Greetings, Making the Branders; it’s been a while since I’ve been around ye olde MTB blog.

Apologies for my scarcity. I’ve been experiencing an unbloggable, long-term personal crisis which has pretty much resolved itself, so hopefully I’ll get into some regular brand blogging.

Before starting that, though, let me say that Beth is in recovery right now from a fairly serious illness, so if everyone reading this could send she and her familia some good vibes, they’d appreciate it.

So the big branding story I missed during my travails was probably the election (maybe you heard about it?).

All politics aside, I think that Obama’s victory was in many ways a triumph of good branding and brand management over awful brand management. The 8 years of the Bush presidency have been very hard on the Republican brand (small, pro-business government, run by socially conservative, competent managers), as the size of the government has ballooned, the economy has gutterred, and one Republican sex and corruption scandal after another have tarnished the GOP’s image.

So the party selected the one Republican who probably could have won in 2008, because McCain had a history of pushing back against the Republican brand. His own brand (the Maverick!, bi-partisanship, competence) was strong and well-known. And then he spent the next several months after his nomination systematically taking his own brand apart through a combination of what seemed like incompetence and a willingness to accept any and all aspects of the party line, even those aspects he had formerly dismissed. Every week seemed to bring a new message from the McCain campaign, often totally at odds with last week’s message (the fundamentals of the economy are strong! I’m suspending my campaign to deal with the economic crisis!).

The Obama campaign, on the other hand was a model of brand positioning and messaging consistency. He managed to position himself as the only true agent of change so effectively that both Clinton in the primaries, and McCain in the general election tried to piggyback on the message of hope and change he was promulgating. And there were very few messaging inconsistencies from the campaign, from the beautiful logo, to the nicely produced collateral, to the campaign’s response to possible controversies.

The operation was designed and executed to, with ruthless efficiency, put out a single overarching brand promise (change), and every interaction with the electorate had to reinforce that message. And it was remarkably successful. When the Reverend Wright situation almost blew up into a racially charged controversy, Obama crafted and delivered a speech that not only silenced his critics, but positioned him as a new, almost post-racial black candidate – a candidate of true change, totally divorced from the civil rights holdovers of the 60s who are largely discredited (rightly or wrongly) in the great American middle. A possible disaster was turned into an opportunity to reinforce Obama’s brand promise.

And that was largely the story of the election, I think. A flawlessly executed brand strategy has opened a new era in American electoral politics.

Next week: the auto bailout and the Branding of Detroit.

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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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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.

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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.

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As branding professionals, we tell ourselves (and you) that branding is a business tool of almost mystical power. And some of you are probably skeptical. But every so often a piece of evidence comes along that is hard even for us to believe.

This study, from the April Journal of Consumer Research, finds that seeing the Apple logo for even a fraction of a second – too quickly to consciously register it – made test subjects more creative, while seeing the IBM logo for the same amount of time had no similar effect. Seeing the Disney logo made test subjects act more honestly than did the E! logo.

How does your logo affect your customers?

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A Brand is Reborn:

The Presenters and Sponsors of Denver’s Making the Brand 2008 have announced a winner. Denver’s Making the Brand 2008 is an annual contest designed to re-brand one small, independent, metro Denver-based company, and to educate Denver’s small business community about the importance of branding to their continued success. Renaissance Adventure Guides (www.raguides.com), a Denver-based adventure travel firm, has been selected as recipient of the $20,000 brand and marketing package offered as the Grand Prize in the first annual contest.

“I was so excited when we made our decision,” says Beth Boen, owner of CreativeXchange Marketing (www.creativexchangemarketing.com), who is presenting the contest along with Phases Design Studio (www.designfiles.net), a local graphic design company, and The Write Stuff (www.travitthamilton.com), a copywriting company. “Renaissance Adventure Guides is exactly the kind of business we were hoping to award the Grand Prize to. They are a small, local company on the verge of great things, and they have a real commitment to making our community and the world a better place.”

The official announcement was made to the public Tuesday morning on 9News Mornings during an interview with Renaissance Adventure Guides’ owner, Max Young. According to Young, “We’re really fired up about this, because it’s something we’ve known we’ve needed to do for a while now, but weren’t sure how to really get the ball rolling. We’ve been doing our own marketing for a few years, and really didn’t have a firm grasp on our branding. It just seemed like the time had come to step up. And then we heard about the contest, so the timing and everything has been just perfect.”

Kandra Churchwell, Creative Director of Phases Design Studio says, “Max and Lyle (Phetteplace, co-owner of Renaissance Adventure Guides) are exactly the kind of business owners we want to work with in general, but especially for the contest. They’re excited about the process, open to trying of new ideas, and willing to go through the whole thing in front of the entire metro Denver small business community. We think this is going be powerful experience for Renaissance Adventure Guides and the small business community alike!”

The two runners up were also announced today:

Gift Basket Junction (www.giftbasketjunction.com), and M&D Kitting Solutions (www.mdkittingsolutions.com), a mail order fulfillment company. The runners up will receive a branding assessment (valued at $795) provided by the Contest Presenters.

The Grand Prize Package includes marketing research and a marketing plan, a full custom design package (website, collateral, stationery, business cards), as well as brand and marketing messaging (tagline or slogan, web copy and brochure copy). The package will also include printing, SEO services and, if determined necessary by the Presenters, web video, product photography, and billboard advertising.

“All three of the finalists are great companies with a lot of potential,” says Travitt Hamilton, owner of copywriting company The Write Stuff. “So it was really tough to pick just one. All of them met the requirements of the contest and they all stand for a lot of the same things that we believe the contest is all about. In the end, it was a choice between three really worthy companies, which made the process exciting, but really challenging!”

Renaissance Adventure Guides’ new brand will be presented in June.

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Last Friday Beth Boen (Creative Xchange Marketing) appeared on KUSA’s Mornings program with Gregg Moss to promote Making the Brand, and to talk about the importance of using branding to drive small companies’ success. As always, she was persuasive and informative, and surprisingly energetic and wide awake, considering it was 5 in the morning!

You can view Beth’s appearance at
http://www.9news.com/money/article.aspx?storyid=83879

KUSA – Anyone who has bought Coors Beer knows the company’s claim for Rocky Mountain Water. If you buy a hamburger from McDonalds, it’s understood you’re at the golden arches. That’s proof that you can’t underestimate the power of branding when it comes to business.

To help small businesses tap into some of the power branding provides, several marketing firms are once again supporting the annual Making the Brand contest. The contest is designed to educate small business owners about how a strong brand can contribute and, oftentimes, drive a company’s success. The prize is a brand and identity package worth up to $20,000.

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