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Brand Development

Denver branding agency’s brand development process answers the questions: Who are you? Who needs to know? How will they find out?Why should they care?What is the why behind the what and how?

May 21
outdoor digital brand

4 Ways to Strengthen Your Outdoor Digital Brand

By Brand Development

The brand is the entire experience that a person has with your business’ purpose. 

Most brands start with their product/service and sell based on their features and benefits—which is important—but in doing so, leaves them only to compete on the product’s understanding, not its why.

“Brands have become the global currency of success.”
– Brand Atlas

At each touch point, your brand must be integrated for maximum efficiency that drives your prospect to your goals that simultaneously solves their needs and wants along the way.  

If you’re interested in building a strong brand rather than just a product-based company, here are four points to keep in mind when thinking through how to strengthen your brand in 2018.

 

1. Map your brand’s touchpoints

When thinking about what a brand is, you need to understand that it’s not just 2-3 pieces like your website, logo or catalog—but all the pieces. It’s your dealer sheet, the way your product feels, your customer service, your influencers, content, email signature, Facebook and Instagram page—everything.

Here is a simple representation of what brand looks like: 

 

What is a brand?

Each touchpoint is an opportunity to increase awareness and build loyalty.

 

2. Align your brand

Ask yourself and your key stakeholders (the people with invested interest) what your brand means and write it down. Then go ask your customers what your brand means to them and then 10 or so of your employees. If they all say the same thing—congrats, you have brand alignment! If they say something different, then you may want to rethink your brand and figure out why there are inconsistencies.

Brand inconsistencies take away from your marketing’s effectiveness and create confusion among your prospects. 

Common problems that cause brands to be out of alignment is clarity of the mission, customer service, brand identity and broken promises.

  • Brand Strategy AlignmentBrand promise – If what you’re promising isn’t being delivered on, then your brand isn’t trustworthy. Today, trust is everything in the age of #fakenews. Make every effort to fix and make good on what your brand promises to its customers.
  • Brand identity – Does your brand’s look and feel (color, shape, format, type, imagery, texture etc.) accurately convey the it’s key emotional and visual attributes? If not, it may be time for a redesign or invest in lifestyle photography.
  • Customer-centered – Is your customer service receiving high-marks? Without strong brand alignment between your employer brand and corporate brand you will not be able to deliver customer-centered service. 

3. Connect your brand to your customer

How do you connect your brand to your customer? In the past, most brand development processes solely focused on the product and what the marketer wanted the customer to think and feel. Today, every marketing brand strategy should start with the customer first.  This can only be done by defining what is called a buyer persona.

Buyer personas are fictional representations of your ideal customers. They are based on real data about customer demographics and online behavior, along with educated speculation about their personal histories, motivations, and concerns.

By defining your buyer persona, you will be able to develop a strong brand foundation to help guide you when you get lost in the day to day activities of marketing and running your business. Keeping regular tabs on what your customer is feeling will help you build brand loyalty more quickly.

The fastest way to connect your brand is to communicate how you solve your customer’s problem. Track these data points through your online forms, Facebook insights, analytics and artificial intelligence programs. It doesn’t hurt to survey your customers every once and while either.

“Solve their problems and be empathetic.”
– Gary Vaynerchuk

4. Brand is built on consistent, helpful service

Are you using Facebook Messenger, Drift or Intercom on your website to answer customer questions? These new tools allow you to communicate in real-time that have become central in providing an excellent customer service experience online. One bad customer experience, late delivery or rude response can tarnish your brand—especially when the person on the receiving end posts what happened on Facebook for the whole world to know.

The hard truth about your customers today is:

  • They want to help themselves, not call you.
  • They learn from friends, not salespeople.
  • They trust your customers, not your marketing.

According to Harvard Business Review: Evidence shows that customers will no longer tolerate the rushed and inconvenient service that has become all too common. And now with voice chat, chatbots and AI hitting the web, customers are more empowered than ever and demand answers to their questions faster than before. For example, 61 percent of participating Baby Boomers say a potential chatbot benefit is “getting an instant response,” while just 51 percent of Millennials say the same. (Source: Convince and Convert) The total chat volume in 2016 nearly tripled that in 2015. Both statistics can back up the conclusion that the demand for live chat has been steadily growing. (Source: Comm100)

Our recent research demonstrates that when customers contact companies for service, they care most about two things:

  • Is the frontline employee knowledgeable?
  • And is the problem resolved on the first call or chat?

Yet these factors often aren’t even on customer service manager or business owners’ dashboards. Most service centers continue to measure time on hold, time to respond and minutes per call, as they have for decades. Such metrics encourage agents to hurry through calls—resulting in just the kind of experience customers dislike.  

According to HubSpot, The key to growth in 2018 is:

  • Happy customers who recommend your company to their friends
  • Successful customers who share their results with the world
  • Modern customer support that matches how people communicate

More than half of the customers we surveyed across industries say they’ve had a bad service experience, and nearly the same fraction think many of the companies they interact with don’t understand or care about them. On average, 40% of customers who suffer through bad experiences stop doing business with the offending company. (SOURCE: HBR)

In conclusion, to strengthen your brand, you must map every touchpoint, align for consistency, connect with your customers problems by putting them center and focus on delivering helpful, consistent service. Once these touchpoints are built out and set, then you are able to provide a great experience built on the standards of today’s empowered consumer that will reward your company with future sales growth.

 

Mar 21
firearm-brand-product-development-strategy

Daniel Defense: The 3-Legged Stool of an Effective Firearm Brand Journey

By Firearms Marketing, Brand Development, Branding

Your firearm brand is built by multiple touch points (advertising, customer service, product experience, etc.) repeated day after day, month after month, year after year to establish a collective understanding of what your brand stands for in the mind of your customers and the broader firearm industry.

According to an NSSF survey: Accuracy, Reliability, and Manufacturer Reputation are the most sought after qualities in a firearm—especially an MSR. How do you build a brand that conjures up these same feelings and opinions?

In this post, I’ll outline the journey your brand must take when looking at building an effective long-term brand strategy by using a three-legged stool analogy and the legendary story of Daniel Defense to help you think clearer about how to move your business forward and how to create a stronger brand reputation that increases your brand’s equity and ultimately your success. 

Where to start?
Brand strategy is the business case for change at a brand level. It envisages the future position of a brand in the marketplace, based on the company’s wider business aspirations and its ability to deliver and market brands that align with that desired position. (Source: BSI)

When asking what your desired position is—where do you see your company in 5, 10 or 15 years? Do you want to be known as the brand with the most aesthetically pleasing platform? Or perhaps to be referred to as the lightest firearm? These aspirations must be guided by a strategy to get you to a place in the market that belongs only to you in the mind of your customers. Getting to your desired perception may involve taking several paths. It may be first to target and invest in the government sector to establish a reputation before entering the ups and downs of the consumer market. It may be to build your reputation as an OEM first before creating your consumer branded line of products. Whatever your goal is—it must be linked directly to the problem you’re out to solve coupled with a scalable business model that gives you sustainable growth.

