Tag Archives: Branding
Your Brand In Today’s Age Of Digital Transformation: Let’s Take This Conversation Offline
The more online your brand, the more digital your product, the more offline you should think.
Let me explain.
There is an obvious backward trend happening: Kids love cheap plastic skateboards again. All the hard work of creating gears for bikes is thrown out for fixies, and the hottest Silicon Valley investment is…artisanal coffee shops. Small batch gin producers are next in line. Stihl chain saws only sell through their own little stores, 8,500 of them in the US. You won’t find their products online or at major home-improvement stores, and it’s working great.
Why? Because today offline is special, it is different. It is tangible and it is memorable. You don’t ‘like’, but you actually truly enjoy a brand. You don’t hit ‘share’ like you hit snooze on your alarm clock, instead, you have a real conversation with people who trust you about a brand. Now that we are all well versed with pay-per-click ads and (finally) Social Media, it is time to hit the Pause-button and think about what it is that makes your brand special and how to best engage with your audience in your outreach. How will you create memorable, perhaps even inventive, inspirational campaigns?
The best place to look for inspiration is in the most offline of places: Bars. Firestone Walker’s beer coasters (above via crappy iPhone photo by yours truly) are every bit on-brand, while starting a clever conversation about defending ones beer. Remember grabbing matches in restaurants on your way out, back when we were all smoking like chimneys? As we changed our habits, so have restauranteurs and those fun and useful souvenirs have all but disappeared, making them a novelty now. A local bar down the street from our office goes back to basics by offering matches (pictured above) with the most rudimentary and anti-brand (hence memorable) call to action.
Traditional marketing indeed can be seen as a novelty today, and if treated in a unique way, and matched with the core values and personality of your brand, you might agree that retro is the new now, and offline the new online; even for your digital-first brand. If you can pull of ‘the matchbox trick’, remaining on your customer’s mind daily for months, I let you crunch the big data numbers on that one, but I feel you’d see a new type of ROI. So when you gear up for your marketing outreach, perhaps go single-gear and stand out instead.
Kill Your Brand In Order To Create It
It’s not quite as harsh as it sounds, but yes, I would like for you to imagine your new venture’s death. Here is why.
Not a proprietary exercise to my consultancy, writing a memorial speech for your brand during the Brand Foundation stage is a cruel, yet crucial step in defining your brand’s lasting values, and has been a staple in early brand development for many brand strategists. Given that those speeches are short, to the point, and always focus on only the best one has to say about the deceased, it is a great opportunity to dig deeper (did not mean for this pun to happen) into the soul and its bigger, social purpose. A brand can only leave a lasting positive impact if it cared to make a difference in people’s lives.
This is why a memorial speech is an extremely fruitful, imaginative, and most of the times rather entertaining exercise to be doing at the very onset of your brand development; and you can rarely say that about a memorial speech.
Over time we uncovered a secondary, but equally important finding during the exercise: The realization that you need to ponder about how your venture will die. And that uncovers the real long term vision for your brand: Will it be bought by Costco, improved upon and distributed to the masses? Will it become part of Marissa Mayer’s tech portfolio, giving you a nice financial push (and we don’t quite know what Yahoo! might do with it)? What is your dream, way past your 5 or 10 year business plan? If it has to end, how would you want it to end? That insight will help shape the overall business and brand strategy.
And here you thought I wanted to harm your newborn venture, while I want to do the exact opposite – watch it grow through planned retirement towards a happy ending.
The True Tech Startup Trend: Cloned Apples From Cloned Trees
Many tech startup founders pitch their project by saying ‘It’s just like Instagram, but with [filling in their differentiator],’ or, ‘Imagine Pinterest, but only [filling in their differentiator]’. Quite peculiar, most of them are located in places like Silicon Alley, Silicon Hill or Silicon Forest.
With ‘startup’ being the thing to do for many (particularly right out of college) this hot minute, it is the idea of starting something (anything really) that is often greater than the business idea in itself. Innovations turned into variations of the same, leaving the invention behind, while startup meccas themselves turned to cloned names: Silicon Alley (New York), Silicon Beach (Los Angeles’ West Side – Note: we pushed for the name Tech Coast), Silicon Roundabout (London), Silicon Forest (Portland), Silicon Hill (Washington D.C.) not to be mistaken with Silicon Hills (Austin), Silicon Border (Mexicali), Silicon Sloboda (Moscow) and many more.
