September 30th, 2009
You’re a competent entrepreneur and the model employee but when it comes to your company identity you need some help. That’s where brand aid comes in.
“Brand aid is not avaibable over the counter and its not sold in stores. Brand aid is recommended for entepreneurs of all ages who have experienced salespeople who are beginning to show signs of slowdown. Such symptoms may include a decrease in monetary intake, low b-to-b and customer communication, or signs of a general slowdown. If these symptoms increase call a brand doctor. Try Brand aid today!”
Or that’s what it would sound like if it was a pill. Identifying symptoms that your brand may need professional help aren’t always easy. There aren’t commercials to prompt you or ads to remind you. You have to be like a mother and always be aware of your child’s overall disposition.
A brand may need a little or a lot of help depending on how much expert knowledge has already been injected in equity. I don’t just mean professionals qualified in their fields either. Each and every one of us is an expert in many areas. Our preferences and interests have been molded from external sources to make us experts due to the sheer amount of information absorbed in the course of a lifetime.
But don’t mistake familiarity with in-depth knowledge. Whereas you may bring a fresh outside perspective, the professional brings a wealth of knowledge culled from years of relevant information being added to personal experience.
You may know your brand best but they know branding best. Listen to each other. You’re both experts in your own right.
Tags: advice, benefit, brand, brand aid, branding, company identity, consumer, consumers, conversation, customer communication, expert knowledge, external sources, goals, interactions, knowledge, model employee, productivity, Value, wealth of knowledge
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September 28th, 2009
I started this 30 Days To A Better Brand series with the intent to write an article everyday for 30 days. Sometimes intentions can not be synced up with actualities. My business started getting much busier so I had to decide what was more important- sticking to the plan or going with the flow. This is also the decision your brand must face in business.
I personally decided that doing what I had to do for Esultancy (my new social strategy firm with Oz Sultan and Khayyam Wakil) was of more pressing importance than sticking to a regimented posting schedule. This is a valuable lesson for all brands. When an opportunity presents itself that is more pressing you should shift to accommodate it.
The main criteria I gauge how I deal with situations are based on how pressing it is, how opportune it is, if it’s “on brand” and if it will net more money in the short run than the other project being displaced. While blogging can be lucrative and elevates your profile thus leading to money, unfortunately I don’t blog for money.
So I decided to focus on getting my business off the ground. We’re so enamored with the content creation and sharing products that we tend to forget that we’re here to make money. Regardless of using social media for fun, everyone has a personal brand and social media usage can affect you.
Everyone has social equity. What we do in the public eye shapes people’s perception of us and ultimately affects how much money we make. Referrals, appraisals, partnerships and promotions are formed over time. Do what’s right for you and your brand and in the end you’ll do what’s right for your pocket.
Tags: actualities, advice, appraisals, benefit, brand, branding, business, consumers, content creation, core values, gauge, goals, going with the flow, hierarchy, interaction, interactions, life, marketing, network, networking, partnerships, perception, personal brand, productivity, promotions, referrals, social, social equity, social media, social strategy, strategy firm, Value
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September 20th, 2009
While it may be your brand you do not actually own it. Your public owns it. Your customers decide what your brand means to them. Once you put your company out there it is now in the hands of the public.
The fact that your audience has final say in whether your product thrives or dies doesn’t change the fact that you still have the last say in the decisions implemented. If a majority of people purchasing your product decide decide they don’t like something either you must change it, change their opinion or become a victim of change.
Changing your brand based on feedback alone is shortsighted. Although there is wisdom in the crowd you ultimately are the professional. Your years of experience coupled with thorough knowledge of the category definitely weights your opinion. Just remember, you don’t pay your bills; they do.
So what do you do?
• Survey your customers with key questions
• List all potential pros and cons at hand
• Compare with competitors and other businesses who may have had the same issue
• Create a mindmap of your business / product / situation landscape
• Map out the best possibility to completion
• Implement your plan in timely phases
• Gauge for feedback
• Adjust accordingly
Not all situations are created equal and neither are your customers. By being aware of your capabilities, your customer’s savviness and the clarity of mind to know the difference between the two, you should be positioned to dominate in any situation you encounter.
