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A Framework For Building Admired Brands

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Achieving brand admiration requires keeping the company’s end game— creating brand equity— in mind. Our brand admiration framework offers unique causal insights into how brand managers can strengthen the equity of a brand, regardless of where in the company’s business hierarchy the brand resides (e.g., a branded product variant, a branded product, a branded business unit, or a branded company). Admired brands induce brand loyalty and brand advocacy behaviors, creating opportunities for efficient profit and growth. Brands that commit to the following have the best chance of reaching the status of the most admired brands.

1. Brand managers should focus on building, strengthening, and leveraging brand admiration because it (1) represents the most desired brand-customer relationship state, and (2) it has enormous payoffs for a brand and a company.

2. Building, strengthening, and leveraging brand admiration is relevant to all types of brands— regardless of whether they are in a B2B or a B2C market, or whether they are products or services, celebrity brands, place brands, or entertainment brands. Some markets (such as B2B markets) will have the most to gain by thinking through the 3Es and identifying opportunities to drive brand admiration, since many are blind to the critical role of enticing and enriching benefits in building and sustaining brand admiration over time.

3. Marketers control the extent to which they build, strengthen, and leverage the admiration of their brand by the extent to which their brand offers benefits that are known to underlie human happiness; that is, the extent to which the brand enables, entices, and enriches customers.

4. Building brand admiration is not limited to external customers. It starts with building brand admiration from within. Given companies’ ongoing efforts to attract and retain talent, internal brand admiration building efforts are critical.

5. Brand managers need to think carefully about customers’ need profiles and how to offer enabling, enticing, and enriching benefits in a consistent and complementary way. These activities build the two foundational components of brand admiration: brand-self connections and top-of-mind recall of a brand.

6. Brand admiration ranges on a continuum from high to low, with some brands being more admired than others. But even the most highly admired brands can use a set of value-enhancement strategies to continually enhance admiration for their brand.

7. Once a brand is admired, companies have the opportunity to leverage brand admiration using product and brand extensions for efficient growth. Good extensions reinforce the brand’s core identity, broaden it to include other associations, and facilitate future growth options.

8. Brand managers have a variety of brand-naming choices when extending their brands. Ideally, brand-naming decisions will be made within the context of the company’s entire brand architecture.

9. It is possible to measure brand equity. Our novel brand equity measure has powerful conceptual and measurement advantages over other financial measures of brand equity.

10. Finally, companies can and should construct a brand admiration dashboard to map brand health over time and identify and prioritize areas in which continued efforts at improvement should be made.

Following this framework will help you reach that precious goal of building and strengthening brand admiration, fostering brand advocacy and loyalty behaviors, and enhancing the financial value of the brand to your organization.

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: C. Whan Park, Deborah MacInnis and Andreas Eisingerich, excerpted from their book, Brand Admiration with permission from Wiley Publishing.

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How are Branding and Positioning related?

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Sourced from INKBOT DESIGN

Graphic designers, business owners, marketing experts – everyone is aware of the importance of branding for the success of each startup.

With all that focus on branding, it seems we are forgetting about something: brand positioning.

Many of us confuse positioning as an aspect of branding, but it is an entirely different concept that requires a unique approach.

Let’s clarify things once and for all.

What’s the difference between branding and positioning?

How do these two concepts work together?

Do you need both or can you get good results by focusing on one of them?

Here is the most straightforward explanation that helps you make a distinction between the two concepts:

Branding is all about creating positive user expectations.

When you engage in branding, you focus on the users.

Positioning is about making your brand the preferred option among all competitors.

When you engage in positioning, you focus on the way your offer competes with all other players in the industry.

What is Branding Exactly?

 

In its most straightforward definition, branding is a design process of establishing the personality of a product, service, or company.

When you start a company, or you launch a new product/service, you know how you want the audience to perceive it.

Then, you take various steps to influence the opinions of your target customers regarding this brand.

Your brand conveys what your company is, what you want it to be, and what people perceive it to be.

Effective branding helps you set a price your customers are willing to pay.

It convinces them that you are offering great value for their money.

The brand is distinguished by a few elements:

When you combine all these elements, and you come up with methods that help you promote the brand, you get your brand strategy.

Through this strategy, you will plan a specific branding campaign via various distribution channels.

Several steps lead you to a successful branding strategy:

  • Setting a purpose and making a promise that corresponds to that goal.
  • Establishing a promotion that’s consistent with the brand’s message.
  • Triggering strong emotions with the target customer.
  • Involving all employees in the brand’s promotion.
  • Altering the campaign concerning latest trends.
  • Staying aware of the competition.

Competition awareness, which is an integral part of branding, is precisely what brings this concept close to positioning.

