You are here: Home / Blog

Are you Sanitizing your Brand?

October 2, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Seems like I’ve had a few conversations in the last week that are actually the same conversation. It revolves around small business owners and their brands. See, brand is a slippery thing… it strengthens or weakens, grows or shrinks, and evolves with every little thing your business does. For example, when Apple does something dumb (like calling their tablet “iPad”) everyone’s up in arms for a little while. Bloggers make fun of them, their stock drops a bit. They lose brand brownie points with their market. Apple happens to have enough brand brownie points in the bank that it doesn’t hurt them too badly. And then they tend to do something delightful again and all is forgiven. They’ve made the iPad so great that we’ve gotten over the dumb name and there you go.

That’s brand… just like your friend who you love. You love her tons, but then she pisses you off and is awesome and then you love her again. In a small business, you, the owner are the driver of the brand. Which is kinda scary… When I meet some one new I have a moment of “who should I be so this person likes me?” Hopefully, I remember to be nothing other than me and let the person decide based on authenticity rather than some false pretense that I don’t know will work any better. So in business we try even more to be who we think our customers want. We write text for our website that follow MLA’s rules of grammar, we create graphics that don’t offend. We try to be like our competitors and then ask ourselves how we can stand out. It’s all so silly.

Don’t sanitize your brand. Don’t go vanilla because you’re scared people won’t like mocha-fudge-cherry chip. You’re right, there are some people who won’t love mocha-fudge-cherry chip… but you don’t need, or want, everyone in the world to buy from you… unless you’re Wal-Mart. Your balls-out, full-force personality will be polarizing. You’ll have people who don’t like it and people who LOVE it.  You won’t have on-the-fencers. You won’t have price-shoppers. You won’t have clients who buy from the next guy they find who is cheaper. That’s the effect of polarizing. You’ll have people who don’t like you and people who love you no matter what you do.

You may be shocked, but I know people who don’t like Apple. And Steve Jobs didn’t care about them… He took care of the small percentage of the world who LOVE Apple. Because those people will buy again and again and again.

So, how are you sanitizing your brand? What would it take for you to fearlessly let your personality come through?

Filed Under: Branding Sparks

Your Brand Precedes You

July 30, 2010 By Leave a Comment

I hear terms like “marketing, ” “PR,” and “branding” in conversations so often, and so interchangeably, that I lose track of what we’re actually talking about. And then even I get confused about the difference among them… and I specialize in branding!

And so I was grateful for this comic from Chris at 9GAG.com for so simply illustrating the difference.

I think of branding as the message, while marketing/pr/advertising are the means of communicating it. Crafting that message using consistent language, graphics, photography, colors and experiences is what I do best.  Communicating that message via social media, editorial placement, ad placements, etc is what marketers do best. Without a consistent brand, what are you marketing?

What I like about this comic is the idea that your brand precedes you. It speaks for you. It warms up your audience. It draws out your customer from the rest of the crowd. It starts living in a customer’s mind before they’ve called you, before they’ve tried your product or service.

As long as you’ve built a brand that is authentic, you’ll have no problem meeting the expectations of those who are calling for more information, which in turn reinforces your brand.

In the context of this comic, if you’re branding yourself as a great lover, the only way to meet that expectation is to be one.

Filed Under: Branding Sparks Tagged With: , , ,

But it’s such a nice font…

June 25, 2010 By Leave a Comment

3203322291_ab33582325

3203322291_ab33582325
◄ Back
Picture 1 of 12

It’s such a nice font
How ’bout we use Papyrus?
Actually, it’s not.

From a typography standpoint, it’s gimmick-y, poorly kerned, and the letterforms are un-impressive.  From a branding standpoint, Papyrus is so overused that it appears in print and online in everything from restaurant menus and homemade tri-fold brochures to travel websites and yoga dvds.

I think that maybe when it first came out, it may have been intended to have a middle-eastern/Egyptian feel to it. But since it’s been a standard font on every Mac and Windows computer since the mid-1980′s, it’s become the go-to typeface for someone who is trying to be creative. And I don’t mean to be harsh – recently Papyrus was used in the movie title and subtitles in Avatar – so I’m poking at professional designers and bootstrapping entrepreneurs equally. If you’d like to see more, check out Papyrus Watch.

And while Papyrus is probably the most recognizably over-used, abused and misused typeface, it’s not alone. Another one to avoid like the plague is Comic Sans. Originally intended for things like cartoon speech bubbles, it’s also now used in everything from medical services to “wet paint” signs. My point with all this is to steer anyone who makes any type decisions ever, away from those default fonts on your computer to the vast array of type available on the internet… much of it for free. Dafont is an excellent source of free fonts. Also try Urban Fonts and Acid Fonts.  Always check the fine print if you’re using it commercially.

Images from www.papyruswatch.com and the Flickr Comic Sans Pool

Filed Under: Branding Sparks Tagged With: , , , , ,

Case Study: Wildly Successful

June 16, 2010 By

ws_logo_final6

ws_logo_final6
◄ Back
Picture 1 of 5

This is a story about re-branding. Re-branding is often more challenging than building a
new brand from scratch.

Dawn Todd, founder of Wildly Successful Women, had a new vision for her business.
After a few good years of watching it grow, this new vision had become bigger and
bolder than she could possibly have foreseen in the beginning.

Dawn’s company was Wildly Successful. Wildly Successful offers a wide variety of
resources for entrepreneurs, male and female, from business coaching to marketing to
venture capital and more.

When Dawn and I began working together on her new brand, we knew it had to scream “Success!” Dawn and I talked about the branding for Cadillac and how it exudes classiness without feeling old. There’s a reason we refer to things as “the Cadillacs” of their industry: “Dyson is the Cadillac of vacuums.”

After studying and discussing Cadillac, along with other brands like Tiffany’s and Chanel, we eventually decided on a crest, a script, and a red/gold palette, and voila! the new and wildly successful brand for Wildly Successful was born.

Filed Under: Case Studies Tagged With: , , , ,

Branding Haiku: What is it?

June 16, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Branding – I want it!
How do I make it happen?
What is it really?

 

Almost everyone understands the effects of branding done well. We’ve all bought something without really knowing why, or have become loyal to a company for some reason or another. A brand done well almost goes unnoticed, because it just plain works and makes sense. It quietly becomes a household name, a part of your life you might take for granted.

I grew up with brands like Kraft, K-Mart, Schwinn, Atari, and Buick. They were characters in my childhood, as much as my dog or my friend down the street. I interacted with them daily, I depended on them to meet my expectations.

Those have been replaced with Whole Foods, The Gap, Honda, Apple Computer… still, I interact with them daily and depend on them to meet my expectations. The hows and whys of these relationships is what this blog is designed to explore. While I create and build brands for small business, I constantly study how other brands are created and built; what works, what doesn’t, and what blows us away.

Filed Under: Branding Sparks Tagged With: ,