Archive for the ‘brand promise’ tag
New Brand Building Course on lynda.com!
We are excited to share that we have a new course on lynda.com called Building Your Brand!
You have a brand – but are you in control of your brand? Just released on lynda.com (as of yesterday) is our Wild Web Woman Lorrie Thomas Ross‘ latest online video course called Building Your Brand. Sit back and watch for 30 minutes while Lorrie teaches you the ropes of branding and maintaining your brand. It’s healthy Web Marketing Rx – grab a cup of tea (or wine, that is an antioxidant right?!!) and watch and learn to get your brand under your command!
Organizations large and small, non-profits, products and even individuals can harness the power of branding to boost business and connect with customers. Learn how to make your brand work hard for your business.
I already watched the videos – in true marketing style, I wanted to highlight some great branding tips from the videos to maximize relationships with your customers.
- A brand is more than a logo. A brand is a name, term, design, symbol or other feature that identifies your brand as distinct in the marketplace.
- Develop a Brand Promise. Take some time to develop what your brand says to the world and the promises you want to make to your customers.
- Branding isn’t just for big business. Branding is all about marketplace perception – how clients and customers perceive the personality of your organization – and can work for organizations big or small.
- Keep your brand consistent. Keep the design, logo, tagline and messaging of your organization consistent across all media channels to boost credibility and familiarity with your customers.
Grabs the reins of your brand today! Watch the Building Your Brand course now (it’s under 30 minutes, easy peasy lemon squeezy, as us Wild Web Women like to say)! And click here to get a FREE 7 DAY Trial of lynda.com!
For those of you who don’t know yet, lynda.com is an awesome subscription based online video tutorial service for only $25 month. The website offers a variety of amazing tutorials from everything like how market your business online to learning to use Excel, Gmail or any other software you can think of. Web Marketing Therapy loves lynda.com and we think you will too. Check out lynda.com and start learning how to Build Your Brand today or watch Lorrie’s other course Online Marketing Fundamentals!
Special offer for our blog readers and friends: Click here to get a FREE 7 DAY Trial of lynda.com!
For more great branding tips you can follow Lorrie on Twitter @webtherapist or me @jenniejacobs!
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38 Ideas For Your Pinterest Strategy
Pinterest continues to fascinate me by it’s simplicity and ease of use. However, if you peak behind the curtain it holds a similar sophistication to that of Twitter. Who would have thought we’d call a 140 text platform sophisticated communication? Where this new visual social network will take us is the guess of crystal ball gazers and social media pundits. Neither of which am I. I’m just a working gal who loves, not necessarily the technology, but the promise of what it can do to bring business back to the corner grocery story relationship. (C.B Whittemore’s post) For me the two driving benefits of social media have always been: 1. Build and nuture relationships 2. Tell the story of the brand through the people who are its heart: employees and customers If you get those right it’s a marketing two step along the way to making the cash register ring. Oh by the way, don’t drink so much of the Koolaid that you believe a sales is a direct result of Only a tweet or status update or even a pin. As part of client work and creating workshops on Pinterest I develope a running list of ideas. Some are strategic and others more tactical but I thought I’d pass them along to help you frame your adventure (and it should be!) in the visual world of Pinterest. Strategy 1. Determine how graphics as linked to content can align with your brand values brand promise 2. Determine how Pinterest will…
Penetrating New Markets Through Distributors
We regularly answer marketing questions here on Branding Strategy Insider. Today we hear from Mike, a Vice President of Global Marketing in Atlanta, Georgia who writes…
“We are a mid sized software company that is starting to grow into geographic areas where we will go to market with a distributor versus investing in putting our own people and offices into the region. We are discussing a brand architecture for these ‘master resellers’ as the first few we are working with want to go to market using our brand. Of course we hesitate here as it is our brand but we also recognize the fact that it is our brand that is getting traction and it makes it more difficult for them to penetrate the market with a different name, etc. from the company and product they are reselling.
What is the best way forward?”