Why Is Branding Important?

A consistent branding strategy will get your target audience to develop positive impressions about your product/service and company.

This will add value to whatever you are selling, so you will be able to charge more.

A strong brand will justify the price, just like Estée Lauder can easily sell facial creams at a higher rate than the one random company sets, even if this unpopular company uses similar ingredients.

Estée’s consistent and robust strategy built a powerful brand equity.

The customers are willing to pay the higher price.

 

Most of them do not even bother experimenting with other brands since they know they will get what they expect from this one.

The added value comes not only from perceived quality but through emotional attachment as well.

This luxury cosmetics brand, for example, associates its products with Hollywood stars and beautiful people.

It is not just the cream that sells the cream.

It is also its status.

If a branding strategy helps you get a higher status for your brand, it is clear why it is so essential for the development of your brand.

It would be crazy not to invest in it.

What Is Brand Positioning?

For the process of positioning to start, you need a product or service that you are going to place.

Through these efforts, you are going to manage the way your users perceive your brand.

You will imply that they cannot get that experience from competitive offers.

In some cases, the company can decide to start a new positioning campaign for an already existing brand.

In most cases, however, the positioning process comes before branding.

Reebok, for example, was already an established name when it started shifting its brand positioning strategy.

This company had a hard time to convince its target audience that it is a better choice than Nike and Adidas.

After the exclusive deal with CrossFit, Reebok’s positioning strategy was reinvented.

 

It started developing its niche market, with customers who would pick this brand before any other option on the market.

Effective positioning is about creating a unique emotional benefit that makes your brand different from the competition.

It involves several stages:

  • Creating a brand positioning statement.
  • Comparing the brand to the competition to identify its uniqueness.
  • Analyzing the competition.
  • Determining the current position.
  • Analyzing the position of competitors.
  • Developing a unique positioning strategy.
  • Implementing the plan and testing its effectiveness.

As you can see, this is a different process from the one you undertake for branding.

Instead of being focused solely on your users and their experience with the product, you are focused on the competition and finding ways to rank higher.

Why Is Positioning Important?

In its essence, positioning is much more than identifying and improving your position in the market.

It is also about seeing how your product or service is significant and encouraging to the niche market.

It is also about making your offer sustainable, so you can continuously deliver it and beat the competition across all points of contact with the customer.

With that, your offer will occupy a distinctive place and value in the mind of your target customer.

Let’s take Estée Lauder as an example again.

It is not just a brand.

It is a brand that its target audience prefers among all competitive offers.

It is evident that the creators of the positioning strategy have identified and determined points of comparison and contrast with other brands.

Then, they developed a compelling brand promise, and they gave us reasons to believe it.

That is why the target audience chooses this brand over competitive offers.

I recently came across a compelling new brand: Fedor.

It is a small family business focused on producing all-natural shaving products and soaps.

 

You will see an excellent positioning strategy all over its website and social media profiles.

We can see how these products compare to the competition and we know believable reasons why we should choose them.

Without such a strategy, this would be yet another small business from a country most of us have never heard of.

Thanks to the smart positioning, however, the brand is an international success.

Brand Positioning is not only important.

It is an absolute necessity!

When you start offering a product or a service, you have to claim your spot in the industry.

Otherwise, you will just get lost in the crowd.

How Are Branding and Positioning Related?

To make the difference easier to understand:

Branding focuses on a user’s reaction to using the product, and Positioning focuses on a specific benefit that sets the brand above the competition.

With this logic, you need an establish a strong brand before you start the positioning.

In reality, however, these processes are closely intertwined.

Great positioning will help you establish a stronger brand, and great branding will help you set up a position.

If you start with the positioning strategy, you will lure your market to the brand.

The question is: do you need both?

Yes.

With effective branding, your company will stay profitable because its users will be willing to pay the price you ask for.

Through the positioning process, you are implying that the user cannot get your brand’s experience from competitive offerings.

Let’s examine Reebok’s campaign again.

First of all, it repositioned itself.

Instead of competing with Nike, Adidas, and other brands in the way it did before, it found a unique market to position itself on – CrossFit.

Then, Reebok came out with a new logo, which reflects this change.

That is branding.

Reebok also started a new marketing campaign, based on consumer-focused events and influencer marketing.

That is positioning and branding combined.

Here’s an interesting fact for you: the positioning will occur whether or not you develop a proactive positioning campaign.

Every brand has its position in the market.

However, this position will not be impressive if you are not working on it.

If you take an intelligent and proactive approach, you can influence the way your target customers rank your brand among all that competition.

 

Now You Know the Difference. It is Time for Action!

 

Branding and positioning have few elements in common.

When creating a logo design, for example, the graphic designer has to convey both the position and the emotional appeal of the brand.

