brand identity
Stick to the Brand Name Your Customers Recognize
Whether you are a small business or nonprofit professional, building and sustaining your organization’s brand reputation is essential to your success. Without the big bucks that corporations have to invest, your brand name is a big part of the brand recognition process, so using it consistently is important.
Your organization may offer many products, services, and/or programs, perhaps with a variety of names. How do you market them? Which brand name do you use when you answer the telephone, sign your emails, print your letterhead, post in your social media accounts…?
Here’s an example of what NOT to do. My retired father subscribes to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ). When it didn’t arrive yesterday, he asked me to follow up.
I logged into the account I set up for him and the system didn’t recognize the log-in information, so I started a live chat with a WSJ representative. Here’s how the beginning went:
Visitor: My father did not receive his paper this morning and I tried logging on for him but I wasn’t successful. His account number is #xxx.
Katie: Thank you for contacting Dow Jones.
Visitor: Dow Jones?
Katie: Yes Dow Jones, The Wall Street Journal is owned by Dow Jones.
At first, I thought I had clicked the wrong chat button on the WSJ Web site. The fact that the publication is owned by Dow Jones means nothing to me. As a customer, I was calling The Journal.
It made me wonder how many times the chat personnel had to explain the same thing to other subscribers - subscribers who are interested in the business world but may not be attuned to all of Wall Street’s mergers and acquisitions. What a waste of productivity time as well as creating confusion about the brand name.
It wasn’t until I researched this online did I discover an article on Reuters about Dow Jones, including quotes from its CEO, Lex Fenwick.
‘The WSJ.com is now mainly a consumer website that carries a selection of stories from Newswires but far from the entire feed. The goal of the project, dubbed “Grand Central,” is to crack open new markets using the brand cachet of the Journal,’ Fenwick said.”
What can your small business or organization learn from this experience with the WSJ?
If a huge corporation can confuse customers with its brand and sub-brand names, your small organization could create even more confusion without brand name consistency.
So, stick to one brand name, whenever you can, to build brand recognition on a tight budget.
Does your small business or nonprofit use a variety of brand names? If so, how? How do your target audiences know the difference?
Strategies and Best Practices for Building a Stronger Brand Identity
Guest post by Ray William Nelson
Building a stronger brand identity is an essential part of growing any business or nonprofit organization. Even the biggest brands in the world had to start somewhere. While there is no guaranteed formula for success, there are a number of strategies and best practices that virtually any organization can use to help improve the results of their efforts. These five tips offer simply yet powerful ways to boost your brand building efforts.
1. Create an Image for Your Brand
You have probably heard the saying “A picture is worth 1000 words.” This also applies to brand building and marketing. From your business cards and Web site, to your signage and promotional materials, creating a cohesive and consistent visual identity for your brand will help to build familiarity, trust and promote a professional appearance.
2. Define Your Brand
What makes your brand stand out from the competition? What can your brand offer that others do not? Why should a customer choose your brand? These are all part of what defines your brand.
Many small businesses start off great by finding demand for a product or service. They then neglect to define their brand and provide customers with a reason to choose their brand. Define your brand with concise message, quality promotional materials and a unique approach to your market. This helps to create brand recognition and boost branding efforts.
3. Refine and Hone Your Brand Constantly
Even billion dollar companies are constantly assessing their brand and how it adds value to their company. This is especially crucial for small businesses and non-profits where market trends can shift quickly. From sales and market analysis to website analytics and customer surveys, tracking your brand building efforts and business performance will help to make it obvious which efforts are paying off and what aspects might need additional tweaking.
4. Be Your Brand
With the Internet and social media, information is constantly traveling between businesses, customers, media outlets and other potential sources of exposure. This means that if you are not living your brand message, you are asking for trouble.
You have defined your brand and created an image, now give it a personality and a voice. From staff etiquette to newsletters, your core values and personality should be a part of every aspect of your brand. When done properly, this can also help to build rapport with your customer base.
5. Be Consistent
Results do not always happen overnight. One of the biggest mistakes that many businesses make in building a brand is failing to be consistent. Changing your logo, switching social media platforms or renovating your newsletter may provide a benefit in some cases. However, in most cases, you are only undermining your own efforts and potentially alienating your existing audience.
Make changes in small ways and analyze the results before attempting anything drastic. By being consistent, you help to reinforce your brand identity and build a relationship with industry peers and your customer base.
Brand building offers obvious benefits for businesses of all sizes. Whether you are an established small business or an Internet start-up, these tips and strategies offer valuable ways to improve your brand identity. With a little determination and proper practices, leveraging the power of your brand can help take your business to the next level.
Do you have any brand identity stories to share? What has worked and what hasn’t for your business or nonprofit?
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Ray Nelson is a writer specializing in branding and market research. He enjoys writing about best practices for small business owners and professionals.
Brand Mutiny at Smaller Organizations
So, you work at a smaller business or nonprofit organization, and you think brand management is only for large corporations? NOT! Brand management is as important in smaller orgs as it is for the “big guys.”
Let’s say your organization or company has taken the time to develop a sense of its brand. Now, it may not have gone through a branding process to develop a brand architecture, promise, etc., but perhaps it has developed a brand image. That’s a good start. Even better if the image and identity were developed with input from a variety of stakeholders.
So, let’s say your org has different departments, albeit, smaller ones. And, let’s say that a couple of these departments are considered sub-brands to the main brand. Examples: A swimming pool building business that has a separate department (sub-branded company) for on-site pool services; or a private school that has different programs with different names than the parent brand.
What happens when the sub-brands run amok and do their own thing? What if they develop their own Web sites that are not offshoots of the parent brand’s site? These sites can look and feel completely different - so much so, that you’d never know they came from the same organization. What if they developed their own marketing collateral and messaging, separate from the parent brand and not tied into it?
I call this brand mutiny!
Is it good for the parent brand and all the sub-brands? NO! It leads to customer and employee confusion, in-fighting, power struggles, and eventually, can lead to customer attrition.
Unless all the ducks are in a row, with sound strategies and tactics for each sub-brand that tie into the parent brand, your organization’s brand image and reputation cannot be easily identified and established.
That’s why we have brand managers. These people are not the “brand police” to punish and chastise; their job is to align the brand and gain brand traction.
Now, I ask… is there someone at your organization managing the brand? Why or why not?
THE Design Color of the Year for 2012
Every year, during Fashion Week in the fall, the Pantone Matching System (PMS) unveils its "Color of the Year" for the following calendar year. In 2012, that color is TANGERINE TANGO.
“Tangerine Tango is an orange with a lot of depth to it,” said Pantone Color Institute executive director Leatrice Eiseman. “Reminiscent of the radiant shadings of a sunset, Tangerine Tango marries the vivaciousness and adrenaline rush of red with the friendliness and warmth of yellow, to form a high-visibility, magnetic hue that emanates heat and energy. ”
Even though its color selection affects the fashion and home decor industries, Pantone is still considered the resource for all things color. In the marketing communications world, PMS colors are used to determine a brand's color palette. So, when Pantone comes out with 175 new colors, as it did this year, that's big news.
The challenge in using trendy colors for marketing communications purposes is longevity. What's hot this year may be stale in a year. If marketers choose Tangerine Tango as part of a new product, service, or business brand identity, it's important that the color matches the brand personality.
What do you think of these new colors? Do any of them resonate with you? What type of brands (products, services, or organizations) would be good choices for any of the colors?