Silicon Valley was named after the prosperous semiconductor manufacturers that were inhabiting the surrounding San Francisco area in the 1970’s. Today, as too many Silicon Valley clones are churning out too many Snapchat clones, it is time to remind ourselves what Silicon Valley was named after: An element; and there are no two elements that are alike. Silicon as an element only exists once. The periodic table is yours to experiment with.
Time to get creative. I can’t wait to hear about, better yet, be part of that journey.
CATEGORIES: Startup Advice Your Brand Launch: Naming
Whatever You Do To Gain New Customers, Stop.
Want to get more customers? Are you purchasing pay-per-click ads? Planning to exhibit at a conference? Rolling out some print-ad campaigns? Cold-calling perhaps? Interns acting as 24/7 Social Media Experts?
Stop whatever you are doing and think inside the box. That is, the very screen in front of you.
New ventures spend a vast amount of time and money pushing people towards their landing pages in order to get them to opt in, download an app or make a purchase. Makes sense. This is what it’s all about: Gaining Customers, Leads and Followers, quickly. The best proof of concept you can possibly get.
Yet they do not even spend a fraction of that time or money analyzing – I am not talking about A/B testing here – if that entry point actually talks the talk and looks the look.
In order to attract, you have to be attractive and not just beg for clicks. I know many ad agency execs who hate seeing their clients waste tremendous amounts of money on online media buys (a dying breed in itself) that point to horribly off-brand (design and message) landing pages. They are called landing pages because that is exactly what people do: They land, and then they take off again, into any direction, just not down the purchasing funnel. Instead of being appealing entry points, those often are quite appalling afterthoughts. It’s like throwing a party and you spend all the time and money on inviting loads of very cool and attractive people, and as the day comes around you don’t even clean the house or have cold drinks ready.
If you want to get more customers, put yourself in their shoes first and work until you get yourself to click that buy, submit or follow button on your (let’s call them…) entry pages. Only then should you even consider looking for new customers ‘by entry of’ your web site, which, really, is the main entrance to your brand today.
Make that house look like it has never looked before. Polish that glossy red door and put your name on it. This is the time to shine and to let people in.
Happy spring-cleaning!
The Number One Reason Customers Will Be Attracted To Your Brand
To find out, ask yourself this simple question:
What Is Your Brand’s Scent?
I am not referring to the overwhelming perfume infused air you have to walk through when entering an Abercrombie & Fitch store (a scented brand environment). I am talking about the metaphoric scent your brand emits to attract, distract, or utterly confuse your audience.
During a delightful call with Stuart MacDonald (Freshbooks’ CMO) earlier this week, Stuart used the word ‘scent’ when we talked about branding. It really hit home. Like animals, we are attracted to scents, in the literal and metaphoric fashion. Nike emits the scent of inspiration and innovation for athletes, Oprah the scent of belonging and community.
When thinking about your brand, and why customers will be attracted to it, think about what scent your brand has. It will make you think beyond logo, beyond copy, beyond imagery and campaigns. You will have to take a step back and start to interact with your brand from afar, as if it was the very first time you ever ‘smelled it’. I hope it smells like roses, unless roses are not really your brand.
The closer you will get to your brand, the stronger and more intense (= focused) the scent will get, and once you are deeply immersed in it you will realize if you are in fact emitting the right scent altogether. It’s powerful. Try it today and let me know how it educated your actions.
Tackling Your New Brand’s About Page: 4 Tips On How To Say Less, Edit More, And Make It Resonate
I was born in Austria. English is my second language. Yes, I write a lot, but I do it because I want to share my expertise, not because I believe that I am a great writer. Yet today I set out to blur the lines of copy writing, branding, enthusiasm, content strategy, your target audience and content overload. Launching your brand puts an emphasis on the About section of your web site, no doubt about it. Even if you have a video and to-the-point messaging on the Landing Page(s), the About page will be sought-after. It needs to explain the following in a swift manner:
- What you do (Mission/Product Or Service Intro)
- Who you do it for (Target Audience)
- How you differ (Differentiators)
- Why I should care (Connect Emotionally/Value Proposition)
- What I should do next (Call To Action)
That’s a lot to convey on a single page and therein lies the problem for an enthusiastic entrepreneur who writes this important piece of content in a stream of consciousness (it is after all the subject you know best), then quickly proofs it, and by the push of a button publishes it. Rarely do they look back. Yet another item checked off the busy to-do list. Then the journey of marketing and metrics hits in and the About page, long forgotten, is like ‘a ghost employee’ in a well functioning company; it lives on yet it should have been let go and replaced a long time ago.
