Beth, Travitt and I are all very excited to be speaking at the next Design to Print / Denver Media Group next week!

The group invited us to lead a discussion on branding, and creating a branding team. We are pleased to share our knowledge of the field, branding, and of course working within the local community.

Feel free to stop by the event, network, and get a chance to meet the MTB crew in person!

Full event details are on the Design to Print / Denver Media Group Web site.

Share This

The work is completed - and Renaissance Adventure Guides is now enjoying their new brand!

The final package included a basic marketing plan, tag line, logo, stationery, company brochure, billboards, and Web site.

We will be checking with Max and Lyle over at Renaissance over the next year to bring you updates on how the brand is working for them.

We thank our sponsors, Print Colorado, Outdoor Promotions, and seOverflow, for their dedicated contributions to the contest and look forward to the 2009 Making the Brand contest.

Share This

As Beth is working out the marketing plan, Kandra and I also get to work – Kandra on the logo and imagery, me on the messaging.

The logo is probably what most people think about when they think of branding. When you say McDonalds, what pops into your mind? The golden arches and the scary clown. With Nike, the swoosh.

The other element that people key on, and my area of expertise (such as it is) is the slogan or tag line. Are these the same thing? The words are often used interchangeably, but I think they’re different and have different uses. I think even wikipedia doesn’t really get at the differences, but here’s what I think: A slogan incorporates a call to action of some sort. “Just do it.” “Reach Out and Touch Someone.” “Don’t Leave Home Without It.”

A tag line is similar, but doesn’t incorporate a call to action. It doesn’t mean they’re less effective necessarily, but it does mean they have a different purpose. They are more descriptive than a slogan, but don’t ask the target audience to actually do anything. “Little, yellow, different, better.” Movies have tag lines rather than slogans, because they’re not really selling you anything – they just want you to remember the film: “In Space, No One Can Hear You Scream” (from my favorite movie evah, by the way).

To my mind, the slogan empowers the prospect by putting the the need for action on their shoulders. The tag line empowers the company or product by focusing strictly on describing it or its benefits. Tag lines change more often than do slogans. How long has it been since Coke was “the real thing?” A long time, but Nike has been telling us to “Just do it,” for more than 20 years.

I think, actually that “Just do it,” is the best slogan in branding history. I’m not necessarily a huge fan of Nike the company, but Nike the brand is almost pure genius. The slogan itself incorporates a call to action, but it also communicates a sense of urgency bordering on impatience. And it puts the impetus for action and focus purely on the customer.

I think that if the slogan was tweaked just a little, it would be a disaster. One of the more common and least effective constructions in sloganeering today is “giving you the strength, power, or control…” or “putting you in charge…” – We, the company will give you control or the tools to do something. The focus is on the company, not the customer, and the customer is disempowered. Its as if Nike’s slogan was “Letting you do it.” Nike’s core brand message is empowering the individual athlete, so their slogan subtly reinforces the idea of empowerment by calling on them to do the work and reap the rewards (using Nike shoes as a tool, of course).

All small companies could learn something from Nike’s branding. After all, they started out as 2 guys selling shoes out of the trunk of Phil Knight’s car. One of the ways they have thrived is by making sure that they reinforce their message of empowering the athlete at every turn. Their slogan is the most obvious and successful example of this.

Share This

After the intensive marketing and business brainstorming session with Max and Lyle from RAG, Beth got to work on the marketing plan, researching and planning strategies for reaching Renaissance Adventure Guide’s (RAG) target markets. The marketing plan for RAG was a little different and more complex than your typical small biz marketing plan, because Lyle and Max are intent on growing fairly aggressively, and they have 3 distinct markets they’re trying to reach. So that means their marketing plan will have 3 channels, each of which has a unique set of goals, tactics and collateral, all of which have to establish their own identity without contradicting or undermining RAG’s corporate brand.