Stool Leg 1: Solve the problem

big-hole-upper

Photo credit: Daniel Defense

Marty Daniel started in 2001 by creating the Big Hole Upper Receiver—which forever improved the way we mount sighting systems to ARs. This led to several other products like the M4 12.0 hand guard that was a direct replacement for the Army Marksmanship Unit. Marty’s product solved a problem in the industry that gave him the starting point of building the reputable brand Daniel Defense is today. His starting point was recognizing a problem and solving it. (Source: Guns & Ammo)

How to get there.
The purpose of brand strategy, is to identify how far the brand must “travel” perceptually in order to be competitive, the benefits of getting there for the business, the purpose and values that the brand culture will need to adhere to in order to make that journey and the competitive resistance that the brand may encounter getting to that end point. It’s the why and the where. (Source: BSI)

Stool Leg 2: Build respect

What aspects of your story must be created and perfected to get you to your ultimate brand destination? Is it an investment in talent? Is it infrastructure? Is it a reputation among law enforcement or the special operations community? Define how you can link your marketing efforts to strategy, product development, operations, and other areas to create unique value for your customers, so you have a compelling story to tell.

After the success of Marty’s upper, and a follow-up sling mount product—he designed the RIS II Rail System and was awarded a lucrative contract with SOCOM. And then won an additional contract with the UK Ministry of Defense’ which in essence proved his engineering prowess and design capabilities as a serious manufacturer. This created the second leg of his stool: Respect.

How to stay there once you arrive.
Staying on top is sometimes much harder to achieve than getting there. So you must ask: “What’s my next success?” What has your brand planned for next? How will you capitalize on what works? Why will that feel like a natural extension of the relationship that your customers already have with you? Your purpose should provide clear guidelines for future development. (Source: BSI)

Stool Leg 3: Scalability

By thinking of itself as a manufacturer of the world’s finest weapon systems—not just rails or rifles—Daniel Defense has extended its development license considerably. It can literally look for new ways to give people experiences they haven’t had and positions them to be one of the largest manufacturers in the industry. 

three-legged-stool-brandTo scale his business, Marty saw three components to add to the momentum of Daniel Defense: In-house equipment (hammer forge machining) that allowed him to control quality, output, and price. This all lead to increased customer service and his intuition to surround himself with competent staff and employees. Today, Daniel Defense is the epitome of an American success story and one of the most admired brands in the firearm industry.

You can build a brand around the three most coveted value propositions in the firearms industry: accuracy, reliability, and a strong reputation—by thinking critically about the journey it’s going to take to get you to your desired brand position. This path may be somewhat familiar of other firearm brands, but proving your product’s ability to fulfill a niche in the industry, proving that your product is reliable and scalable, you have the three legs to sustain your brand that will stand the test of time and win the hearts and minds of those who depend on what you create.

 

Feb 19
storybrand guide

Three Game Changing Takeaways From The StoryBrand Conference

By StoryBrand, Brand Development

I just completed a ground-breaking week-long study on consumer behavior, by Donald Miller, a New York Times and Wall Street Journal Best Selling Author, on how to use the power of story to clearly communicate for better results. I wanted to share with you my three biggest takeaways from the StoryBrand Certified Guide Training that is sure to get you thinking differently about your business and how to communicate your brand’s message with greater clarity.

We are at a point in human history where your prospective customers and clients are bombarded with an unprecedented amount of noise and clutter. Facebook ads, phone dings, bings and bops, emails, podcasts, pop up banners, click-bait and unsolicited phone calls and texts have made it difficult to make any money spent on marketing work as good as it used to.

Furthermore, these intrusive methods have made brands untrustful as some companies have tricked customers into buying their products which have driven trust among brands past the point of no return. This barrage of distraction has the potential to stymie your business growth, waste thousands of dollars on marketing that doesn’t work and ultimately bring your business to the precipice.

However, there is a unique proven framework to fight against this to make your marketing work—and it has to do with the power of story. You see, storytelling has been a way to communicate with just about everyone since the dawn of time. It’s the sole reason the 43 Billion dollar movie industry continues to thrive year after year. And when you think about it, it’s the reason we love to sit around the campfire and listen to someone who overcame impossible odds that ended in success. And since story is used to create clarity in our understanding—it’s a perfect tool to infuse into your business and marketing communications that cuts through the clutter, grabs your customer’s attention and ultimately drives more sales. This process has been proven in thousands of businesses including brands like Chik-Fil-A, Pantene, Car Max, Intel, Berkshire Hathaway, and even Presidential political campaigns.

So in the following, I’ll give you my three biggest takeaways from last week’s StoryBrand Conference with some links to some resources that will give you more understanding on the power of story and how to use it to grow your business.

1. People don’t read websites, they scan them.

Website Wireframe

People don’t buy the best products, they buy the ones they understand the clearest. When you’re trying to build your business, clarity beats cute and clever every time. Your website is the hub of all your marketing activities and is the easiest way to track marketing spend. If a prospective customer lands on your website and you can’t spell out to them how you solve their problem within 8 seconds, you lose them. They bounce off and find someone else who can, usually a competitor.

2. Customer’s buy products or services based on internal problems, not external problems.

The difference between an internal and external problem is this:

The external problem is the tangible obstacle your customer has to overcome to get the thing that they want.

Ex. I need a new set of binoculars, mine just busted.”

Because your character is facing the external problem, how is that making them feel internally?

Ex. “I have a big adventure trip coming up and if I don’t have good set of binos I’m going to miss out on seeing all the wildlife.”

See the difference? The internal problem miss out has much more meaning behind it because the results are more tragic than the external problem. Most marketers communicate the external problem and don’t sell the internal problem.

3. Your product/service should show how the customer will transform into something better.

People naturally want to become better. Whether you’re trying to lose weight, become a better speaker, hire a better candidate or grow a bigger business—we all want to be aspire to our future itself. For example, a hunter in the below MTN OPS post wants to become a “conquering outdoor athlete.” For a hiker, it could be to become a “conservationist sojourner.” For a fitness fanatic, it could be to become “the athlete everyone wants to be.” Whatever your customer wants to become—you have to show how your product or service will get them there. Most companies put all the focus on their products benefits and features, not what their customer’s want to become. This doesn’t trigger the emotional responses in the brain needed to help your customer understand how you can help them or move them to the desired call to action.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

@chadmendes taking it all in at last light during his Utah Mule Deer Hunt. | #MtnOps #ConquerMore | @luke.dusenbury

A post shared by MTN OPS (@mtnops) on

By taking the time to clarify your message and figure out these aspects of your messaging, you will be able to transform your marketing and grow your business. In the following weeks, I will be rolling out a series of articles based on story and the StoryBrand process.

If you’d like to check out the book and learn more about the process yourself you can:

You can also schedule a call with me and get a clear plan on how to move forward that will allow you to grow your business more effectively in the age of distraction.

Feb 01
Brand Loyalty Customer Retention

7 Ways To Build Brand Loyalty Through Customer Retention

By Brand Development

Business owners of small-mid sized B2C companies—or entrepreneurs getting their enterprise off the ground—know that there are certain things that must be done in order to guarantee long-term success. The things that have brought success in the past must continue—and improve over time. This typically revolves around acquiring more customers and retaining the ones you currently have.

However, we sometimes—in the hustle and bustle of running our businesses—loose sight and take our eye off the ball of managing our customer retention programs. We tend to rely heavily on our products superiority, thinking that if we deliver a great product, customers will follow. When this type of thinking occurs, it’s easy to get off track. And before you know it—customers begin to bail.

According to Bain and Co., a 5% increase in customer retention can increase a company’s profitability by 75%. And if those numbers don’t impress you, Gartner Group statistics tell us that 80% of your company’s future revenue will come from just 20% of your existing customers. 

