7 Steps to Design Your Brand

Every company has a brand whether they created it through design or accident. By creating your brand through design, you shape the way you wish your company to be viewed by customers and potential customers. This will remove some of the uncertainty concerning what others will expect from you and say about you. The power of a brand can?t be over-estimated.

Do you know what makes your company or its products unique? If you don?t you can?t begin to establish a brand identity by design. Here are seven elements to consider when designing your brand.

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Brand Limitations

Ideally, a good brand serves to enhance a sound infrastructure with a solid reputation. Branding is not a magic wand; it cannot provide a quick fix to a company’s problems or compensate for any shortcomings. Branding will help very little if your internal operations and cultural personality are opposite what you are trying to convey to the outside audience. Your internal brand personality is just as important as the external message. The average customer is not going to purchase a product or service without feeling comfortable with the company offering it.

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Q2 Nation Brands Index

The second Anholt-GMI Nation Brands Index (NBI) report ranks the brand power and appeal of 25 developed and developing nations and is based on the opinion of 10, 000 consumers from 10 countries.This is the first analytical ranking of nation brands based on worldwide public perceptions of a country’s cultural, political, commercial and human assets, investment potential and tourist appeal

NBI report analyzes the brand values of more countries (25 compared to 11) than the first report published in May 2005. Australia, a new entry in the NBI, has replaced Sweden as the world’s strongest nation brand. Canada is ranked number two, Switzerland three and the UK is fourth, with Sweden fifth. Overall, the U.S. is now eleventh, rather than fourth.

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The Internal Impact of External Branding

Conventional wisdom says branding is for external communication; it aims to influence current and prospective customers. But this view of branding is too narrow, especially when a company is trying to fundamentally redefine its business strategy.

Nowadays, companies in the throes of change need brand communication to affect their employees’ actions as much as it does their customers.

Indeed, for the many companies attempting to make the shift from selling lower-margin goods and services to offering higher-margin customized solutions, branding can serve a powerful internal purpose. When we are faced with this very challenge, the branding strategy is critical in uniting formerly divided business-unit and product-oriented management factions behind new shared goals and strategies to deliver solutions.

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Make Brand Advertising Work Online, the Yahoo! Way

Considering the latest Forrester Research study about online advertising the future is bright for the 21st century’s media giants, like Yahoo! or Google, and here are some excerpts from this study:

  • 2005 growth in online advertising spending, represents a 23 percent increase from 2004, up to $14.7 billion and it’s estimated to $26 billion by 2010
  • This is not the return of “The Bubble”. The growth is coming from marketers having to make tough decisions about allocating scarce advertising dollars – in many cases, funding online channels from traditional channels. Back in 1999/2000, spending often came from exuberant spending, fueled by venture money.
  • It’s more than just about search. Search is great, it’s growing, but it’s not the whole story. In fact, I anticipate that search will become much more integrated into traditional brand advertising
  • Marketers will shift channels away from traditional channels to fund online marketing

With all these in mind, Fortune Magazine, published and interesting article on Yahoo’s Brilliant Solution, an in-depth analysis on Yahoo’s approach towards winning more and more of the online branding advertising dollars.

And in the scrum for online brand advertising—almost as large a market—Yahoo is poised to grab the biggest share. Its 181 million active registered users are probably the largest online clientele, which means Yahoo can tell advertisers it knows the habits of more users than any other portal—or any traditional media company.

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Brand Extension – 10 principles

Mentioned here before, [tag]brand extension[/tag], is the application of a brand beyond its initial range of products, or outside of its category.

Many brand extensions are simply bad business ideas. Just because consumers would accept chocolate pudding from Nestl� doesn�t mean this is a good business idea. The category may be dominated by another company. Nestl� may not be able to efficiently manufacture the product. The margins in the new category may be too small to justify the investment, etc. Launching a brand extension that is an orphan in the category can be a prescription for failure because the item cannot generate sufficient sales to be adequately supported and defended.

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10 Steps To An Irresistible Brand

The methodology of crafting brand strategies, defines ten steps on the “yellow brick road” to an irresistible brand, each complete with its own tools, and all composing a comprehensive and well structured work process. Using the ten not so easy, but sure-fire steps, you can create truly amazing brands.

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Best Global Brands by Value for 2005

In the new special report, BusinessWeek and Interbrand rank the companies that best built their images — and made them stick in 2005. The names that gained the most in value focus ruthlessly on every detail of their brands, honing simple, cohesive identities that are consistent in every product, in every market around the world, and in every contact with consumers. (In the ranking, which is compiled in partnership with brand consultancy Interbrand Corp., a dollar value is calculated for each brand using publicly available data, projected profits, and variables such as market leadership).

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