Companies spend billions searching for memorable slogans, but the payoff is elusive and other key aspects of business may be neglected. Today, however, memorable slogans are the exception, not the rule. Slogans aren’t magic, and in most cases consumers don’t pay that much attention to them anyway. Companies that focus too much on slogans end up neglecting the truly important aspects of their businesses.
Customers are color blind
In today’s e-commerce age, where everyone is forced to type and to remember names with absolutely correct spellings, companies with big branding campaigns only hurt themselves with their old-fashioned, painted, colorful advice.
The use of color as a name or to identify a corporation is far too stretched. The customer, at large, is somewhat color blind to these branding tactics. Customers are already recovering from the awkward, dumb and, at times, obscene names from the wild branding era of the last dot.com bubble: PurpleFrog, PurpleCow, PurpleDog, PurpleRhino, all the way to BlueFrog, BlueCow, BlueDog, BlueRhino, etc. These poor animals were subjected to much verbal abuse and named in just about every color of the rainbow, almost creating possible strikes at the local zoo.
Branding insights and opportunities
Brands are not a passing phenomenon, nor are they something to be left to amateurs, or those who have newly jumped on the ‘brandwagon’. These 10 Insights and Opportunities are what are occupying the minds of captains of industry, branders and marketers around the world
1: Clarity
In an over-communicated world, lack of clarity will substantially reduce effectiveness and efficiency; and complex brand and sub-brand structures without a real audience rationale will reduce this still further.
Opportunity
Torture test your brand positioning
Branding: Five new lessons
Starting from P&G and Gilette merger, and their wide experience in branding, Business Magazine presents five lessons from classic companies and upstarts alike. All are thriving by managing brands differently than companies did in the heyday of the mass market.
Innovate. Innovate. Innovate.
Innovation isn’t always built from scratch. It can be done by transferring technologies from one brand to another.
Branding: smell it
Branding is an area so often totally misunderstood as having something to do with a [tag]logo[/tag]. But, in reality it is one that has a major impact on the long-term success of all companies, a fact that is now being recognised to the extent of seeing it increasingly creeping into company profit and loss statements.
One new book, Brand Sense : Build Powerful Brands through Touch, Taste, Smell, Sight, and Sound, takes a unique approach to one of most important business issues today: branding.
Based on more than 18 months of research covering a dozen countries, the book explains how the most effective companies build their brands around the five senses — touch, taste, smell, sight and sound — with startling and measurable results.
Drawing on examples of both product creation and retail experience, he details how to establish a marketing approach that appeals to all the senses, not just the usual sight and sound.
This book is a must-read for anyone needing to get to grips with a major business issue, offering great practical advice in a very accessible style.
Branding is more than a logo
How clear is your image in the minds of your potential customers? How can you bring that image into focus? Defining, developing and maintaining a brand identity is the key.
A brand image is the picture that appears in a member of your target market’s mind when they see, hear or think about you, your company and your service. So how can a business with limited resources, develop an effective brand image? Here is a step by step guide to steer you through the process.
- Define your desired brand image
- Develop your logo
- Begin communicating your brand identity to your target market
- Maintain your brand identity
Full article: Branding: It’s more than a logo
Small-biz and branding
When we speak of branding most of the time people try to relate it to big business house, however, the fact is that every business needs to establish their brand in order to survive the competition.
Most of us, including you, would prefer to consider the stability of a company before making a purchase decision. Once you have established your brand with a professionally designed logo, business card and other marketing efforts it becomes much easier for you to build your credibility among the customers.
So, if you think you are tired of being a “small business” and its time to grow up, take the first step; establish your brand!
Develop an effective branding strategy
Branding used to be the preserve of the consumer goods manufacturers, but today even the smallest business organisation, or not-for-profit organisations, must be aware of their brand image. This is how your customers see you, and sets the operating style for the organisation. A badly handled enquiry, or a hard to use website, may kill a sale long before you get an opportunity to bid for the business.
Re-branding?, with a new name or logo, does not come cheap and may prove to be a waste of money. It is not a quick fix for deeper problems. The value of a strong brand lies in the impression left with anyone who comes into contact with the organisation.
The issue is that people often only see the brand as the image that is used by the marketing communication department. This is a big mistake ? particularly if there is a mismatch with the culture. It can be a reason why staff from other departments feel that the marketing department is in a world of its own.
How people remember your brand/logo?
A very interesting experiment attempts to evaluate the actual power of brands by making Austrian people draw a total of twelve logos (nine international, three typically European) from memory, 25 people per brand. Salut, share of mind!
Branding & Packaging – a little history
Continuing somehow the previous post, I found yet another valuable resources, with loads of pictures and stuff, of us brands and packages. The American Package Museum site claims that:
it’s primary objective is to preserve and display specimens of American Package design and branding from the early decades of the 20th century. The secondary objective is to establish a community for those interested in such endeavor.