I know this feeling well. I see it on a nearly daily basis with our new clients, but I also fell victim to it myself. Here are my top 4 tips on how to go about deriving your About copy:
1. Find A Time And Place
It has to be right. You can’t just block off an hour on your busy calendar. It has to be more like that moment when you drive to the beach to just sit and breathe and think big thoughts. Make the time for that moment and don’t put a time limit on it. For myself that moment arrived during a 12 hour flight after I have answered ‘all’ E-Mails and there was no WI-FI for new ones to trickle in. I watched the Steve Jobs movie (Inspiration 1), had a glass of wine (Inspiration 2), the cabin lights went out so everyone could sleep (I was in Coach – Inspiration 3), and I knew if I started writing now that I had hours and hours to fine tune and contemplate. And so I did – the time and place were right. Best of all, even if I wanted to, I could not just push it live as I did not have WI-FI, so it forced me to sleep over it and make even more tiny edits when ‘back on the ground.’ It took me 3 hours to write.
Edit, edit, pause, then edit some more.
2. Think In Words, Not Sentences
Words should not come easy (Ask F.R. David, he knew). If they do, consider it a brainstorm exercise, then work on a synopsis of that copy. Don’t cut paragraphs, don’t review sentences, dive deeper and focus on it word-by-word. In the end your About copy should be thought of as a lineup of tag lines, because in a tag line every word counts, has meaning, adds to your brand story. Think of each word as a strategic component to the whole.
3. Read It Like They Would
Once you feel you phrased it in just the right way, make sure it will resonate with them. Sounds logical, hence easy, but it is one tough role play: Write in an emotional and enthusiastic manner that conveys your brand’s soul, but then read it from the perspective of your target audience. It helps when you created target personas, that way you can read pretending you are that specific person. If time allows, run it by your target audience and conduct a mini focus group, or even A/B testing of different About pages, to see what sticks.
4. Edit, Then Edit Again
Make it as simple as possible. Make it as short as possible. If you need to, add links to further content below your CTA (Call To Action). No one reads a long About section. No one. Rather go through steps 1-3 and then edit it down again and have something your audience will actually be compelled to read, because it is short and approachable. This is about getting them excited to keep going further, to click deeper, it is not the page that needs to convey everything, but ensure it has the 5 components listed above embodied.
In a study of user tests it was discovered that users with higher literacy levels also fared better on web sites written for a lower level literacy audience. So keep it brief and keep it simple. I guess I should go back and edit this post, but I don’t feel too bad keeping it this length as someone just released the book ‘Brief: Make a Bigger Impact by Saying Less;’ it spans 256 pages.
CATEGORIES: Startup Advice Your Brand Launch: Digital
How Oversharing Creative Options Will Hurt Your Brand (On Hand of The Worst Magazine Cover Design of 2014)
When I was 8 years old I started ‘a publishing house’. I named it Buttersemmelweich Verlag. A real memorable name, right? It translates to ButterBreadSoft Publishing Co. It only published a single magazine, but over the course of several years. It was called SNOOPY. Go here for a stunning visual I dug out from the family archives just for you. Please note the Nike logos on Snoopy’s shoes, a sign of innocence lost and a hint of my future in branding. Perhaps the Charles M. Schulz Museum (which I can highly recommend a visit to) will sue me for the 6 issues I sold – yes, the young entrepreneur that I was I actually asked my family members to pay for my work. Just like a retainer, each issue I drew and wrote was copied 6 times (by my mum) and always sold out (to my mum Etc). As I grew a year older the name of the magazine was changed to JoeCool, an obvious transition, and I brought on ‘a partner’ as one ought to do, especially since I could not use the typewriter yet. My fascination with magazines grew over the years. As a young communication designer I felt the need to be on the forefront of pop culture, to be informed about as many topics as I possibly could in a swift and constant manner, while being surrounded by the freshest fonts and layouts. Since the internet has not quite been as giving back then as it is today, buying as many magazine subscriptions as possible was my goal. I have since adjusted my subscriptions, but have not kicked the habit. Needless to say, I have seen (and over the years also professionally designed) plenty of magazines.
As I descended into the current issue of Bloomberg Businessweek a couple of evenings ago, I was shocked before I could even flip to Page 2. The cover was bad. It was so bad that it was actually appalling to me. Judge for yourself:
I was shocked, not a bit intrigued, only shocked, and a little sad as Bloomberg Businessweek has been pushing its design steadily after its acquisition in 2009. Conceptual, socially challenging and often shocking cover designs were part of their re-branding. But this cover is just shockingly bad.
How did it happen and why would you care?