For example, if RAG wants to establish a family friendly identity to attract tourists to their rafting trips, but also wants to capture, young, male locals who snowboard to the kayaking trips, they’ll need 2 distinct sets of materials. These 2 sets of materials will be targeted to 2 totally different audiences, so they’ll have different content and imagery, will aim for a different call to action, and will be distributed differently. And at the same time, both of these campaigns must reinforce the company identity.

A similar example: several years ago Disney had an opportunity to establish a cable channel in Europe, but their partners in the venture wanted to also show, on the same channel but during different dayparts, films with some adult content. This would have been a completely different audience (obviously), but the ads for the adult content would have appeared with the Disney logo, and other branding. This is a case where the new product brand contradicted and may even have damaged the company brand – in this case, so seriously that it’s hard to imagine what it would have looked like or how it would have succeeded. And the Disney folks must have felt the same way, because they ultimately decided not to take the plunge.

In the case of RAG, the stakes are not quite the same. We need to establish an image that is attractive and empowering to families, while emphasizing that some of the products on offer are tailor made for rough and tumble thrill seekers. Reaching such different audiences effectively has made this a more complicated than usual marketing plan, and I’m glad it’s Beth’s job to sort it all out rather than mine.

Share This

With so many brands existing, how hard is it to create a truly unique brand icon?

greeNYC apparently found it quite difficult and Apple Computers is filing a claim against the trademark request for their “Apple like” icon.

I posted the gist of the claim and counter claim over on design review, along with images of the two logo’s.

Share This

As you might know if you’ve been following along, we’ve begun work on Making the Brand’s winning company, Renaissance Adventure Guides‘ new brand. In addition to the Grand Prize, we awarded 2 runners up (Gift Basket Junction, and M&D Kitting Solutions) Brand Navigation Systems (BNS).

The BNS is a good alternative for a company that isn’t sure they’re ready to go whole hog with a branding or rebranding project, but still wants their current brand and marketing collateral evaluated, would like some suggestions on what to do next, and would like to keep their options open when it comes to working with other marketers, designers and writers.

A BNS starts out somewhat similarly to the heavy duty business and marketing brainstorming session that any branding process should begin with. Beth and her giant sticky notes lead us through the process of establishing a profile of the client which you can read about in a bit more detail at the first link above. Then, rather than Beth getting to work on the marketing plan, Kandra hitting the drafting table and Travitt chaining himself to the typewriting machine, the 3 of us sit down and draft a Brand Navigation System for the client that summarizes the meeting and our thoughts on their brand.

Besides a summary of the meeting, based on Beth’s, and Kandra’s notes and Travitt’s doodlings, the BNS includes an overall assessment of the client’s current brand (based on our examination of any current collateral), Kandra’s thoughts regarding the logo, typography, color choices and layout options if appropriate, Travitt’s on the current messaging, and Beth’s on the marketing. The BNS may include logo, color and typeface suggestions, core message, slogan, and name suggestions if requested by the client, possible budget and timelines – in short the BNS is a creative brief that we can use to craft a great brand for that client, or that they can take to another team to slap together a slightly less great brand.

Whether or not a client continues with us, goes to another branding team, or decides to abandon the project altogether, it’s a valuable exercise. Closely examining your brand (or correctly branding a start up), is a process that provides a type of business focus that you don’t get in any other way. It ties together all the thinking that might have gone into your business and marketing plans, guides your hiring practices and helps you qualify clients, and forces you to make vitally important choices regarding how you want your business to be perceived in the marketplace.

Share This

The New York Governor’s recent troubles got me to thinking about a certain aspect of branding that we haven’t really touched on in the brief life of this blog – the brand promise. Also, I figured putting Client 9’s name in the headline might get us a little extra traffic.

A brand promise is “what audiences are assured of receiving as a result of their relationship with the brand.” It’s the one major core benefit your customers or clients should expect from your company. Apple’s brand promise is ease of use and great industrial design. Microsoft’s brand promise is universal compatibility. That’s why when you switch to a Mac after years of using Windows, it’s frustrating that you have to unlearn your old habits. The brand promise implies that there won’t be a learning curve. When your printer doesn’t work with Vista, the real reason it’s aggravating (beyond the lost productivity) is that the brand promise implies that because Windows is so pervasive, everything will work with it.

