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Exploit
Your Brand To The Fullest
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A brand goes beyond a company name and
tagline. It is a complete personality or set of values, sometimes even a
story line, along with repeated visual, auditory and behavioral elements.
When you decide to invest in creating a brand, follow these guidelines to
ensure that you get your money's worth.
by Marcia Yudkin
Contributing Author
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A brand goes beyond a company name and tagline. It is a complete personality
or set of values, sometimes even a story line, along with repeated visual,
auditory and behavioral elements. When you decide to invest in creating a
brand, follow these guidelines to ensure that you get your money's worth:
(article continued below ...)
1. Be distinctive.
You'll land your company in expensive legal hot water if you attempt to
steal or encroach on another company's identity. Apart from legalities, you
tend to get the most bang for your branding buck when you generate a
powerful contrast with competitors' images. Do something different.
Smartfood popcorn's glossy black bags still stand out on store shelves as
few other food products do. And what macaroni-and-cheese maker besides
Annie's offers free "Be Green" bumper stickers and information about the
company mascot, a real rabbit named Bernie, on the packaging?
2. Repeat, repeat, repeat!
The more times your slogans, logo, stories, colors, themes, values and other
elements come before your intended public, the greater their effect.
Normally, if you have XXXXX dollars to spend this year spreading awareness
of your brand, you're better off creating thousands of small impressions
than spending it all on one blow-out event.
Think of the radio and TV ads that sing in your head while you're trying
to concentrate on something else. No matter how catchy those tunes, they
wouldn't do that if you heard them only once. The same goes for the world's
most creative bank logo. When prospective customers also see that image on
magnets at their friends' houses, on tote bags at the day care center, on
thermoses in taxicabs and on the uniforms of the local softball league -
then it's really starting to make an impact.
3. Be consistent.
Branding works best when you use the same colors, the same musical theme,
the same company name and the same symbols in all company materials and
environments. The store shouldn't be called "O'Reilley's" on T-shirts and "OReilleys"
in the newspaper ad.
Sounds obvious, but even powerhouses like IBM have neglected this rule.
In the early 1990's, IBM had several hundred different logos and slogans
circulating. In mid-1994, it laid down the law on which identity elements
were authorized and which prohibited. Partly as a result, in 1995 IBM rose
to the position of the world's third most valuable brand from position
number 282 the year before.
4. Be persistent.
Those within a company will be tempted to change the image of a brand way
before it's time to do so. Never modify or update a central element of a
brand just because you're tired of it. If it's working, it can continue
working for decades.
Since the 1880's, Ivory soap has successfully called itself "99 44/100%
pure." Marlboro has linked itself with cowboys since the 1950's - and the
brand has a current value of around $13 billion. Betty Crocker has changed
her hairstyle, but she's been wearing red and white since her first
appearance on food products in 1921.
5. Don't water it down.
A brand must stand for something and must be linked with something specific
in the minds of your public. When Packard, which had been America's top
luxury-brand car, suddenly announced in the 1940's, "Now everyone can afford
a Packard," the company slid into deep trouble. Cadillac picked up buyers
who'd previously wanted the cachet of a Packard.
6. Evolve as necessary.
Brands may need to mutate when they're perceived as misrepresenting a
company that has changed or as out of step with the times. A dramatic
example is the updating of Betty Crocker, who lost the original gray flecks
in her hair over time and changed from homey-looking to dressed for success
to more informally attired as society changed.
With bank mergers now epidemic, it's crucial to try to keep brand equity
going. When one bank does not simply swallow the other, designers have come
up with elegant new combinations of old identity elements -- one color from
company A and one from company B, one syllable from each, a new shape
incorporating symbols from both banks, etc.
7. Protect it.
Registering a trademark gives you a measure of legal exclusivity on your
brand identity, including sometimes even a color scheme, a product's look
and feel or an interior decorating scheme. Even so, you may need to police
unauthorized usage of your brand elements by searching out offenders and
sending cease-and-desist letters. Contact an intellectual property attorney
for details.
Don't let your brand name degenerate into a generic term. "Aspirin" used
to be a brand name, as did "Escalator." You may feel flattered that people
are using your product, service or company name to stand for its entire
category, but when that kind of usage becomes widespread it can open the
door to competitors having legal license to trade upon the investment you've
made in injecting that name into people's minds.
(article continued below ...)
About The Author:
Marcia Yudkin is the author of 6 Steps to Free Publicity and ten other
books hailed for outstanding creativity. Find out more about her new
discount naming company, Named At Last, which brainstorms new company names,
new product names, tag lines and more for cost-conscious organizations, at
http://www.NamedAtLast.com .
October 2005
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