Bloomberg Businessweek shares the story on how the covers were conceived in each issue, on Page 2, right next to the index, a prime location for any magazine. So here it goes:
Image Source: Bloomberg Businessweek
Yes, indeed they talk about ripping off MC Escher – and may I add that the original design (above) also has a touch of Spy vs Spy ‘borrowing.’ Alright, I registered that as a bizarre strategy statement, but going from a solid conceptual and surely intriguing (yet copied) design to a horrendous – ‘at least it’s got big colorful letters’ – solution makes it obvious that the chosen design option only made it to the cover in a rush to meet print-deadlines (imagine how long the Escher illustration must have taken to create?).
As the reader, a consumer, the target audience, do you see the problem? Sharing both designs and the decision criteria is a very bad brand decision. If the cover design is genius, Bloomberg Businessweek’s story on how it was made is only killing the magic. No room left for imagination. Even worse, we can see how bad the other cover design option was, making the amazing design option that much less great as we want to feel designs go from good to better to great. If the design is really bad (as it is in the current issue) and the option that did not make it would have been significantly better (as was the case in the current issue), the reader is upset and disappointed by Bloomberg Businessweek’s choice. This is obviously not good for a brand and I see this as an open letter to Bloomberg Businessweek to change its strategy and to use this Page 2 real estate for something that works for, instead of against, its brand.
As an entrepreneur, never share your design options with your audience at large. It’s tempting as they are the ones that will need to buy (into) it. If you really don’t trust your brand or design consultants, have a small and narrow focus group, if you must, but do not share design options with your entire audience. Not during, and definitely not once they have been made. Most everyone who did not go through design college tends to screw this up big time. Look at Marissa Mayer’s big fail when introducing the public to Yahoo!’s logo re-design last year. Everyone got excited, everyone had their favorites, and then…a universally disappointing final choice.
The habit of sharing creative options is one of over sharing, or TMI as one would text. Don’t fall into this invitingly open trap as your audience’s TMI feeling would very quickly morph into an OMG and a WTF (Excuse my language) expression on your end. Spare yourself, and your brand that pain.
The Leaf Blower Syndrome
I am not sure about you, but I can not stand leaf blowers. The concept does not work for me in any way.
Now if you live outside the US, or in a region that has sane laws restricting or prohibiting the use of such evil devices, you may not know what I am referring to. The concept is simple: Leaf blowers use high pressure air, like a fan or hairdryer on steroids, to move leaves from one area to another, most often this means your gardeners blow them to your neighbors, or onto the street. Problem solved? Not quite. Either your neighbor hates you now (even a bit more), or the wind blows them back to you, eventually. Solution? Have the leaf blowers come by more often.
Now that I filled you in, let’s do this again:
The Leaf Blower Syndrome: Brand Identity of Startups
Leaf blowers postpone an issue, while displeasing everyone who gets in touch with them. It stinks up the neighborhood, is annoyingly noisy and pushes a problem from one place to another. Bingo! Out of sight – out of mind. Now that was quick and cheap. Consider those massive amounts of leaves handled.
On my way to our office last week, my thoughts deeply entrenched in the world of branding (as you’d expect), leaf blowers pushed their leaves smack onto a busy street during rush hour traffic. As I passed them I saw those leaves go absolutely everywhere; mostly right back to where they came from. It made me think of all these startups saving money bootstrapping (Hint: ’99 Designs Dot Com’) – now read these two words carefully – their identity by crowd sourcing it to strangers to create cool designs. They will not arrive at a solution easily, so they get more leaf blowers to work faster and more often creating vast amounts of different logo designs, spending hours over hours discussing the designs they receive in their Inbox until they need to just pick the one they ‘like’ best.
A couple months later early brand adopters gather and success hits. The wind has changed, the leaves are coming back. This is the point in which they realize that the logo is not their real identity. It does not connect. It is missing meaning. It does not have nor create a story. They need to re-brand, even though they just spent all that time and energy, and by now even a sizable expense. And this time it is going to be much more costly then had they done it right from the get-go. They have to re-educate their customers, hire a specialist whom they pay professional fees like they do with their other consultants. They need to re-create all touch points from the web site via all the collateral to perhaps even the signage. It stinks.
If you ask successful startups what they would have done differently in retrospect, many say they wish they had not cut costs on their initial branding or web site efforts. The wind changes, the leaves come back, but at that point the neighbors already like you that much less and making up is hard to do, a much lengthier process that involves other ‘leaf-behinds’ (sorry, I just had to!).
I recall my parents picking up leaves in batches in our garden and carrying them to the compost to get rid of them. Now that makes a whole lot of sense. It definitely was a time investment, but only a one-time investment. It even had a romantic part to it. It showed they cared and that the seasons were changing.