Still not sold on customer retention?

One final statistic provided by Lee Resource Inc. should give you plenty to think about: Attracting new customers will cost your company 5 times more than keeping an existing customer. (Source: Forbes)

In order to retain your customers and build brand loyalty, here are 7 things to keep in mind.

1. Do not over promise
It’s really easy in your marketing communications to bolster your value propositions that make your audience think that what you’re offering is the next best thing to sliced bread. Take extra care not to over promise your products key differentiators in an attempt to make your packaging and marketing more powerful. Focus on creating a brand image and supplement that with a message that doesn’t over promise to your customers.

If you can’t deliver on it, don’t promise it. And remember the old adage: “Under promise, over deliver.”

customer retention blackberry2. Cutting corners can be disastrous
In 2011, Blackberry’s (RIM) entire network of 70 million customers went down. This happened because Blackberry did not adequately prepare for their customers increased demand for video streaming.

“Industry insiders and former RIM staff say the company has been storing up problems for years through its approach to its system – and the outage was only to be expected.” (Source: The Gaurdian)

At some point, someone at RIM decided not to invest in new system upgrades most likely in attempt to save some money.

This cost Blackberry its brand and plenty of marketshare (10% in 2011 now down to only 1% in 2015) (Source: Business Insider)

Blackberry’s demise could have been avoided by not cutting corners and keeping a better eye on what their customers wanted.

3. Keep it simple
We all love Apple because their products are simple. In our fast-paced, I have no-time, gotta-run world—you must simplify your products and services in order for them to be relevant. Anything that requires an extensive learning curve, or a lot of time to figure your product out—will be given up on and lost in the noise. 

Keep your products simple. By removing as many extra steps as possible—you will provide a better product experience to your customer. It will also help you simplify your communications. 

brand loyalty4. Invest in your brand 
I bought a GPS/heart rate monitor a few years ago for $500 plus tax—a big investment for my triathlon training requirements. Through the course of my use, the face got scratched making it unreadable, the watchband broke several times and I had to replace the heart rate monitor strap 4 times. I decided to keep reinvesting in it, because to replace it would have cost me even more money. I logged onto to the products support site and found people having the same problems, but I still hung on to it. 

When I initially purchased the watch—I thought the brand was superior to that of its competitors and that it would give me an edge in my training. I knew I was buying the Mercedes of training watches—but in the end, I was disappointed and worse of all—angry. If the watch came with guaranteed product support and replacement, it may have sat a little better with me, even though I felt cheated, I didn’t desert the brand, and gave it three more chances. 

brand loyaltyThe lesson here is, by investing in brand development that positions your brand as superior—you can potentially retain your customers, even if they become unhappy. If you asked a Mercedes owner why they keep driving a car that needs to go to the shop for repairs every other month, they’d tell you: “because Mercedes is the best.” 

5. Provide over-the-top customer service
If you’ve ever been overcharged for something you know that it needs to be resolved right away. If you have to make your customers search for a customer service number and then give them a foreign speaking service rep who could care less about your problem, this will definitely cause customers to become angry. Over the top customer service must be provided at all times.

A great example of a company that provides over-the-top customer support is an enterprise hosting company called Rackspace. Their tagline: “Fanatical Support” says it all. They give their customers the assurance they need that when something goes wrong—you can get someone on the line right away and get an answer on the spot. Because of companies like Rackspace, the customer service paradigm has shifted. Everyone expects great customer service. 

6. Utilize social media to stay in contact
If your customers subscribe to your Facebook feed, they want to hear from you. By implementing an inbound marketing strategy you’ll have plenty of interesting content to share that keeps your customers engaged, informed and delighted. See the free resource below on more information about attracting customers with Facebook. 

If you’re not utilizing social media to build a following for your products, you’re missing a huge opportunity to drive traffic and increase revenue.

7. Let them know you’re thinking about them
It also doesn’t hurt to budget some perks for your customers from time to time. Not all marketing spend has to be on advertisements, direct mail and tradeshows. A great example happened to me a few months ago. I received a letter from Southwest Airlines for 4 free drinks next time we fly—that don’t expire till the end of this year. Next time I fly—guess who I’m booking with? Southwest.

It’s the little things that can make your customers very happy.

In conclusion, to build brand loyalty and retain your customers, don’t over promise or cut corners. Keep it simple, build a brand that holds on to them, provide over-the-top customer service, utilize social media to stay in contact and let them know you’re thinking about them once in a while.

Nov 20

3 Tips to Growing Your Brand in the Age of Inbound Marketing

By Brand Development, Inbound Marketing

The age of inbound marketing is here, and the rules have changed in regards to growing your company’s brand.

With so much content being created at break-neck speed, it’s important for your brand to have a clearly defined position so that your content is relevant, speaks to the right audience and achieves your business goals.

Marketers are shifting their budgets away from “interruption” advertising, and increasing their inbound marketing budgets (Source: HubSpot). Inbound marketing is changing how brands communicate.

Consider these statistics: 

  • 86% of people skip television ads. (source: Mashable)
  • Because 61% of consumers say they feel better about a company that delivers custom content, they are also more likely to buy from that company. (Source: Custom Content Council)
  • 90% of consumers find custom content useful and 78% believe that organizations providing custom content are interested in building good relationships with them. (Source: McMurry/TMG)
  • 4% more leads are generated by inbound than by outbound. (Source: HubSpot) 

In the age of inbound marketing, here are 3 tips to help grow your brand.

Tip #1: Establish yourself as a visible expert.

What is a visible expert? A visible expert is someone within an industry who focuses on a particular niche that he/she is known for. Studies have shown that 62% of visible experts accrue brand building benefits for their companies. (Source: Hinge Research Institute) Through specialization, content marketing, speaking engagements and book publications—you can boost your visible expert profile and attract more clients and customers.

Examples of some visible experts include: Darmesh Shah (Inbound Marketing, HubSpot), Karl Rove (Political Consultant, American Crossroads), Gary Vaynerchuck (Social Media, Vayner Media) and Warren Buffet (Investing, Berkshire Hathaway).

By establishing yourself as a recognized visible expert within your industry—you are able to charge higher fees, attract more leads and grow your company faster.

LinkedIn is a highly effective channel to building visible expert status for the purpose of distributing your content and building your company’s brand.

Tip #2: Help. Don’t sell.

By creating relevant and valuable content that answers your customers most burning questions first—you build trust and credibility that earns you their interest, time and attention.

According to Marketo, 93% of B2B buyers begin their buying process using Internet search. By optimizing your blog articles, downloadable ebooks and whitepapers for search engines and social media networks, you pull customers to your brand through your content. 68% of consumers are likely to spend time reading content from a brand they are interested in. (Source: The CMA) By optimizing your content for search engines you have greater opportunities to attract customers, build your brand and promote your content through social media shares and likes that educates your prospects faster and can potentially shorten your sales cycle.

Tip #3: Perfect your messaging.

One of the greatest challenges in marketing is crafting the right messaging. How do you know if your messaging will resonate? Most companies don’t have large marketing budgets to test market. In the age of inbound marketing, you can dial in your brand messaging faster by conducting A/B testing—easier and cheaper—to find out what messages resonate with your target customers. By finding out what title or blog post gets the most traffic and social shares, you can begin to dial in your brand messaging that makes your marketing more effective.

