Single Hardest Part of Branding: Part 2

posted by Brenton on June 21st, 2010

On Friday, I talked about brands that try to encompass the whole shabang and how that can be very ineffective and even water down the strength of your brand.

Over the weekend, I asked you to think about what could be chipped away from your brand right now to make it even more effective. Now that you’ve had the time to ponder the extra bits that are muddying your brand’s waters, you’re probably wondering how to decide what to chip off your brand? What if you remove an essential bit and you don’t even know it!

As you develop clarity around your brand think about the visual elements, such as an icon or image, that looks nice but doesn’t add to the story you are telling.

Is it your messaging that’s not specific enough? Does it capture the true reason why people buy your product or choose your organization?

I’d like to leave you with a statistic I saw in the book Radically Transparent by Andy Beal and Judy Strauss. It points to studies that show that 85% of a company’s brand image is driven by sales interactions, and not by marketing campaigns.

This makes good sense in a B2B environment because it reminds us that when auditing the strength of a current brand, we need to think more broadly than just marketing communications.

Brands need to include the messages that customer-facing employees are communicating through their words and actions. Does your brand do this?

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The Single Hardest Part of Branding

posted by Brenton on June 18th, 2010

When they asked Michelangelo how he made his statue of David he is reported to have said, “It is easy. You just chip away the stone that doesn’t look like David.” This quote gets to the heart of the most difficult part of defining a brand.

The hardest part is deciding what to leave in and what to leave out. There are many problems your brand can solve. There are many target market possibilities. There are many features and benefits you could communicate. The tendency is to want to tell people everything and hope something sticks. I don’t think I need to go into detail as to why this doesn’t work. I’ll let my post “Is Your Brand Overweight” do the talking.

Defining a winning brand starts with the mindset that less is more. Complexity is the enemy. Shoot for simple,  strikingly clear and distinct. Try viewing your brand like the statue of David, a block of marble you must chip away at until the only thing remaining is the purest essence of what the brand is and does.

What do you think should be chipped away from your brand right now to make it more effective?

What extra bits are adding confusion or muddying the waters?

I’ll leave you to ponder that over the weekend. Feel free to share you discoveries. And on Monday I’ll give you some suggestions of my own.

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Is Your Brand Overweight?

posted by Brenton on June 16th, 2010

Is this your brand?

Has it become so big that it feels like you’re offering everything to anyone? I’m seeing more and more of this “quantity” over “quality” branding every day, so I thought I’d provide a helpful list of questions to help you determine if your brand suffers from too much weight gain. The questions are:

Do you keep adding (new features, new products, new messages) and rarely cut things out?

Are you in a market space where you have no competitive advantage or ability to create value above and beyond the competition? Why are you in that space? What is being in that space doing to your core business?

If you had to reduce your product line, reduce your marketing copy, reduce your team, reduce your prospect list down to the 20% that generates 80% of your success, what would you cut today?

Don’t over think this. Write down whatever first comes to mind and share it with the rest of us so that we can all learn and improve our branding initiatives together. I look forward to your feedback.

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Techniques to Instantly Position your Brand

posted by Brenton on June 11th, 2010

In yesterday’s post, I introduced a powerful technique to help you get the attention of your audience and make your brand more desirable through positive comparison. The benefit of this technique is that it ensures the value of what you are offering is understood. The brain habitually seeks familiarity—and familiarity feels safe.

Today, I promised to share some easy fill-in-the-blank methods to help you compare yourself (your company, product, offering etc.) to something your audience can relate to.

Fill-in-the-blanks:

We are the ______ in our category.

The blank is another brand you compare yourself to that carries the associations you want your brand to be known for.

A classic example is ‘We are the Cadillac in our category’

People have a perception of what Cadillac means. The brand is associated with being premium and stylish. By connecting your brand to a known brand you instantly position yourself in a clear and compelling way.

This assumes of course that your audience thinks and feels the way you want them to about whatever you are comparing yourself to.

Another fill in the blank you can use is:

We are like _____ in these ways, but are different in these important ways _____.