Pick up the pieces, make sense of them, do it with love, and it will show. Just remember, it’s your startups identity.
CATEGORIES: Startup Advice Your Brand Launch: Identity
Why Our Brand Consultancy Doesn’t Have An In-Your-Face Splashy Logo
For a consultancy that has a clear focus on brand creation, you might have wondered at some point why we did not create a stunning icon or a splashy in-your-face logo for our own company. Are we not following our own rules, are we lazy, or is there a different strategy at play? Ask no more, the myths will be busted today.
I decided early on, even with my former company, Geyrhalter & Co, that designing a logo in its truest form for a business that is in the business of designing logos would not be the right path – it could only back fire. It might be too ornamental, too colorful, too round, too square, too bold, too…anything really that does not fit our prospects’ bill of decorative wishes and likes. We do not want to attract clients based on a graphic style, nor would we want to scare them away using a specific style. We are in the business of creating your brand, ours should remain in the background.
In other words, it’s a bit like the design of a logo for an exclusive car seller that focuses on the newest and most luxurious models. He decides to have a visual representation of a Tesla turn into the logo. It represents a true cutting edge car while surely representing luxury. To him. And only today. A dumbed down comparison, I know, but you get the point. A brand identity design (through its 3 components) should describe what you are in business for, it should show your brand’s personality, touch on differentiators and your brand’s core values, but it does not need to, and most of the time should not show the actual product.
Our brand design needed to lead, it had to be professional and sophisticated, but simple, clean, and most important non-invasive. Below screenshot of my former brand agency’s Facebook page header shows how our simple logotype was floating above the work we did for our clients, making a clear statement of who was responsible for the brand visuals, yet distancing ourselves from all the colors and graphic shapes of our work.
When working on our brand identity design we took many paths before arriving at our current logo, which portrays innovation and disruption through sheer use of a bright and unusual poppy color, while the simple custom typography signifies openness and professionalism. When we launched FINIEN, it looked like an established company from day one, yet a disruptor with an open mind. It had fulfilled its purpose, matching strategic goals with final design. It has treated us well, even if it does not have a cool icon or splashy design, actually, because it does not have it.
CATEGORIES: Your Brand Launch: Identity
How to Leverage the 3 Core Components of Your Brand Identity to Enhance Messaging
When we think of brand we first think of logo (even though we know a brand is much more than its logo). The logo is the key point of visual interaction with a brand, hence we are likely to recall it every time we think (or talk) of – or write about – a brand.
During the brand identity (‘logo‘) design process entrepreneurs often forget that there are 2 other elements that help tell the company or product’s story. They interact and bring value to the brand identity as a whole. Do not repeat the same message, but instead ensure to leverage these 3 core components to create a stronger, deeper brand message:
The 3 core brand identity components need to complement each other, each adding something unique to the whole story, and together forming a cohesive and strong initial brand message.
If your name describes your business, do not focus on showing the same message in your logo; instead use your logo to talk about other key elements that describe and differentiate your business. If you are in the cloud storage business and your name includes the two words cloud and storage (A bad company name, yet good example: Cloud Storage Ninjas), have your logo visualize security and stability, if those are key components of your brand’s message. Contrary, if your name is nondescript, either fabricated or an acronym, ensure that the associated brand identity design visualizes what you are in business for (EG: “Cloud Storage“).
Often forgotten during the brand identity design process (and beyond) is…the tagline. There are many factors to blame for the slowly occurring extinction of the tagline (mainly of digital nature, as tag lines are hard to squeeze into apps and templated web sites), but the power of a great tagline is still immense (Just do it, I say!). The tagline should be alive and kicking even though its placement has changed (from the traditional place below the brand identity design). It can now be used as the first header users see on a brand’s web site, the descriptor below the company name in an email signature, in place of yet another step-and-repeat icon pattern on a back of a business card, or in the often underestimated – yet early – brand touch point, the lobby of a business. The tag line is a powerful tool, that, together with the name and brand identity design, tells a stronger, deeper and more actionable initial brand story. It is a leading actor and you can write the script.
Keep the bigger picture in mind when embarking on your identity design project and use your Brand Platform to ensure these 3 core elements touch on more than just one or two of your core values and differentiators (while keeping it visually simple).
Next week I will talk about why our identity design looks the way it does. Are we not following our own rules, are we lazy, or is there a different strategy at play? Hint: It’s the latter.
The Post Host
Fabian Geyrhalter is the Principal of FINIEN, creating clarity for brand transformations.
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