In conclusion, by utilizing the above three tips of establishing yourself as a visible expert, helping—not selling, and utilizing A/B testing to dial in your messaging—you’ll have greater success in growing your brand more efficiently in the age of inbound marketing.

Interested in learning if Inbound Marketing is right for your business? Please contact us for a free inbound marketing assessment. 

 

 

Sep 30

Do I Really Need A Brand Strategy?

By Brand Development

Maybe you’ve just come out with some disruptive technology or game-changing gadget.

Or maybe your business has been around for a while and you’ve realized that to compete in today’s environment, you need to focus more on your reputation or brand. 

Do you really need a brand strategy?

Your customers, clients, employees, partners already have some kind of feeling, thought or understanding of you or your product/service—negative or positive.

The truth is… a brand already exists, even if you’ve never taken the time to develop your brand.

Below are 9 surprising facts that you may not have considered in regards to your brand development strategy.

1. Make it easier for the customer to buy

Customers make decisions on products they know and trust. If a customer is not familiar with your brand, they are less likely to buy it.


Think of the last time you were in the grocery store and you had to pick up some pickles. Vlasic—the pickle category leader—was not on the shelf. Do you buy the “I’ve never heard of you” brand of pickles—or forgo the pickles altogether? Most likely, you’ll wait till the next grocery trip or go to another store. Brands help us make buying decisions.

2. Make it easier for the sales team to sell
Having a strong brand reputation in the marketplace will allow your sales team to close more sales based on brand performance alone. A reputation for service, quality and the ability to solve your customer’s problem will be more likely received and sought after.


3. Brand clarity and delivery spurs employee motivation

Brands give your employees purpose. Having a clear cultural direction, goal and mission based on your brand values will create higher performance and productivity.


4. Increase the value of your company over time
Brands are line items on today’s most valued companies. The Coca-Cola brand alone accounts for 51 percent of the stock market value of the Coca-Cola Company. (Source: Brandchannel) 

5. Brand definition brings clarity to your business goals and direction
Having trouble getting along? The brand development process will get you and your key stakeholders on the same page that will align and foster greater cooperation.

6. The brand development exercise creates innovation

Most of us are so busy we sometimes just go through the motions in our businesses day after day with the mentality of “if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it attitude.” By purposefully sitting down and thinking about your brand and business you will give yourself and your team time to create new processes, products, services and other ideas that will drive innovation. This is time well spent.

7. Saves money on future design and advertising costs
Instead of reinventing the wheel every time that new ad needs to be placed or package redesigned, your brand standards will provide a guideline for consistency that creates visual recall and recognition.

8. A strong brand creates preference which, equals profit

By consistently delivering the same value, service and quality—along with the same visual identifiers—you begin to create preference and repeat customers. This is called “branding.” The goal of brand development is to create preference.

9. Attract talented employees
In today’s war for talent—companies are struggling to find talented and skilled workers. Those with strong employer brands coupled with a strong corporate brand will win.

10. Provides the foundation of you marketing efforts
Without a brand strategy, it will be very difficult to focus your inbound marketing efforts. The absence of your customer’s buyer personas, key messaging and brand-centric visuals will make any marketing effort less effective. 

So, do you need a brand strategy?

Well, if any of the above points appeal to you—I would say yes—brand development can help. Even if competition is non-existent—you eventually will need to develop your brand, if not direct it in some way. We have in any given category 10-20 of everything (toothpaste, cars, shoes, dishwashing soap, law firms, construction companies, healthcare providers etc.) by having a well-defined brand, you will be able to compete at a higher level than your competition and build a valuable asset for the future.  

Sep 25
Brand-Development-Interview-Guide

How To Create A Brand Development Interview Guide

By Brand Development

To discover what your brand stands for—you must start by asking your customers/clients the right questions.

By asking the wrong questions, you can completely miss the most important insights of how people view and feel about your brand.

As a marketer, you may have been tasked to rebrand your company or improve your brand’s performance. Within the brand development process one of the best ways to understand if your message and reputation is where you want it to be—is to interview your stakeholders and customers or clients.

In this article, I’ll share six points that will help you ask the right questions to accurately identify your customers/client’s perceptions, beliefs, feelings and motives. Your findings will give you a rich insight into how your brand is perceived and will equip you to build a more effective brand.  

 Brand interviews should consist of the following: 

  1. Basic demographic information
  2. Brand experiences
  3. Brand understanding
  4. Frequented marketing channels
  5. Feedback on how to improve the brand’s product or service.

The interview should only last about 30 minutes and consist of 10-15 questions (max). It may be necessary to create three different questionnaires depending on whom you’re interviewing. As an example, customer questions will be different than partner or internal stakeholder questions.

So let’s dig in…

1. Understand your industry’s challenges
To begin forming your questions, begin by looking at your industry. Every industry has some kind of challenge. Identify what those challenges or pain points are. Here are a few examples: 

  • Healthcare — regulation
  • Medical Device  — limited creative
  • Estate Planning — customer retention
  • Construction — antiquated processes
  • Retail — customer interest
  • Utilities — customer service

To get some background, start by doing some internet research to familiarize yourself with common industry obstacles and category imperatives. Twitter is a great place to start to locate industry news sources. This will give you a good foundation and help you in drafting your initial list of questions.

2. Interview your brand’s key stakeholders
The second step is to benchmark your investigation. Start with your company’s key stakeholders. This may include the CEO, COO, CTO and Sales Director. A lot of times, they will have insight that you may not have known or realized. Make sure to schedule your time via email well in advance. Try to pick a day where they are not too busy. Be aware and prepared to answer any potential skepticism. Their answers will give you a foundation of knowledge to test against.

[box type=”info” size=”large”]Interview Tip: Occasionally, you’ll encounter a cold facade that you’ll have to break through to get to the real truth. Don’t accept just any answer if you feel the answer given is too shallow, rephrase and ask it later on.[/box]

3. Interview your brand’s customers
To begin the customer survey, get buy-in from your stakeholders to conduct the interview and get feedback on the questions you want to ask. The best place to start is with your social media followers as they have already opted in to receive communication from you. Depending on how large of company you are, you may be able to personally email your customers to arrange the interviews.

Don’t rule out those passive-silent customers/clients. Their experiences with your brand are just as important to understand as those following you on social media. Make sure you have a variety of people to draw from. Interview your happiest customers as well as the ones who have constant complaints.

Interview Tip: You will encounter difficulty with scheduling.  I suggest asking 2-3 interviewees at a time over the course of 2-3 days. Use a tool like Sidekick to ensure your emails are received.

Interview 15-20 people (or as many as you can as time allows) and make sure to follow the same format throughout. If you are a bigger company, you may want to hire a marketing research firm. Remember, the better the questions, the better your investigation will be.

It may be necessary to send out an online survey through Survey Monkey for larger samples. 

Interview Tip: Don’t ask leading questions, focus your questions on getting a specific answer, don’t interrupt and try to transition naturally.

4. Analyze your answers
After you’ve completed each individual interview, write your responses on a whiteboard of what stood out to you and begin to look for potential trends.

5. Create your buyer personas
What is a buyer persona? Buyer personas are fictional representations of your ideal customers. They are based on real data about customer demographics and online behavior, along with educated speculation about their personal histories, motivations, and concerns.

Your brand is not what you say it is, it’s what your customers/clients say it is.

By creating buyer personas, you will be able to focus your brand’s messaging, content and visuals to your customers/clients more effectively.