This technique compares your brand with a competitive offering, which the audience likely understands, but then ensures you stand out from them. This technique reinforces how you are similar, which builds familiarity and eases the anxiety of the buyer, and then informs them how you are unique.

An example of this can be found on the website of a highly successful Credit Union based locally in Kitchener/Waterloo. They highlight how they are similar to other financial institutions and then they highlight their differences.

Anchoring your brand to a known entity is the fastest way into the brain. People will compare your brand to something. It’s your responsibility as a marketer to make the connections for prospects. If you do you, it will increase the interest level in your brand or offering as if the flood gates opened and a stampede of buyers came running to your door eager to learn more about your offer.

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How to Instantly Position your Brand

posted by Brenton on June 10th, 2010

Here is a powerful technique you can put to use immediately to get the attention of your audience and prospects while making your brand more desirable. This branding technique ensures the value of what you are offering is understood.

The way you do it is to compare yourself (your company, product, offering, etc.) to something the audience can relate to. This is especially important when introducing new technologies or offerings that are unlike anything that is currently in existence. The brain seeks familiarity because familiarity feels safe.

It important to realize that you are being compared to someone or something and are being positioned in the mind relative to that someone or something. It is your opportunity and responsibility, as someone who cares how you are perceived, to actively position yourself the way that you desire.

If what you offer is unfamiliar, it’s perceived to be risky, and it will be quickly rejected by the majority—if you have ever presented a new concept to a committee or management team you’ll know what I’m talking about. However if you anchor the brand or idea to something people already understand to be true, then you’ll see heads nodding rather than eyes rolling and blood pressure boiling.

In tomorrow’s post, I will introduce some helpful fill in the blank techniques to help solidify your brand position. In the meantime, think about some comparisons that you can make between your brand and one that your audience already understands (in a positive light) to anchor your brand in a safe identity. Oh, and also check out my past post on 3 Brand Messages in a League of Their Own for some creative inspiration.

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3 Brand Messages in a League of Their Own: Finale

posted by Brenton on June 3rd, 2010

Today marks the final post in my 3 favorite and most (personally) impactful brand messages series. Yesterday we looked at eHarmony, a brand that cleverly marries (pun intended :) a clear brand essence with credible and convincing brand proof that builds customer trust.

I’d like to end my series of favorite brand messages with Geico, you know, the company with the cute gecko ads. This strong gecko personality, backed by the strong Geico brand promise of “15 minutes could save you 15% or more on car insurance” increases the appeal of the insurance provider (it does for this guy at least).

I find that the key, and often under utilized principle demonstrated by Geico, is the use of numbers. If Geico’s promise merely stated “we save you money on your car insurance,” it would be a very generic idea that would likely generate ‘same old car insurance company’ response. But by adding hard numbers—“15 minutes can save you 15%”—Geico’s gecko boosts the strength of the company’s brand message and stands out from other insurance providers who stick to broad (and weaker) messages.

Now that I’ve done all the sharing, please give us your two-cents with some examples of your favorite strong brand messages.

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3 Brand Messages in a League of Their Own: Part 2

posted by Brenton on June 2nd, 2010

So yesterday I introduced my intention to feature my 3 favorite and most (personally)  impactful) brand messages and featured my first of 3 brand messages that I feel resonate most with me from Enterprise car rentals. Their tagline “We’ll pick you up” is a functional promise with a brilliant double meaning…but you’ll have to read my post yesterday (if you haven’t already) to get all the details.

Today, as promised, I’m featuring another of my favorite brand messages from eHarmony.

2. eHarmony – The one that gets you married (I’ve defined this key message from the eHarmony website)

While I’ve never used their services, the eHarmony brand marries (pun intended!) two key principles. The first reflects what I discussed in a former post on Brand Essence, which is another way of saying “What business are you REALLY in?”. And eHarmony is in the marriage business, which differentiates them from most other dating sites which don’t go as far as promising they will help you find true love.

The second principle is having credible, convincing brand proof. eHarmony backs up their promise to get you married with compelling testimonials and a one-of-a-kind ‘Compatibility Matching System’ that includes 29 keys areas of compatibility. Their tangible process/system builds solid trust in their brand.