Thanks for your question Mike. When selling your brand through others, it is important to select the right partners who will represent your brand well. It is also important to arm the distributors with the following:
- A selling script that outline’s your brand’s unique value proposition and key selling points
- Brand identity system and standards/guidelines
- Consider creating a digital asset management system so that distributors will be forced to present your brand accurately and consistently while creating high quality brand marketing materials more easily
- Consider offering brand training sessions to your distributors – you must make sure they understand what your brand promise is and the importance of delivering on that promise
- Consider establishing regular brand communication with the distributors, providing them with brand stories and “selling points” and increasing your brand’s mindshare with them
You might also consider drawing up a contract/agreement with them that allows you to sever the relationship should they not present your brand properly.
When considering expanded distribution into new geographic markets, if those markets are comprised of different cultures and different languages, make sure your brand name, tagline and brand messaging translate and are interpreted properly in those new markets.
Finally, if you are considering creating a variation of your brand’s identity for some master resellers, consider some sort of brand endorsement that indicates they are a “certified reseller,” “platinum distributor,” “official distributor,” or something to that affect.
Have a question related to branding? Just Ask The Blake Project
Sponsored by: The Brand Positioning Workshop
Coke’s Happiness Islands, the Internet Ocean’s Most Pleasant Archipelago
Looking to waste a little time on the Internet today? (Of course you are.) Take a trip over to Coca-Cola's Happiness Islands, a friendly little "sitelets archipelago" in the vast Internet ocean. Each island leads to its own breezy diversion—like FallingDominoes.com, BlowingBubblesInTheSky.com and ABeachBonfire.com. The unassuming sitelets, created by Wieden + Kennedy in Amsterdam, add a little happiness to your day, in support of the marketer's broader brand promise. Amusingly, the site is set up like a real map. If you pull back to reveal the global view, it's clear that the Happiness Islands are located in the Web equivalent of where Hanks went down in Cast Away. Via Adverblog.
Twenty Considerations For Building Strong Brands
Brand marketers should keep the following in mind for building strong brands:
1. Do we really understand what motivates our brand’s target customers?
2. Does the brand have a point of view? Does it stand for something?
3. Does the brand transcend a product category?
4. Is the brand truly differentiated?
5. Does the brand possess admirable human qualities? Is it trustworthy and reliable?
6. Does the brand build an emotional connection?
7. Is the brand’s identity immediately recognizable and memorable?
8. Are we presenting the brand consistently over time and across media?
9. Does the brand promise come to life at every point of customer contact?
10. What are we doing to build brand awareness?
11. Are we creating brand myths and stories?
12. Are we aggressively pursuing publicity for the brand?
13. Is the brand vital and innovative and interesting?
14. Is our brand interacting with and engaging its customers in interesting ways?
15. Do people in our organization view the brand as an asset that should be grown and leveraged?
16. Are we measuring and actively managing the brand’s equity?
17. Are we managing the brand against a plan?
18. Is the entire organization united and committed to delivering on the brand promise?
19. Is the CEO the chief brand champion?
20. Are we investing in the brand’s future?
Sponsored By: The Brand Positioning Workshop
The Broken Brand Promise: Progressive
Dear Progressive:
Saul Bellow wrote a novel, Herzog, in which the hero occupied his time writing angry letters to public figures. I really don’t have time to do that, but the customer experience I just had has provoked my literary spirit. It’s restless, so here goes:
The Brand-Driven Enterprise Defined
What does it really mean to be a truly “brand-driven” enterprise in the new economy? Many persist in defining brand as the external image of a company, product or service. In reality, brand-driven companies know intuitively it is first an internal activity that comes from the heart of the enterprise straight to the heart of the customer. It is always an honest, open, two-way conversation that creates enormous value for both participants. As products and services become more and more functionally similar, and the noise of marketing and message clutter becomes increasingly hard to navigate through, customers will have more difficulty differentiating and perceiving innovation from common, good from great. Design is essential to brand-driven companies.
Brand design in the new economy is more about meaning than marketing. That being said, the whole notion of the science of branding as a means for determining quantitative metrics seems to be an over-sold idea. Metrics are important and useful, but how do you quantify a person’s feelings, aspirations, passions, beliefs and devotion? Yet the rewards for connecting these “soft” emotional attributes add billions of dollars of hard market value (think brand equity) to those who employ a greater conscious awareness of the power of break away brand design. Branding is no longer marketing shtick. And it should never be a process owned solely within the disciplines of product development and marketing. A brand belongs to every discipline within the enterprise. All coming together to craft unified and honest answers to a few tough introspective questions:
- why are we here?