6. Brand alignment
As your interviews come to conclusion—your brand should begin to rise to the top. You should begin to see differences between what your company says versus what your customers say about your brand. 

The interviews will prepare you to conduct an educated and insightful brand discovery session where you will drill more into the internal side and business strategy of the brand. More to come on this later…

In conclusion, to begin the development of your brand, start by conducting industry research online, interview your key stakeholders, interview your customers, analyze your responses for misalignment and look for trends. Create your buyer personas to laser focus your messaging, visual and content.

 

May 23
Brand Rollout

Why Your Brand Rolled Out The Back Door And Down The Street – Part 2

By Brand Development

In my last post, I talked about 4 things to keep in mind to make the most of your brand development investment when rolling out your new brand to your employees and how to create lasting brand change. I discussed the importance of getting your employees’ buy-in early and introducing the brand correctly.

In this post, I’ll give you 4 things to remember when rolling out the brand externally to your customers. Depending on what kind of company you are, changing your brand can be minimal to very complex.

1. Release brand standards to employees, vendors and partners

Instruct your branding agency to create brand standards and guidelines. This will contain rules on how to use the new brand’s visual elements for efficiency. Make sure to publish and deliver the guidelines to all brand ambassadors in the company—especially the sales and marketing folks. Make the brand standards accessible via a password protected website or a downloadable document. Announce the brand standards by email and who to contact for brand approvals.

2. Make it all about your customers
Unlike your employees who will typically push back on the new branding, your customers will typically welcome the change. Once again, make the external rollout all about them. Communicate why the change was made. Utilize social media, email and other channels to reach your customers. Invite your customers to visit the new website. Careful planning must be made so that there is no disconnect. If your brand includes product packaging, make sure to communicate the old and the new so no brand equity is lost in the transition.

3. Pick the right media mix
Larger companies will conduct million dollar multi-media campaigns to announce their new brands. They may hold special events or create a Q&A hotline. Create targeted messaging and repeat it over and over again for at least 9 to 14 months.

UPS BrandWhen UPS rebranded in 2007, their television ads showed their old logo changing from the drab 2-dimensional package icon to the more stylized 3-dimensional shield icon for at least a year. Their trucks seemed to be changed over the same amount of time. But who could forget their brilliant whiteboard commercials? They coupled their new branding with a new ad campaign communicating the company’s new positioning and tagline – What can brown do for you? (Which was later changed to We love logistics.)

For small to medium sizes companies—a typical press release will suffice that corresponds with the launch of your new website, email announcement. You may want to consider a soft launch of your website to work out any bugs before announcing it to the masses.

4. Pick the right time
Be sure to schedule plenty of time to conduct all the necessary activities. Think through the rollout by starting with the end in mind. What is the goal, who needs to know, how will they find out and where? Look at this as you would an advertising campaign, because that’s exactly what it is. Pick the right time to introduce your brand, either at a planned customer event or trade show. Time it to maximize your message and marketing dollars.

In conclusion, next to your people, your brand is your most valuable asset. Create and deliver the brand standards and guidelines, make the new brand all about your customers, pick the right media mix and time it with an upcoming customer event for maximum benefit.

For more information on how we can help you create real brand change within your organization, contact our agency for a complimentary brand assessment.

May 17
Brand Development Rollout

Why Your Brand Rolled Out The Back Door And Down The Street – Part 1

By Brand Development, Branding, Business

Completing the brand development process is a major milestone in any company’s history. After months of work it becomes time to introduce and roll it out to your employees and then your customers and the public in general. However after the party is over and the smoke has cleared, the brand is usually forgotten and your people return to status quo and it’s business as usual. Why?

In the first of two posts, here are 4 things to keep in mind to make the most of your brand development investment when rolling out your new brand internally and creating real brand change.

1. Get employee buy-in early
To make your brand rollout successful, get your employees involved early in the process. Identify the people in your company who are the centers of influence. Create a team of brand ambassadors. By getting your employees feedback and input—you will give them ownership of the new brand. Their feedback will provide the framework and direction of the changes that need to be made. When they see that the changes they suggested have been incorporated, they will be more likely to embrace the new brand. They will also act as advocates and defenders of the new brand when and if water cooler discussions turn negative about the coming changes.

2. Introduce the brand correctly
Also begin thinking about the brand rollout event early in the process. It can sometimes take months of planning depending on your budget. Each company is different, but you typically want to start by creating some buzz. Try to think of ways to get your employees excited about the new brand. Communicate some of the key benefits and changes coming and how they contributed to the new direction. Make the brand rollout party all about them. This will be your first chance to introduce the new brand and you’ll want to take some time to really think through how to best present it.

3. Leadership does the honors
The new brand should be introduced by the CEO or president. The brand development process is a top-down initiative and you’ll want to utilize the C-Suite’s influence. Take the steps needed to educate your employees on what a brand is and why it is important. After a little branding 101, go through the main communication points of the brand. Especially communicate what has changed and what will stay the same. Remember to communicate the purpose and the “why” behind the “what”. Seek to inspire through purpose.

4. Create “the change” through your employees

Lets face it, change is hard. Most companies—after the brand is rolled out—return to status quo. To create real brand change, new standards must be communicated and implemented within your workforce. To move the culture, changes must be made at the people level. So for example, you may want to consider the following:

  1. Through natural attrition, begin to replace the employees who leave with people who adhere and align with the brand’s new values.
  2. Use assessments to accurately determine the “jobfit” and “brandfit” of each candidate.
  3. Invest in employer branding to attract top talent.
  4. Train tenured employees to adapt to the changes being made.
  5. Pay employees to leave who are not adopting the change (See Zappos and Amazon examples)

The company with the best people wins. To create real brand change and to make the most of your brand development investment—start with your people early in the process and continue to build a culture based on your customers. Anything else is just pretty words and pictures.

In my next post, I’ll talk about the external rollout process.

For more information on how we can help you create real brand change within your organization, contact our agency for a complimentary brand assessment.

May 06
how to write an awesome tagline

How To Write An Awesome Tagline

By Brand Development

Coming up with a tagline for your business can be a little difficult—but it isn’t as hard as you might think. A good tagline can influence customer behavior and give them an understanding of what your product, service or brand is about. Here are a couple ones you might recognize:

  • Just Do It.
  • Think Different.
  • The Ultimate Driving Machine.
  • Like No Other Place On Earth.
  • We Bring Good Things To Life.


Taglines influence consumers’ behavior by evoking an emotional response. A tagline is a short phrase that captures a company’s brand essence, personality, and positioning, and distinguishes the company from its competitors. (Source: Defining Brand Identity)

In this post, we are going to write a tagline for a fictitious pen company called Penly. We’ll go through 6 steps using Penly as an example that you can then use to craft your own tagline.

branding tagline1. What makes your product or service unique?
To start, you first need to understand what makes your product or service unique. Does it contain some kind of unique material? Does it have some kind of competitive advantage? Is it shaped differently? Does it take a different approach than your competitors? Write down 1-3 things that makes your product or service unique.

For our pen company, it is 1. design, 2. ink color and, 3. balance. Our pen is slightly heavier in the middle so that it is perfectly balanced. Our pen slows the writer down that helps them to write better and clearer. Studies have shown penmanship is affected because people write too fast. Yet, it’s not too heavy to cramp the users’ wrist after long periods of note taking.

