Stretch Brand

From Microsoft to Apple, and many non-technology companies in between, I’ve spent my career creating or re-shaping brands and developing positioning strategies. Much has been written about business brand development, but less about building sustainable personal brands and defining how you are positioned. Why? Because effective personal brand development is a highly nuanced activity, and hard to adhere to without strong internal resources, clear and balanced ambition, and sustained personal commitment.

It’s one thing to say, here’s a hot company or…

I don’t expect that this list will make it to the David Letterman show, but maybe it should.

Part 1 of this article addressed a lot of content and technical aspects like fonts, spacing and legibility concerns. I never got around to the obvious “Don’t make your business card oversized so it doesn’t fit in a man’s wallet”, or “Don’t use metal business cards unless you really want a body cavity search the next time you try to board an airplane”.

Those are all easy…

Raise your hand if you’ve ever “fixed” something important with duct tape. Come on, you know who you are.

I’ll admit it?I know I’m guilty. In college, during a particularly low-income quarter, I fixed my broken backpack with duct tape because I couldn’t afford to buy a new one right away. More recently, I fixed a tent with duct tape while I was camping, because there was simply nothing else around to repair it with. In both cases, these repairs were…

 

Effective marketing starts with a powerful brand.

 

If there’s one thing that’s going to get your business through this recession, it’s your business brand. Sweeping statement? Perhaps! Let me qualify that a little more.

Planning, managing and communicating your business brand effectively will attract more of the right sort of clients. You’ll build loyalty, gain more repeat business and you’ll make your marketing much, much more effective.

Imagine being in a position where you didn’t have to go out and permanently tout for…

Lately, I have been persevering to unravel and record more and more of branding and the prominence of Logo as the first step towards effective brand building. At this juncture of time, I am pretty sure of certain ideas about brand and brand building.

1.       The foundation of a brand is the logo.

2.       Website, packaging and promotional materials–all of which should integrate your logo–communicate your brand.

3.       Brand strategy is how, what, where, when and to whom you plan to communicate and…

Question: are you promoting a company – a product/service?  Are your marketing efforts pointing to Brand X?  Or, Brand U? Does it matter?

Common examples are easy.  Nike, Kleenex, Coke.  Do you shop for soft, absorbable tissue or Kleenex?  Do you shop for ice cold soft drinks or Coke?  Wearing the latest style of tennis shoes or Nike’s?

Other familiar examples include Donald Trump.  The epitome of personal branding and yet — what does Trump market?  It doesn’t seem to matter as…

A good logo design is highly instrumental in establishing a
business brand and creating a long lasting impression among its
customers. It should be able to create a powerful impact on the
viewers and successfully exude the nature and attitude of a
business. Ideally, a company logo design should be able to
communicate your company ethos, principles, mission and the
nature of product/service offered, to the viewers.

A professional logo design would establish a professional image
of your company and strengthen your brand. Actually, in most
cases the consumer…

Create and manage your business brand by focusing on performance, reliability and consistency. You have to meet the needs of your customers first and foremost.

What is the most important aspect of branding for any business? Certainly it is essential for all, whether high street retail or home business, to have an effective and coherent strategy in place for branding, but when it comes to putting that into practice, which aspect is of critical importance?

There are, of course, many aspects to…

I lived in the dormitories for the first two years I was in college. Life on campus tended to be a bit boring, though. But there was one building down the hill that was known for providing entertainment. The inhabitants tended to throw parties for pretty much any reason?not just end-of-finals parties, but the-power’s-gone-out parties, and even the-cafeteria-served-something-gross parties. Any excuse was enough of an excuse to party.

Redesigning your business brand is a big to-do. You have to do a…

Learn what the colors you use say about your business.

Have you ever considered the importance of color in branding? Coke is red. UPS is brown. IBM is blue. These corporations understand the proper use of color is vital to creating a positive image among consumers. Furthermore, color plays a huge role in memory recall. It stimulates all the senses, instantly conveying a message like no other communication method.

Choosing the right dominant color for your brand is crucial. This color…