- how are we unique?
- how do we make a difference to our customer?
- who cares and why?
Brand design defines your business enterprise based on what you really care about and never letting any outside circumstance (think competitor) define you. A brand promise is a dynamic, living, relevant, inspired, on-going saga called “the values we care most deeply about”. Brand leadership is living this truth by delivering a profound experience to an audience that cares with equal passion and devotion. Hence creating brand advocates, sneezers, viral marketers, a.k.a. happy customers who identify themselves and their aspirations through the shared values of a brand they love. Brand design is in harmonious vibration with the customer’s emotional desires and aspirations. There is nothing decorative or superficial about it.
In the new economy, brand development and design are valued for what they really are – namely, twin activities that harness and connect the passion and emotion within the heart of the enterprise to the heart of the customer. Essentially two sides of the same coin called a valuable relationship.
Sponsored by: The Brand Strategy Workshop For Startups
The Importance of Design for Great Branding
When it comes to branding your organization, design matters. I think many people grasp the idea that branding is about connecting with your client base via an emotional connection/dedication to the brand. However, it is the function of design to bring that connection of customer and brand together. Reading articles on the topic of branding and design, particularly the article from Fast Company by Mark McNeilly 9 Principles For Great Branding By Design and the NY Times The Importance of Branding Your New Business by AllBusiness.com, I pulled some quotes that I found striking in the clear and concise manner in which they explain the relationship between branding and design and the importance of branding for businesses:
“A brand is not your logo or ID system, It’s a gut feeling people have about you. When two or more people have the same feeling, you have a brand. You get that feeling via smart design, which creates the experiences people have with the brand. Everything you do creates the brand experience; ergo design IS your brand.” – Robert Brunner, founder of the design shop Ammunition
“A simple, well-thought-through, authentic design is often the best. Everything doesn’t need to be redesigned; sometimes what we have in hand is better than what we seek. It’s not all about being different; it’s about being better.” – David Hill, vice president of design at Lenovo
“For startups and small businesses, branding can often take a backseat to other considerations, such as funding and product development. This is a mistake, as a company’s brand can be key to its success. Dollar for dollar, it is as important and vital as any other early steps.” – NY Times
“Create a clear and compelling message, in words, pictures or both, so that everyone…can easily understand your brand promise and why they should care about it.” – Ken Carbone, in his article explaining the three steps to creating a successful brand; Unify. Simplify. Amplify.
Design and brand go hand-in-hand. Design has the ability to communicate a great message instantly via emotional responses/feeling/ideas brought forth from the design, and a brand is just that, a message communicating the importance and the essence of your organization. In a nutshell – DESIGN IS IMPORTANT! It is vital for your brand, especially at the beginning formation of a business.
To read and learn more on branding, brand design and brand content take a peek at these articles to get you inspired:
4 Ways To Create Brand Content People Actually Care About
9 Principles For Great Branding By Design
The Importance of Branding Your New Business
$100K of Free Branding Advice, in Just Three Words
I would love to hear your thoughts on the branding, how your company uses design to communicate importance messages and why, if you haven’t, invested in design for your organization.
You can continue the discussion below in the comments section or follow me on Twitter @jenniejacobs
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Video of the day: Sexy never takes a day off
This is not a running commercial. The Chase is actually the latest Agent Provocateur video, quite different from the usual sexy sophisticated style.
The insight and the approach, less blatantly sexy, less sexist, more realistic, remind me of the latest Axe Shower Gel campaign (see Axe new generation boyfriends). Sign of the times?
I do like the “think different” approach, but I also think this video kills Agent Provocateur’s brand coolness. It would have been perfect if this was a promo for a new performance underwear line… But since it’s not, I feel it fails to deliver on the luxury lingerie and aspirational brand promise.
What do you think?
How a Small VC’s Commitment to Content Made a BIG Difference
This is a guest post written by Brian Zimmerman. Brian is managing director of OpenView Venture Partners, an expansion-stage venture capital firm focused on providing technology companies with deep operational support. You can follow Brian on Twitter @BrianZimm1.
When Joe Pulizzi and Newt Barrett published their bestselling book, Get Content, Get Customers in 2008, the authors wrote that the marketing world — and the online universe at large — needed to prepare for a content revolution.