2. Write down 1-3 value propositions
A value proposition is a promise of value you intend to deliver or provide to your customer. It is the value or benefit they will receive from using your product or service.

For our pen, our value propositions are: 1. smoother writing, 2. classy design and, 3. darker more prestige looking inks.

3. Position your product or service
Positioning is a brand’s attempt to occupy a market niche, idea or a distinct impression in your customer’s mind. Positioning is one the most critical elements in the brand strategy development process.

It starts by understanding points 1 and 2 and your competitor’s positioning—because two competitors cannot occupy the same position. In our pen example, there are three main competitors in the category. Go Pen positions themselves as an everyday “get-the-job-done” kinda pen. They’ve been in the pen making business since the 1940s and hold most of the market share. Our second competitor, Big Pen positions their pens as the “industrial pen”—and is pitched towards the working man. It’s got a thicker grip and is used with metal casing to show its ruggedness. The third pen company—Lil’Pen positions their pens as a cheap, buy-in-bulk pen. Nothing fancy about Lil’Pen —a pen is a pen.

As a marketer or business owner you want to try to figure out where the “whitespace” is within your market and how to provide a better product to an audience who has a need. What niche or space are you going occupy? What makes your product different and viable?  Typically, you’ll want to conduct some customer research, look at industry trends, conduct some test marketing and other activities to determine where the logical place is to position your pen.

After conducting our own research, we’ve found that there is a segment of the pen market that is vastly underserved. That segment is the professional segment: ages 35-50, male or female, typically college grads, holds an executive position or has a professional degree like an C.P.A., M.B.A., M.D., J.D. etc. and who tend to write a lot. For the most part it seems this segment may benefit from our pen’s unique characteristics.

We will define our positioning statement next, but first we need to take a look at our buyer persona and what makes our pen the “only”.

4. Define your buyer persona
Next, you must understand your customer—or buyer persona. You must know how to best talk to your customers and where best to reach them. You must seek to address their pain points and solve their problems. You must find a way to appeal to their aspirations, character qualities and understand what motivates them. For our pen, it’s about giving them a fine writing tool that makes them more productive, take better notes and feel a bit smarter when they are holding our pen. It may even lend them some status when they lay their pen down at the meeting table.

5. Define your only.
According to Marty Neumeier, the author of Zag, an onliness statement is something that no one else can say about you. Using our pen as an example, our onliness statement looks like this:

Penly is the only pen company that helps professionals take better notes, be more productive and write smarter.

Notice our onliness statement contains who our customer is, what the product is and how it is different in the marketplace. You can replace the words that are highlighted and add in your own company name, customer and value propositions.

brand development tagline6. Distill your tagline from your onliness statement
Now, we must cut the onliness statement down to its bare essence. Using some of the words above, try to distill the overarching theme into a few words. Play around and try to come up with something that is smooth, a bit clever and catchy. So for example:

  • Penly, The Professionals Pen
  • Penly, Better Notes
  • Penly, Write Smarter
  • Penly, Write Better
  • Penly, Now You’re Writing

Attach your tagline with your name to see it and hear how it sounds.

Those are a few off the cuff…but for this example, I think we’ll go with Write Smarter. It captures the essence of our pen, tells something about what our pen does and how it helps our buyer persona and how we want them to feel when they use our pen.

So you see, coming up with a tagline isn’t all that difficult—right? You just need to take the necessary steps to think through it by boiling down your product or service to its essence. By identifying what makes your product or service unique, what value it delivers to your customers, what position it holds in their mind, who your buyer persona is, what your only is, you can distill your message down to a simple mantra that connects your product to your customer succinctly and clearly that creates value.

Struggling to connect your brand to your customers or looking for a unique tagline? 

Apr 16
how to rebrand

The 7 Factors For Rebranding

By Brand Development

There are many factors to consider when evaluating the decision to rebrand your company. Typically you’re gripped with a sense of bewilderment as the word ‘rebrand’ typically means ‘change.’ This is always difficult, especially when you’re the one responsible for the success and longevity of your company.

Faced with undulating marketplace circumstances—a rebrand may be the only viable option you have to remain competitive. The entrance of new competitors, commoditization, internal changes and changing customer attitudes may have weakened your company’s ability to accurately articulate your unique value proposition. Perhaps you’ve been knocked off by faster, more agile competitors with more aggressive marketing tactics than your own or you let things get away on you by not keeping up to date on massive disruption that is taking place across various industries.

Whatever the case, re-branding can be a good thing. It signifies a stage in your business’ maturity and growth. It is an opportunity to more closely examine your mission, purpose and the betterment of your company.  

Brand development can be a catalyst for innovation—an opportunity to develop your current processes. It can bring clarity and alignment to you and your stakeholders and spur employee motivation. In the end this tunes up your company’s internal engine where the end result is customer satisfaction and increased profitability.

To help you understand the main reasons most business owners choose to rebrand, we’ve listed 7 factors that will help you determine if now is the time to consider a rebrand.  



Famous Corporate Rebrand

Famous Corporate Rebrands

1. Name change

Our name no longer fits who we are.

Naming is a long and difficult process. Most viable domain names have been taken or are listed as premium listings because of their necessity and acclaim. Be prepared to pay for a high-quality name or be prepared to make one up.  Start at Name.com to check out the availability of your domain. Work with a branding agency to help you come up with a meaningful, memorable and viable choice. Your name is the most important branding element of your business. A recent example is when Anderson Consulting became Accenture. Anderson Consulting changed their name due to global market expansion. “On January 1, 2001 Andersen Consulting adopted its current name, “Accenture”. The word “Accenture” is supposedly derived from “Accent on the future”. The name “Accenture” was submitted by Kim Petersen, a Danish employee from the company’s Oslo, Norway office, as a result of an internal competition. Accenture felt that the name should represent its will to be a global consulting leader and high performer, and also intended that the name should not be offensive in any country in which Accenture operates. (SOURCE: Wikipedia)

2. Revitalize a brand

Our identity does not represent us any longer.

Due to the natural development, evolution and innovation of your products and services new vertical markets and channels will emerge that prove profitable changing the course of your company. You may have received feedback from your customers or have seen a decline in web traffic. Perhaps you were a packaged product company that has now evolved into a virtual product.  The move to the virtual environment will need to communicate a different message then one sold in a brick-n-mortar. When in doubt, interview and survey your customers to understand if your brand is still connecting to deliver value.

3. Revitalize a brand identity
Our identity is outdated.

Brand identity is a mixture of the visual representation of the product and service you provide and about how that product/service relates to, characterizes and represents your customers. Have your customers changed? Once again when in doubt, interview and survey your customers to understand if the brand is still connecting to deliver value.  Does it need a new look or a whole new service offering. In a recent example, Walgreens completely changed its course to remain relevant and to remain true to its brand values by completely eliminating tobacco from their stores and redesigning the customer experience and adding clinics due to the sweeping health care law.

Logo swooshes gone wild

Logo swooshes gone wild

4. Create an integrated system
Our visual materials do not look the same.

Over the years as marketing managers and designers have come and gone, they’ve left their own interpretations of your company’s brand on your materials. If standards were not put in place at the initial development of your brand—chances are your materials look inconsistent, scattered and unfocused. 

BRANDING TIP: Still using swooshes and drop shadows? These were hot design trends in the late nineties and early 2000’s. Today, flat design is ‘in’ lead by top global brands like Apple, Windows and Google.