Tags: advice, attributes, audience, benefit, brand, branding, business, business product, capabilities, clarity of mind, communicating, communication, communications, consumer, consumers, conversation, core values, corporate message, cradle to grave, cross country race, crowd, customer relationships, decisions, endurance, feelings, foster innovation, gauge, goals, interaction, interactions, landscape, life, lifeblood, lists, long term relationship, map, marketing, mindmap, network, networking, passion, person smile, productivity, pros and cons, purchase decisions, retention rate, savviness, selling, social, sprint, term rewards, Value, wisdom
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September 19th, 2009
Social media isn’t just one thing to everyone- it’s everything to everyone. Social media is marketing, PR, advertising, customer relations, branding, influence building and most of all, social. To focus only one area for your brand is extremely short-sighted yet ultimately it may be your best move.
Admittedly as a brand you should be proficient and well represented in all of these aspects of social media. That IS what should be happening but let’s face it- most brands are really great at one thing & need help at all the rest. So what does one do?
You could do a couple of things:
• Be a Jack of all trades, master of none by continuing to spread your valuable resources and energy over many areas.
• Hire a competent professional (employee or agency) to head up the areas that your brand isn’t so savvy in.
• Focus on the area your brand is amazing in and just kill it. Be the number one at what you and over time your other areas will pick up because of how great you are in that niche.
The first solution is never the answer because all of the areas suffer when you just half-ass it. The area that your brand naturally shines in is losing out because you have to take away from it to give to the others. You can only split up 100% so many ways.
Tags: advice, attributes, benefit, brand, branding, business, communicating, communication, communications, consumer, consumers, conversation, core values, corporate message, cradle to grave, cross country race, customer relations, customer relationships, endurance, feelings, first solution, foster innovation, goals, interaction, interactions, jack of all trades, jack of all trades master of none, life, lifeblood, lists, long term relationship, marketing, network, networking, niche, passion, person smile, productivity, professional employee, purchase decisions, retention rate, selling, social, sprint, term rewards, valuable resources, Value, wisdom
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September 18th, 2009
I know we’d all like to think our brands are original, given to us by divine inspiration – but they’re not. Regardless if youre just starting out or have been in business for many years, we all are influenced on a day to day basis.
All of your past experiences, biases, likes, dislikes and predispositions all affect your decision making process. You also must account for anyone else who influences the brand. This includes key internal players in messaging, imaging and managing among others as well as external influencers of customers, competitors and partners. Add all of this to the influence of pop culture and media consumed and you have a tremendous amount of influence.
With all the forces vying for dominancy what can you do?
• HUMANIZE: Start thinking about your brand as a human. Each and every human has a personality with likes and dislikes.
• PERSONIFY: Create categories where you can list your brand’s preferences in music, art, literature, movies etc. The sky’s the limit here.
• SPECIFY: Give your brand specific attributes. If it were a human what would it’s demographics be? Gender, age, race, income etc
• ANALYZE: Analyze all of these attributes and figure out what feeling your brand conveys. Is your brand a posh upper east sider that comes from money and summers in the Hamptons?
• ATTRIBUTE: Based on your brand personality analysis what clothes should your brand wear aka what are it’s coloring, styling & imaging attributes.
• SYNC: How do others regard your brand? How do you want your brand to be received? Now that you know how your brand looks & who your brand is you need to make sure that the words coming out of your brand’s mouth syncs up with your image.
We as humans are always changing. New influences come into out lives daily and must be acted upon. Your brand functions in the same way. It’ll always be the same “person” at the core but it must be flexible adaptable and aware of decisions to change on a concious level. Remember, you are what you “eat”.
Tags: advice, attributes, benefit, biases, brand, brand personality, branding, business, communicating, communication, communications, consumer, consumers, conversation, core values, corporate message, cradle to grave, cross country race, customer relationships, decision making process, decisions, demographics, divine inspiration, endurance, experiences, feelings, foster innovation, gender age, goals, influencers, interaction, interactions, life, lifeblood, lists, long term relationship, marketing, network, networking, passion, person smile, personality analysis, pop culture, productivity, purchase decisions, retention rate, selling, social, sprint, sync, term rewards, Value, wisdom
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September 17th, 2009
Go look at something. What’s your first impression? That’s what counts. When people say first impressions are the most important this needs to be paid attention to, especially for your brand.
Your potential customer takes in everything about your brand at the point of contact. Your colors, fonts, wording and text shapes, and graphics all affect their purchase decision. What message is your brand conciously and subconsciously conveying?
Is your target market accurately receiving your message visually? What is the feeling your are looking to convey? Designing a brand that communicates your message effectively is so much more than colors text and image.
The most powerful brands know how to strike a balance between all of these elements. Any designer worth their salt knows that there’s a limit to the amount of colors, fonts, graphics and the scale and placement of all of these elements. The Golden Ratio is a good guideline to test this crucial balance.
