Tag: association

23 Elements of a Healthy Brand

A healthy strong brand has definitely has some other attributes than the best or the biggest. A healthy and a strong brand generates also more results than just bigger sales. A healthy strong brand sustain a product over time through consistency, excellent communication, providing value to its target customers. These and much more.

Here is a checklist of 23 brand health criterias as presented in Peter Cheverton’s excellent book Understanding Brands (Creating Success):

  1. is based on a proposition of genuine substance and value to the target customer
  2. communicates a clear and powerful brand definition
  3. communicates a clear ‘emotional charge’
  4. communicates an attractive and relevant personality
  5. wins, builds and retains customer loyalty
  6. is well known by the target customer
  7. is held in high esteem by the target customer
  8. communicates and evidences a unique match between the company’s capabilities and the customer’s needs
  9. is a source of competitive advantage
  10. is an investment of increasing value that others will want to own
  11. maintains its relevance over time by evolving in response to changing customer expectations and perceptions
  12. increases the profitability of the business is consistent with the business strategy
  13. makes sense within the business’s brand architecture
  14. provides a protective ‘halo’ for growth strategies
  15. provides a barrier to entry for new entrants or substitutes
  16. is uniquely positioned in the market and creates a relevant space in the customer’s mind
  17. communicates and demonstrates a clear sense of value
  18. interacts consistently with the customer on as many fronts and on as many occasions as possible
  19. cements the brand definition into the customer’s mind through interactions and positive associations
  20. is managed and supported consistently over time
  21. has values that can be applied consistently and successfully to all parts of the marketing
  22. mix and through all promotional media
  23. makes people want to get their hands on it
Posted on by Daniel 4

Evaluate Your Name

When re-branding a business or a product or when you set up a new one and have to come up with a brand new name you should find a way to evaluate among different options that might come up in order to choose the best one out of them. Here I just stumble upon and interesting tool to dissect potential names into the nine categories to make it easier to understand why name work or don’t work, and to more easily weigh the pros and cons of one name versus another:

Appearance – Simply how the name looks as a visual signifier, in a logo, an ad, on a billboard, etc.

Distinctive – How differentiated is a given name from its competition. Being distinctive is only one element that goes into making a name memorable, but it is a required element, since if a name is not distinct from a sea of similar names it will not be memorable.

Depth – Layer upon layer of meaning and association. Names with great depth never reveal all they have to offer all at once, but keep surprising you with new ideas.

Energy – How vital and full of life is the name? Does it have buzz? Can it carry an ad campaign on its shoulders?

Humanity – A measure of a name’s warmth, its “humanness,” as opposed to names that are cold, clinical, unemotional. Another – though not foolproof – way to think about this category is to imagine each of the names as a nickname for one of your children.

Positioning – How relevant the name is to the positioning of the product or company being named, the service offered, or to the industry served.

Sound – Again, while always existing in a context of some sort or another, the name will be heard, in radio or television commercials, being presented at a trade show, or simply being discussed in a cocktail party conversation.

“33” – The force of brand magic, and the word-of-mouth buzz that a name is likely to generate. Refers to the mysterious “33” printed on the back of Rolling Rock beer bottles for decades that everybody talks about because nobody is really sure what it means. “33” is that certain something that makes people lean forward and want to learn more about a brand, and to want to share the brand with others. The “33” angle is different for each name.

Trademark – As in the ugly, meat hook reality of trademark availability. All of the names on this list have been prescreened by a trademarked attorney and have been deemed “likely” for trademark registration.

Read more about it here

Posted on by Daniel

Trends in Future Marketing

Someday in the not-so-distant future, branding as we know it will be thought of as so 20th century. With societal, cultural and technological changes occurring at increasingly accelerated rates, keeping your eye on the horizon of future trends in branding gives your company the advantage.

1. Consumers Are the New Creative Directors
Born from consumers’ desire to differentiate themselves from the mass market, this trend toward customization will continue to grow with the flexibility and efficiencies offered by technology at home and in manufacturing.

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Posted on by Daniel