5. When companies merge
We need a new brand to represent the new company.

Perhaps the #1 reason to rebrand is when two companies merge. Think Disney and Pixar. Sirius and XM Radio. Exxon and Mobil. When two cultures collide, key staff members are let go, leadership styles and philosophies change, everything is turned upside down and inside out. This especially takes a mental toll on your employees. Not knowing what is happening in the C-Suite, guesses,  estimations and imaginations run wild that result in anxiousness, worry and loss productivity. Communication is key in this time of transition. The brand development process will help you align and get your new team on the same page quicker.

6. When internal teams lack clarity

Our employees lack direction, engagement and purpose.

One of the most important outcomes of the brand strategy process is employee clarity and understanding of the company’s mission and purpose. The brand development process will allow you to re-discover the purpose of your brand—the why behind the what—providing direction, increasing employee engagement and purpose.

7. Attract Talent

We are not hiring the right people.

A strong corporate brand is helpful to attracting talent. However an employer brand must also be taken into consideration when rebranding. You must also define the values of your culture and why someone would want to work for you. This can only be fostered by the corporate brand’s values and how they relate to your customers.  The key to delighting your customers is to delight your employees. Outside of the normal perks, you must also communicate the purpose through your employer branding to attract the right talent.

BRANDING TIP: Delight your employees and you will delight your customers.

In conclusion, when faced with the possibility of a rebrand, always start with your customers and employees. Their responses to your inquiries will give you the understanding you need to intelligently make the decision to rebrand. If your name needs changing, your brand image is outdated, your materials are scattered, you’ve merged with another company, your internal teams are off center or you are not attracting the necessary talent to meet customer demand, it may be time to rebrand.

Interested in learning more about rebranding and brand development process? Our proprietary brand development approach—Brand+People™ —believes your people are the key differentiator in a marketplace full of identical competitors. We focus on brand alignment through employee engagement, customer experience and brand perception to create authentic human connections for business growth and success. As a seamless extension of your marketing and sales team, we blend branding, inbound marketing and creative design (professional web design, brochure design, logo design, infographics, package design and advertising) to maximize your business goals. Contact us today to learn more.

 

Jan 30

4 Questions Every Brand Must Answer

By Brand Development

“The brand is your product”, said Lee Clow, Chief Creative Officer at TBWA/Worldwide, responsible for Apples’ 1984 commercial. When you think about it, what he said was absolutely true.

In today’s cluttered marketplace and economy, consumers demand an experience from the brands they buy. They also want brands that appeal and align to their lifestyle, character and personalities. The old cliché, “you are what you eat”, now also applies to “you are what you buy“. If you consider for a moment the brands you buy, you would be able to compile a list of things that make you – you. Here’s mine:

  • I drive a Jeep – Jeep stands for freedom/adventure
  • I work on an Apple – I think different
  • I drink Coors Light – I grew up in The Rockies
  • I root for the Broncos – I’m from Denver

If you were to write out a list of the brands and things you like, would someone be able to get an idea of who you are – I bet they would…

This same kind of thinking applies to brands. Below are four questions every brand must be able to answer to be recognizable, memorable, favored, distinctive, preferred and ultimately adored.

1. Who are you?

How would you describe your self? How would your company describe itself if it were a person? The inability to answer this question in a short succinct sentence that people can easily remember diminishes your brand’s potential and ultimately its profitability.

2. Who needs to know?

If your brand were a person, who would they hang out with? These are your customers. How would your brand talk?  What would it wear? In today’s digital, disconnected world where people would rather shoot an email than pick up the phone, brands need to be authentic, understandable, personable and reachable.

3. How will they find you?

Where would your brand go? To the mountains? To a football game or Nordstrom? These places is where your brand needs to be. What sites are they hanging out on? Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest? Make it a point to be there also.

4. Why should they care?

How do you make someone care? Typically, caring involves being friends or having the same interest as another in some altruistic endeavor.

For friendship to happen, you must initiate a conversation or some act of kindness to kindle a conversation. After the conversation you figure out if you have anything in common, then you can move on to the next step.

For shared interests like sustainability, health, conservation etc., you have to come to that interest with the same ideals and values which also sparks a friendship.

Same for brands. Be a brand that is authentic and that exhibits trust and shares a purpose with your customers. Be personable and real. Don’t try to be someone you’re not. For a long time, companies have been driven by their profits, prestige and who has the biggest building as their main focus and have not put the customer center. Customers want to be center!  Make a great product that helps us survive, look good or feel good, save us money—or all four. Back it up with a promise and some great looking/feeling branding, provide great customer/client service and you’ll have customers/clients coming back again and again. It’s that simple and that difficult.

Ultimately, in the end as Clow said — the brand is the product. It’s about standing for something – anything other than the status quo, providing an experience for the brand to carry out a real world function that encourages its customers to aspire to do more.

To learn more about how to create a real, authentic and trustworthy brand that your customers will love, contact us for a free brand consultation.

Jan 18

5 Myths of Brand Development Debunked

By Brand Development

Push back to adopt brand development from the business owner can sometimes be very frustrating. You’re under fire to deliver quality leads to sales — recent tactics of PR, Ads and SEO just aren’t working. You struggle to find true marketplace differentiation but you are not sure exactly what that is. Your messaging is all over the place and the boss wants results.

Don’t give up! We’ve put together a few things to help you look more seriously at why it’s more important than ever to take the time to develop your brand and to help you start coming up with a pitch to turn things around.

In today’s economy, we have 10 to 20 of everything. People begin their purchases by going to the internet or by asking their friends. They block out nearly all advertising. 70% of the purchase decision is over before a customer even contacts a sales person or purchases something from you. Today, brands must go above and beyond to prove trust and authenticity to their customers. One bad experience —  and it’s all over Facebook. Below are 5 myths debunked to help you answer your critics on the need to engage in brand development.

1. Your brand is your logo
Myth. Your logo is just one piece of your brand. Your brand consists of many things: what a customer thinks, feels, tastes, experiences, hears and sees, the good, bad and the ugly about your brand. A fresh, clean and clever logo is very important as it’s usually the first thing customers’ experience.

2. Brand development is expensive
Not a myth. It’s funny how many companies try to do brand development on their own because they’ve gone down the road of trying to hire a branding agency and have gotten back an estimate that curls their toes. But when trying to conduct it themselves they end up screwing up their brand further and spending more money than they would if they would’ve just hired the branding agency. The brand development process takes a lot of work and is priced accordingly. Many hours are spent on research, competitive analysis, communication audits, customer interviews and plenty of time thinking and thinking and thinking. Brand Development is an exhaustive process. To develop a successful brand, you must have a professional brand strategist to provide fresh perspective, insight and direction.

3. Brand development does not need input from your employees
Not a myth. An employee by definition is: a person working for another person or a business firm for pay. True, but in today’s economy, an employee is more like your brand ambassador. He or she may know more than you (Marketing Director or Owner) about your customer. Ask them questions about what customers think about your brand and nine times out of ten you’ll get ten different answers. Your employees are the people who are typically face to face with the customer every day. If they are not accurately communicating the brand values, then your brand is not working to its full potential.

4. Your brand is not your product
Myth. Your brand is your product! People buy what your brand offers them not what you sell them. Take Apple for example; they sell computers, but what they really sell is ideas and the ability to create and think differently. See this video by Simon Sinek for a further understanding.