Spitzer’s downfall was so sensational and such big news all over the world not just because he was the governor of the 16th largest economy in the world, but because he had come to prominence based on his very effective anti-corruption branding (scroll about 1/2 way down the first page to the paragraph about “the Spitzer brand”). If he had been caught simply cheating on his wife, he would have been embarrassed, and his popularity and ability to govern might have taken a hit, but he probably wouldn’t have had to resign. Because his brand promise implied that he would be a crusader for clean government, however, his behavior was seen as a betrayal of the relationship he had built with his constituents.

The lesson for business and branding professionals is this: make sure your company’s behavior is in line with its brand promise, or get ready for a spectacular meltdown.

Share This

About 2 weeks ago, Lyle and Max of winning company Renaissance Adventure Guides (RAG) sat down with us for the first step of their rebranding: an intensive brainstorming session where we grilled them for 4 hours about their business’ past, plans, and hopes for the future. The branding purpose of this session was to establish the identities and habits of RAG’s target market(s), its competition, its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and internal and external threats to its success, and where and what the company will be in 1, 3 and 5 years.

Under Beth’s direction, and using no enhanced interrogation techniques, we were able to glean valuable information that’ll help Beth create an effective brand strategy, Kandra to design a logo that embodies the sense of professionalism, safety and trust necessary for RAG’s target market to feel comfortable hiring them, and Travitt to craft a persuasive slogan that will lodge itself in the brains of everyone who sees or hears it.

Really, what it all comes down to is this: to effectively brand a client, we need to figure out what the business and marketing needs of that client are. The brainstorming session allows us to figure that out, while also giving us a sense of that client’s business culture, how the people who own and work for the company think about and speak to each other about it, and more generally, what their aspirations for the brand are.

Share This

What is a brand? Why should you care? How will branding benefit your company? These are great questions, the very basic questions in fact that you’ll need to answer in order to effectively market your company. These are the questions that Making the Brand was founded to help answer.

Branding is one of the most fundamentally misunderstood concepts in all of business, even by some of its practitioners. At the same time, a strong brand is one of the most powerful tools your company can possess, so understanding what it is and how to use it could determine whether your company succeeds, fails or flounders.

So, what is a brand? You have a logo. You have a tag line. Isn’t that what we’re talking about here? Not exactly. These are components – important components, absolutely, and probably the components most of your customers will see and hear more than any other component of your brand.

But a brand is more than the sum of its parts. A brand is the impression your customers and employees have of your company in their hearts and minds. If you have a business, if you’ve interacted with customers you have a brand. If you’ve hired and trained an employee, you have a brand. The question is, are you in control of it?

Share This

Building a strong brand will benefit your company in ways that are easy to foresee and ways that are impossible to foresee. Think about the great companies of the 20th and 21st centuries: Coca-Cola, IBM, Apple, Nike. What do these companies have in common? All of them have weathered storms, hard times, and periods of struggle. Remember New Coke? The Nike sweatshop scandals? The Apple Newton? What allowed these companies to persevere and ultimately thrive?

Strong, flexible brands. They made it through the choppy waters because their brands helped them establish long-lasting, trusting relationships with their customers and their employees.

Strong branding can establish your company’s identity in the public’s mind, but it should be the basis for communicating with your employees as well, because they may be the main point of contact between your company and its customers or clients.

By forging a strong brand, using it as the basis for building long-lasting relationships with your customers and employees, deploying it as a tool to maintain your company’s focus, your brand will help your company weather downturns in the economy, marketing mistakes, poorly conceived advertising and a host of other impossible-to-predict challenges. In periods of strength, a strong brand will ensure that your company’s growth is targeted and intentional, that your customers always know what your company stands for and that its core values are communicated effectively.

Share This