People are generally intuitive. If you want to know how it feels to your custom er put yourself in their shoes. Envision yourself AS them, down to the precise specifics of their demographics. Are you a stay at home mom with 3 young kids concerned with family values and on a budget? Well now you are.
Separate your head from your heart then bring them back together. How does your brand feel to you? Now how does it seem to you logically? This is exactly what your potential customer is going through.
Take the time to account for your brand’s intangible qualities and you’ll see tangible reults in your bottom line.
Tags: advice, attributes, benefit, bottom line, brand, brand messages, branding, business, communicating, communication, communications, conciously, consumer, consumers, conversation, core values, corporate message, cradle to grave, cross country race, customer relationships, demographics, endurance, family values, feelings, first impression, first impressions, foster innovation, goals, golden ratio, intangible qualities, interaction, interactions, life, lifeblood, lists, long term relationship, marketing, network, networking, passion, person smile, point of contact, productivity, purchase decision, purchase decisions, retention rate, selling, social, specifics, sprint, target market, term rewards, Value, wisdom
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September 16th, 2009
While most of you were obsessing over the Kanye West meme taking the internet by storm, Twitter quietly rolled out an update to their brand image. They killed off the Spam Owl and replaced him with their happy-go-lucky mascot Twitter bird. This comes right on the heels of an update to their TOS many of you have already received by now.
This most recent change is just an extension of their homepage image revamp that focuses more on search and trending topics now.
Of course this update comes amidst other high profile updates from major players such as Facebook (Facebook Lite, @ mentions, Application Prototypes), Google (Fast Flip, Public Sector, mysterious UFO logo saga) and Bing (image search). With the new TOS including references to advertising and Twitter.com traffic plateauing, could this new brand image update be Twitter solidifying it’s image to monetize soon?
One thing we know for sure with Twitter is that most of what they implement is done without fanfare in stages. Just as the TOS has been implemented over the course of the last week, the default avatar isn’t changing all at once. In fact, it’s changing over time into many different flavors: purple, dark blue, baby blue, lime green, dark green, orange, dark red so far.
Even with the staggered rollout, established users with their own custom avatars are already having issues:
We’ve already seen the Fail Whale go the way of the dodo in place of a generic 503-error page. Only time will tell what images will replace the other now iconic characters of Technically Wrong Robot, and Maintenance Caterpillar & Chill Ice Cream Cone. What other image changes and default avatar colors have you spotted?
Tags: 503 error, Bing, bing image search, brand, brand image, branding, business, caterpillar, core values, custom avatars, dark blue, default avatar, design, designers, dodo, Facebook, facebook application prototypes, facebook lite, fail whale, fanfare, flavors, functionality, goals, Google, google fast flip, google public sector, google ufo logo, image changes, image search, interaction, interactions, kanye west, mascot, media, monetize, mysterious ufo, network, profile updates, prototypes, social, social media, spam owl, technology, TOS, twitter, Twitter TOS, ufo logo
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September 15th, 2009
Passion and romance do NOT make a relationship. They’re not sustainable in the long run. Ask anyone who’s been in a long-term relationship. They are key attributes but not essential. This goes for brand-customer relationships especially.
What’s mutually sustainable over time is love, respect, common interests and the ability to make the other person smile. Passion and romance are a sprint. Love and the above mentioned attributes are a cross country race. A burst of passion is needed every now and then to invigorate the relationship but what is truly needed in the long run is endurance.
A brand’s ultimate goal is to have a customer from cradle to grave. This also plays true for the customer. A customer doesn’t want to have to change brands often. The less thinking a customer has to do about their purchase decisions the better.
People are bombarded with tons of decisions they have to make every day. Make their lives simpler and they’ll thank you for it by purchasing often. Some things you can do to make their decision easier:
- Keep a consistent brand imaging and messaging on all fronts
- Give a personality and life to your brand. Make them smile in your own way
- Be honest and open with all communications
- Encourage discussion especially feedback. Your customers are your lifeblood. You should know if they’re unhappy even before they’re dissatisfied. Got that?
- Make interacting fun and interesting. There’s nothing worse than having the same corporate message drilled into your head over & over again.
- Foster innovation internally and externally. Some of the best ideas come from customers and workers from different departments. Remember the wisdom of the crowd.
- Reward for short and long term. By giving people short term rewards you satisfy their need for the now. Giving them long term rewards allows them to strive for something greater thus having a better retention rate all around.