5. The process is over at rollout
Myth. We have seen so many companies develop brands, throw a big roll out party for their employees, give them a t-shirt and a mouse pad with a new mission statement and within a month, nothing from a cultural standpoint has changed and customer satisfaction surveys remain stagnant. Why? Because the brand development process doesn’t end at rollout, it begins! Companies must shift their focus to the employer brand to begin drilling into the culture through their recruitment and talent management practices. Every new employee hired, must be what the brand personifies otherwise your brand development process is nothing more than a creative exercise — it must be implemented properly or all that hard work I mentioned above will be nothing in 6 months.

Companies and startups need to invest in brand development to help them understand who they are, how they can better the marketplace and how they are going to attract the talent necessary to grow and remain sustainable.

If you are looking for help in defining who you are, what makes you unique in a cluttered marketplace and how to build a foundation of sustainability, culture and best hiring practices for your brand. Contact us today!

 

 

Dec 15

Can Your Brand Become Iconic?

By Brand Development

Can your brand become iconic? This week, I look at two brands that have achieved cult-like status. I will explore their history and attempt to trace their origins and discover what made them iconic. First we’ll start with a little branding 101.

Brands originated as far back as 1100 BC. The first known brand was from India. As man progressed up to the industrial revolution, it became necessary as more companies entered into the marketplace the need to differentiate ones products and services over another. Generic brands found it useful to become a real brand to succeed.

The term “Brand” comes from the old Norse word brandr “to burn.”  And as we all remember, Cowboys used brands to identify their cattle just as companies today use their brands to identify themselves.

Today, the term branding is used in marketing, advertising and sales as a way to build relationships on a social and psychological level. Brand developers seek to create not only the words, shapes, colors, look and feel of a brand but also to connect them to the consumer on an emotional level that then creates a preference over competing brands.

Some brands do this so well, they’ve become iconic. They’ve transcended into something bigger than just a product or service – but rather an attitude and lifestyle. Two examples I am looking at is Harley-Davidson Motorcycle Company and Ironman Triathlon.

Harley-DavidsonThe first example is Harley-Davidson. This iconic brand not only defines and differentiates a motorcycle company, but it also defines an entire class of people based on their lifestyle and attitude towards life. Talk to any Harley owner and immediately you’ll get a sense of who they are based on any one response to a trivial question about the weather. You may say: “Nice weather we’re having today isn’t it?” Harley owner: “ Yeah its #$*@ awesome – good day for a ride!” Then you watch them walk off in black leather chaps, vest and boots. Harley has extended its brand into watches, sponsored sub brands on Ford trucks and others. This brand has achieved cult status and is listed on Interbrand’s list of the 100 most influential brands.

Iconic brandThe second example of a company that does this well is Ironman. Ironman’s tagline “Anything is Possible” – defines the attitude of the people who train for and finish a 2.4 mile swim, 112 mike bike and 26.2 mile run – all in one day. Ironman has extended its brand into shoes, watches, headphones, cereal, power bars, sports drinks and clothing. Not only has it’s brand become synonomous with inspiration, but also with accomplishment – which is its main draw for participants. Who would pay a $500+ entry fee, sacrifice 9-12 months of their life to train and then purchase on average $3000-$10000 in equipment to go through 8-17 hours of pain on race day. Although not as widely known as Harley, Ironman has achieved cult-like status, to the people who are called by its brand name.

By tapping into the psychological aspects of the personality, companies can have a greater understanding into their customer’s motivations and triggers.  So to that end it pays to do upfront research on your brand before crafting it.

The question remains, did Harley and Ironman purposely craft their brands in this way? Can you actually go out and create an iconic brand with a cult-like following? Or did these brands happen serendipitously?

In my next post, I’ll look at the history of both companies and seek to discover how these two brands have achieved iconic status.

Oct 31
Logo

How to Design a Great Logo in 7 Steps

By Brand Development, Logo Design

Several times a year I am commissioned to design a logo. Projects run the gamut in subject matter, and  I often find myself biting my lip because I’m not inspired by what the brand, product or service stands for — these projects are priced accordingly or turned down. However in most cases, I’m able to take an idea and run with it, knowing that I can come up with something that meets or exceeds the client’s expectations.

Typically the most difficult projects — the real stumpers — are about subjects that don’t relate to any tangible objects in the real world. It’s much easier to get creative with a person, place or thing than with an idea.  In these cases you have to incorporate related objects to communicate what you are trying to convey. For example lets look at a past project – Noble Plans, a non-profit recruitment agency or RPO.

How do you come up with an icon for Noble? Or Plans? You don’t — it doesn’t exist. The easy way out would be to come up with some typeface and call it good. We solved this problem by using the  “cross meaning” method as a way to communicate the meaning of noble.  ”Cross meaning” is essentially finding something that is similar to the meaning but drawing from another category. So instead of asking what does noble look like — the question becomes, what is noble?

Some examples of Noble may be: A Politician (haha, …no.)? A Knight? A Shield? Perhaps a Lion?

LogoThe answer to the problem was a Lion. It proved to be a good fit to express nobility, integrity and strength.  These were also brand attributes the owners wanted to convey. We then used a strong typeface to reinforce. In the end, not only did the Lion make sense, but it also differientiated the brand in a highly competitive category. We also made sure that within their category, their competitors where not using a Lion.

Really great logo designers typically invoke a high level of cleverness into design. Cleverness is the ability to show inventiveness or originality.

I define creativity as: the capacity and talent of a designer to take shape, color, form, style, imagery and type and transcend those design elements into original, progressive ideas that give the viewer or audience something they have never seen before. Creativity can also influence the purchase decision by causing the viewer to feel enjoyment or satisfaction when encountering a piece of communication. In design, creativity is often restrained to ensure accuracy in communicating with the desired target audience. It can also be repressed by the product or service owner’s idea of how best to present itself. These dynamics determine the level of “punch” of any creative execution.

Remember a logo is much more than just a “logo”  – it’s the number one business asset that allows businesses to compete and differientiate themselves in the marketplace. For small companies, it’s the pivot point that establishes a sense of pride, ownership and foundation.

Below is the process I generally take when designing a logo. Sometimes when I hear the name of the brand, by God’s grace – the idea just pops in my craw, other times — it takes some work and a lot of thought. But the challenge is what keeps me loving what I do – being a designer and a thinker.

Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it. – Henry Ford

  1. First things first, start off with word association: Using the Visual Thesaurus tool and Dictionary.com – I will look for words similar to the subject’s name, meaning, industry or any other nouns or adjectives to begin to understand the meaning and potential underlying meanings and how they are percieved.
  2. Begin initial concepts: Based on your initial impressions of the subject, sketch out some rough concepts on paper. I will then look for photographs to bring resolution to the concepts.
  3. Create 3 different categories to design – Abstract, Lettertype and Icon
  4. Textures, Materials and Movement – Can you reinforce your message with any of these elements?
  5. Color & Type – Add the appropriate colors and characters (typeface) based on the directive of the communication.
  6. Presentation – a little trick I use to present logos is to arrange them in a way that builds up to a climax – presenting the weakest designs first and ending with the strongest. Try to also arrange in a professional layout, just don’t throw them at the client all at once. Walk them through your process. This helps create a great presentation and leaves you taking applause at the end.
  7. Recommendation –  Without a solid presentation your best ideas will fall flat. I always give our recommendations on what we’d like to see the client go with and then fight for it. This adds value to the client and helps you to establish more credibility for later projects.