What do you think of eHarmony’s brand message? Is it love at first sight for you?

Stay tuned tomorrow, I’ll share my third and last favorite brand message. But in the meantime, I’d love to hear about the branding that impacts you the most.

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3 Brand Messages In A League of Their Own: Part 1

posted by Brenton on June 1st, 2010

Everything communicates. Especially your core brand message, which is the differentiating and compelling benefit you are promising customers will receive if they choose you.

Some messages are weak and just add to the noise; while others truly impact their audience.

Over the next three days I plan to share three core brand messages that I love.

I love these core brand messages because of the way they make me feel and the intelligence of the clear brand positioning strategy that is informing the message. They are truly in a league of their own.

I encourage and welcome you to share the branding messages that most resonate with you.

1. Enterprise – We’ll pick you up

www.enterprise.com

In the sea of car rental options, Enterprise rises above the rest with a differentiating idea that they will come to your home, office, etc. and pick you up. The double meaning of this first core branding message is brilliant. There is a functional promise (we’ll come and get you) and an emotional promise (you’ll feel great). If you can combine them into one idea why not? It’s a rare thing, which is why I love this brand message so much.

Tomorrow I’ll share the second core branding message in the series. Again, please share your own favorites.

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Will you Quit Facebook Today?

posted by Anna Fleet on May 31st, 2010

Today has been dubbed “Quit Facebook Day” by a number of global users who plan to delete their profiles sometime today in protest over recent changes to Facebook privacy issues. According to the We’re Quitting Facebook Website, Facebook’s revised privacy policies “demonstrate a lack of respect in how the site treats user data.” As a result, users are up in arms because of overly complex privacy settings, and upset with how Facebook handles user privacy in general.

An article by Ian Paul from PC World says that even though Facebook announced changes to it’s privacy settings this past Wednesday in response to the negative feedback, their efforts were met with mixed reviews.

As of this morning, 27,000 people are still committed to deleting their Facebook accounts—which adds up to about 0.005 percent of the 500 million users on the world’s largest social network, and a lot of bad press.

So will you or won’t you quit Facebook today? Why? Why not?

…stay tuned for the aftermath…

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7 Personal Branding Laws For Marketers – Part 2

posted by Brenton on May 28th, 2010

In yesterday’s post I shared the first 3 of 7 Personal Branding Laws for Marketers. Just to recap, they were:

  1. The Law of Specialization
  2. The Law of Leadership
  3. The Law of Personality

Today, let’s talk about the remaining 4 Laws:

4. Law of Distinctiveness

Do what others don’t do. Often it’s the little things that make you stand out. The team at MFX Partners sent one of our clients cupcakes with their product crafted out of icing on the top, just for fun. Our client loved them! They felt great, we felt great.

Most people just do their jobs and deliver what ’s expected and think that’s good enough. It’s easy to forget that a little surprise and delight goes a long way. You will matter more and build a desirable personal brand if you do the little things that most don’t do.

Ask yourself: What isn’t anyone doing in your field or industry (or company)? It might be a little crazy, but it would ensure you stand out (while maintaining your integrity of course)?

5. Law of Visibility

You will matter more if you are highly visible and part of key conversations where you can share your point of view. If you hide out and hold back you will fade into the background. You can increase your visibility within an organization by taking on high profile projects or volunteering on teams or boards.

Ask yourself: What single thing could you do on a regular basis to become more visible?

6. Law of Congruency

People prefer those they know, like and trust. If you say one thing and do another you lose the trust of those around you. If you put on a false persona to impress people; they will question your integrity and consciously avoid you.

Ask yourself: Are you putting on a false mask or creating doubt about your integrity? What changes do you need to make to be more authentic?

7. Law of Persistence

Most people give up too soon and fail to make the impact they could have made if they had just stuck with it. Assuming that others have bought into the direction you are headed and your direction makes good sense, if you stick with the plan and build a reputation of being someone that gets things done you will build a solid personal brand.

Ask yourself: What project do you need to add extra energy to in order to push it forward and complete it?

Everyday you are building your personal brand. If you live by the 7 Laws you will be respected, well-regarded and truly unstoppable.

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