Brand Identity vs. Brand Image and the Importance of Both

Brand identity and brand image are both essential for a business; however, they're often confused with each other. Brand identity is how your company presents itself through the look, tone, and personality. Brand image is how the world actually sees you, your reputation and impression you've earned. You need both working together, and every so often, both need a refresh.

Brand Identity: How You Present Yourself

Let's start with brand identity and the role it plays in building a business.

Brand identity includes:

1. Core Values
2. Logo
3. Imagery
4. Tagline
5. Tone and Voice
6. Brand Colors

These elements come together to form a cohesive brand personality and brand story. A clear identity from the start makes developing marketing materials more straightforward and helps increase brand awareness. It's critical to attracting and keeping your target audience.

Brand Image: How the World Sees You

While brand identity reflects how your brand sees itself, brand image reflects what others think about it, and you should pay close attention to how you're actually perceived.

Brand image includes:

1. Recognition
2. Impression
3. Reputation
4. Legacy
5. Awareness
6. Meaning
7. Trust

To build a solid brand image, your company has to be recognizable through your brand identity first. People's impressions are shaped by your business's performance, behavior, and quality, and opinions spread through the customer journey, word of mouth, media coverage, and more. Of all these factors, trust matters most; showing your brand is authentic and trustworthy is what keeps customers coming back.

Why (and When) to Refresh Your Brand

Brands aren't static. Names get confusing, colors go stale, logos stop matching who you've become, and none of that means you did anything wrong the first time around. It usually just means you've grown.

A few signs it might be time for a refresh:

• Your name or messaging no longer reflects who you serve or what you actually do
• People, even people inside your organization, struggle to describe you consistently
• Your visuals feel dated next to where the business has gone
• You've expanded, merged, or repositioned and your brand hasn't caught up

A refresh doesn't mean starting from scratch. The best ones honor the legacy that got you here while setting up the next chapter with a new logo, new color palette, updated tagline, refreshed video and web presence, all working together instead of as one-off projects.

A Real Example: IDEA's Rebrand

One of our favorite examples of this in action is our work with IDEA, formerly known as Great Plains IDEA / AG IDEA, a consortium of public universities offering online degree and certificate programs.

For years, IDEA's own faculty and staff fielded confusion about the name itself. The alliance had grown well beyond what "Great Plains" communicated, and not every member university saw themselves reflected in it. In 2022, IDEA decided it was time for a new name, and a new identity to go with it.

JNT partnered with IDEA to build that identity from the inside out: a fresh, modern color palette, a new logo, and the tagline An Online Higher Education Alliance, which does a much better job of describing who they are and what they do. We also reimagined their flagship animated video from a student's perspective, produced new student and staff testimonial videos, and built a new website that positions IDEA as a hub for collaboration across its member universities.

Here's how Kathryn Harth, Program Coordinator at IDEA, put it:

"With the consolidation into one name, IDEA, we wanted a new visual identity to complement it and honor that legacy while celebrating the future and positioning IDEA to be transformative in the landscape of higher education. JNT Company delivered! Their team guided us through creating a new brand identity from the inside out. Our fresh and modern color palette makes our new logo stand out, and the tagline, An Online Higher Education Alliance, better describes who we are and what we do. JNT created a new version of our animated video that describes how IDEA works from a student perspective. Additionally, our new website represents our vision and reaffirms our role as a nucleus for universities, fostering collaboration and creating a space for more innovation in the future."

The Bottom Line: Both Brand Identity and Brand Image Matter

Customers aren't just buying a product or service; they're buying what your brand stands for. A strong, polished brand identity paired with a trustworthy brand image builds credibility and keeps people coming back — and when your brand no longer fits where your business has landed, a refresh can realign the two.

If you're ready to build (or rebuild) a brand that truly represents your organization, connect with us!

-Lilly Crist

Empower 2026 Intern