Greetings everyone!

I am very pleased and excited to announce the grand prize winner for this years Making the Brand Contest!

Table Mountain Vision, in Golden, Colorado!

Thank you again to our sponsors, and to everyone who entered this year. The judging was challenging with all of the wonderful business who entered!

As the branding process progresses, we will be posting updates to keep you informed, and to help educate the local business community on the benefits of branding.

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The contest presenters of Denver’s Making the Brand are pleased to announce the three finalists of the 2009 Denver’s Making the Brand contest!
String Beads of Highlands Ranch

Chatteau Shutter Company of Englewood

Table Mountain Vision Clinic of Golden

The judging process included initial reviews of each nomination form including reviews of each business model and current branding. The next step was to narrow our nominations down to 9 semi-finalists selected for a lengthy phone interview. Based on the phone interview and clarification questions asked of each semi-finalists the three finalists were selected. Each of the three finalists will attend a final in-person interviews with the contest judges on Tuesday, March 10th.
Congratulations to these three finalists and thank you to everyone who entered!

Check back on March 16, 2009 when the Grand Prize Winer will be announced!

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Thu, Jan 29, 2009, Denver, CO – The contest presenters of Denver’s Making the Brand (www.denversmakingthebrand.com), a contest to award a single Denver-based small business a $25,000 branding and marketing package, announced today that they have extended the nomination deadline to February 14, 2009. The decision was made in order to assist as many small businesses as possible in their struggle to return to economic health.

In addition, the contest presenters have decided to expand contest eligibility beyond the retail sector of the local economy, which had been their initial focus for 2009, and to reinstate the more inclusive policies of last year’s contest.

Last year’s winner, Renaissance Adventure Guides (www.raguides.com) – a Denver-based adventure travel company – received their Grand Prize package in mid summer, just as economic warning signs were starting to appear. “Even with the economy beginning to slow down,” says Max Young, owner of Renaissance Adventure Guides, “our sales increased by about 50% after we began to implement the new brand. And, we’re shooting to close the year at a 200% increase.  All the collateral looked great, but more importantly we saw a significant increase in sales as a result of the new brand rollout.”

Kandra Churchwell, founder and Creative Director of Phases Design Studio (www.designfiles.net), says she and the other presenters and sponsors felt that a deadline extension to February 14 and an expansion of business category eligibility “would give even more local, independent companies the opportunity to break out of the economic doldrums with a professional identity and marketing package.”

Run by a consortium of independent branding and marketing firms, Denver’s Making the Brand was founded to allow small businesses to get in the ring and compete with larger companies through professional quality services that are often perceived to be out of the reach of small businesses.

Travitt Hamilton, owner of The Write Stuff (www.travitthamilton.com), says, “It’s easy to sit back and complain about how bad things are. What we want to do is take action. Small companies are the core of the economic engine that’s going to pull us out of this slump, so we figured the more we can do for these folks, the better.”
This year’s contest will award a Grand Prize Package including, if necessary, a new logo, a new name and tag line, a marketing plan, layout, design services and copy for a website – including Search Engine Optimization – print collateral, product photography, a 30 second commercial or web video, outdoor advertising, screen printed garments and more. Everything a small business might need to implement a successful new branding and marketing strategy.

Small businesses in the Denver Metro area, which have been in business for at least a year are eligible for the contest. Nominations are open through midnight February 14, 2009. Anyone, including the owner, can nominate a business by visiting the contest Web site, www.denversmakingthebrand.com, clicking on the “Nominate” button and filling out the entry form.

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W00t!

Kandra will be on 9News Friday morning discussing Making the Brands’ deadline extension and category expansion with Jack Maher.

OK, here’s the bad news… She’s scheduled to go on at 5:10 in the AM. Yikes! But Kandra is an old pro at this now and always rocks the house, even in the middle of the night.

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Sponsors Galore!

I know Denver is one of the best places to live and do business, but I am so proud of our local business community right now!

The 2009 contest has obtained a total of 8 sponsors!! This means that the lucky grand prize winner will receive a very exciting package including:

• marketing plan
• graphic design for every component of the prize offerings
• messaging and content development
  and thanks to our sponsors….
• offset printing services
• search engine optimization for the new web site
• custom photography
• billboards
• public relations support
• custom video
• custom screen printed apparel

In addition to providing support to the contest winner, the following sponsors are also supporting the contest in various aspects:

• Print Colorado - offset printing for contest marketing materials
• Mindfull Business Solutions - official contest judging tally
• The Solution - PR consultation, pre and post contest

Give our sponsors a round of applause for being dedicated to the local community.

I cannot wait to unveil the 2009 brand!!!

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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