Remember, you’re in this relationship for the long haul. Your customer is that hot blonde at the bar that everyone is eyeing and making moves on. Why should she stay with you? Give your customer enough of an incentive not to go anywhere and you’ll be the one reaping the rewards.
Tags: advice, attributes, benefit, brand, branding, burst, business, common interests, communicating, communication, communications, consumer, consumers, conversation, core values, corporate message, cradle to grave, cross country race, customer relationships, endurance, feelings, foster innovation, goals, interaction, interactions, life, lifeblood, lists, long term relationship, marketing, network, networking, passion, person smile, productivity, purchase decisions, retention rate, selling, social, sprint, term rewards, Value, wisdom
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September 13th, 2009
A great successful brand has a plan for various uses of their identity. No possibility is too small or too out there to be considered. Implementation of branding at every level is key to closing the sale when you can’t be there for the hard sale. The sale is in the details and if you’re not there too then you’re losing out.
In today’s increasingly cluttered landscape consumers are vigilantly filtering out their attention. In order to grab a hold of their subconscious and conciousness minds your brand needs to be subtly placed. All the better if you do it a self-referential ironic or unforeseen way. Bonus points for collaboration.
I’m on the train. I’m listening to music. I’m reading a book. I’m playing with my multimedia phone. I’m writing something. I’m doing ALL of this at once. I’m doing all this to block out outside influences on my way to wherever I’m going in my one last area of zen in the outside world. Your advertising and constant bombardment has forced me to put up my defenses. So how do you as a successful brand break through that barrier?
Any type of countermeasure must be done with the most delicate of hands. I’m already guarding against the big in-your-face branded gestures. By the time a sneak attack is realized it’s already too late. My defenses are down and I’m thinking about your brand in a different light.
By taking the time to invest in the details I realize that you’ve taken the time and money to invest in me. As a savvy consumer I know that every little bit of branding costs money. I appreciate it especially when you do so with a fine brush rather than a spraygun.
Even when I’m not conscious of these small details, on some level I’m registering it. That’s the most important part of this whole journey- the soft sell, the long tail, buying a customer’s mindshare. If your brand is interesting enough in a way that I can’t get you out of my head long after your ingenious piece of branding is gone then ultimately you’ve won.
It could be something as simple as having your brand colors be represented on something as trivial as a straw. Regardless of what it is for you just realize that there IS something there for you. If you don’t do it be sure that someone will do it and is probably already doing it.
Tags: advertisers, advice, benefit, bombardment, bonus points, collaboration, communicating, communication, communications, consumers, core values, costs money, different light, feelings, gestures, goals, ingenious piece, interaction, interactions, journey, knowledge, landscape, life, little bit, mindshare, network, networked, networking, personalities, personality, productivity, savvy consumer, sneak attack, social, taking the time, time and money, Value, zen
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September 12th, 2009
You are not Chris Brogan, Brian Solis or Gary Vaynerchuk. You’re not Seth Godin, Guy Kawasaki or even Robert Kiosaki. And neither am I. You’re you and I’m me. You’re not a rockstar. The moment you come to terms with that then you can truly live and love your life.
All of these men mentioned above aren’t overnight successes and don’t just glide along in life. They have been plugging away day in and day out at their claim to fame for years. Practice does indeed make perfect.
These are ordinary men who have achieved success by having passion about something they believe in on a consistent basis. Keywords – passion, believe, consistent. There’s a lesson here in which they are to be admired but by no means deified. Take a page from their books, literally – all of these men are published authors as well.
To paraphrase Gary Vaynerchuck, if everyone would stop consuming so much media and produce more content then we’d all be that much richer. Stop being so concerned with what certain rockstars are doing and be more concerned with what you’re doing.
Find out what you do well and do it, a lot. This may sound simple enough but in today’s media saturated society we increasingly have fragmented attention spans. Cut everything else except one or two things that you love and excel at. Now become legendary in your niche.
As Einstein once said ‘Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration‘. If you’re any sort of inspired genius you’ll learn to perspire and love it, then your fans will love you for the rockstar that you truly are.
Tags: advice, benefit, brian solis, chris brogan, claim to fame, communicating, communication, communications, consistent basis, core values, einstein, feelings, gary vaynerchuck, genius is 1 inspiration and 99 perspiration, goals, guy kawasaki, inspiration, interaction, interactions, knowledge, life, network, networked, networking, niche, ordinary men, overnight successes, paraphrase, passion, personalities, personality, productivity, robert kiosaki, rockstar, rockstars, s media, Seth Godin, social, Value
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