to insert their logo or wordmark to appeal to customers. Some of the most obvious touchpoint’s included their Santander branches. Without even intending to use the bank’s services, potential customers interact with the brand everyday: walking past large billboards that advertise different features the bank provides; passing the store signs on the street and using ATM’s. The companies primary colour palette, a distinctive cardinal red is really effective in drawing attention to the brand in the physical world as it pops against otherwise dull office buildings. Their strong visual branding allows for the logomark: the impression of a white, lit flame on a red background to be used both alone and in conjunction with their wordmark on signs.

Aside from signage and company branches, Santander customers and potential customers also interact with the company by using their app, looking at the app icon and also browsing the company’s website for help and information. These digital touchpoint’s feature consistent styling for example, typography, text sizes, hierarchy and colour palettes – ensuring that the company emulates a uniform appearance which reflects its operation.

Companies like Santander are also able to use more obscure marketing strategies to constantly be with the public’s awareness for example, their logomark appearing on athlete uniforms or stadium grounds through sponsorships or funding projects that benefit the public like a city bike scheme which features the Santander cardinal red and logomark as well as services they provide. This tactics make it so it is virtually impossible to avoid these companies and ensuring that when an individual is looking to change banks, groups like Santander come to mind immediately.

Treaz Roll Out

Using Figma I was able to create several mockups, envisioning how Treaz may create touchpoint’s that promote the brand by using its distinctive colour palette, typography, word marks and logo marks. In the above, I started by thinking about how customers would interact with the banks branding everyday through the use of bankcards and mobile/smart watch applications which they would check regularly.

  

I really enjoyed imagining how I might advertise Treaz in different environments like billboards, storefront boards and social media posts as seen above. From this exercise, I created the phrase: “Money Can Grow on Treaz”, a play on the phrase which inspired the brand’s name at the beginning of the project. I thought this was really successful as the tagline which features heavily on all my mockups, app designs and eventually landing page, is short, catchy and memorable; acting as a positive challenge to the limitations asserted by the original idiom: “Money doesn’t grow on Treaz.” It was interesting to consider how my brand would be viewed on digital platforms like Instagram, Pinterest and Youtube; allowing me to see the many opportunities to catch my young adult audience’s attention. This brand roll also challenged me to follow and develop my brand guidelines, ensuring that I am consistently using the chosen typography, colour palette and imagery to ensure that my brand is professional.