When creating a marketing campaign, you will get content that combines both these concepts.

An owner of a new business has to identify the brand image they want, as well as the position they want to hold in the marketplace.

If you first identify the factors that make your business different from the competition (in other words – you position it), it will be easier to build a strong brand on that foundation.

Learn more about Branding and Positioning

 

COMPETITIVE POSITIONING: Best Practices for Creating Brand Loyalty

by Richard D. Czerniawski & Michael W. Maloney

It takes good brands to succeed in today’s chaotic, fast-moving, competitive marketplace. Marketers are confronted with, and their organisations are contributing to, an age of sameness, where products and services are virtually indistinguishable. The result is that customers are commoditising categories and discriminating principally on price. Offering more and enhanced features is not enough to win customers and create loyalty. It is high time to move beyond product marketing to embrace branding and positioning. COMPETITIVE POSITIONING – BEST PRACTICES FOR CREATING BRAND LOYALTY empowers marketing managers by sharing proven principles, insights from leading marketing practitioners, practical tools, and real-world examples, all of which will help you to successfully build your brand a brand that will connect emotionally with the heart, and remain uppermost in your customer’s minds. Step by step, you will learn best practices that will enable you to develop a competitive positioning.

 

Author Bio: Over the years, William has worked for a variety of marketing companies. He specialises mostly in visual marketing and is often tasked with teaching new staff how to market visually in an online world that is dominated by social media and fake news on Facebook and CNN. William also gives lectures on visual marketing in an online world too.

Sourced from INKBOT DESIGN

If you wish to discuss how we can develop your brand or provide graphic design for your product or business, email us at: [email protected]

Inkbot Design is a Creative Branding Agency that is passionate about effective Graphic Design, Brand Identity, Logos and Web Design.

T: @inkbotdesign F: /inkbotdesign

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Putting a Human Face on a Product: When Brand Humanisation Goes Wrong

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Branding was never an easy task, but here’s something new to look out for.

By MediaStreet Staff Writers.

When companies put a human face on their brand, the public usually responds positively. This advertising approach has brought us alarm clocks with sleepy faces and colour-coated chocolate candies with legs and arms.

But a study conducted by Oregon State University showed that there is a greater backlash by the public when a product branded with human characteristics fails.

Lead author of the study, Marina Puzakova, said even though consumers can tell a camera designed with human characteristics such as little eyes and legs isn’t a person, the very act of humanising a product can be a powerful tool.

A humanised product (left) versus a non-humanised product.

“Somehow, now the product seems alive and mindful, and therefore can be perceived as having intentions and its own motivations to act in a certain way,” Puzakova said. “This perception of intentions can be extremely strong – consumers now see the brand as performing bad intentionally and therefore consumers develop more negative sentiments toward the brand.”

Puzakova conducted five experiments with products that had experienced negative publicity. As a general procedure, participants saw advertisements of both existing and fictitious products, where “human” characteristics, such as arms, legs, or facial-like features were manipulated. Then Puzakova showed participants news reports about how the product had failed in some way, not lived up to its advertising claim, or did not function based on consumer expectations.

In every instance, participants reported that they had stronger negative reactions to the products that were given human characteristics, also known as “brand anthropomorphisation.”

“Brand anthropomorphisation can be a very powerful advertising tool, so I am definitely not saying that companies shouldn’t use it,” Puzakova said. “However, they need to be aware that when they imbue their products with human-like characteristics, any backlash when something goes wrong could be stronger.”

Puzakova’s study found that the strength of negative reactions depended on consumer personality differences as well. Based on a personality test she gave participants, she found that people who believe in “personality stability,” or that personality traits are always the same and don’t change over time, tended to have stronger negative feelings towards anthropomorphised brands.

“Broadly speaking, men tend to believe in personality stability more than women, and seniors as well,” Puzakova said. “Also, some cultures tend to believe in this more than others. This can be important for advertisers to know, depending on who their target market is.

Having a deeper knowledge about their target markets, companies can also design their advertising communications tailored for different types of consumers. For example, marketers may want to emphasise flexibility and change in an ad campaign in order to reverse negative attitudes by male consumers, who tend to believe in personality stability.

Puzakova’s research also has a lesson for companies whose brands fail because of a product malfunction.

“As consumers who believe in stability of personality traits react to product failures more negatively, our research finds that companies need to provide either monetary compensation or give away coupons,” Puzakova said. “Offering a public apology is not enough. For instance, companies that have a humanised brand marketed heavily towards seniors may need to be prepared to generously compensate those consumers if something goes wrong.”

The bottom line, Puzakova said, is companies need to know their audience and the possible dangers of humanising a brand when a product malfunctions. It can be a powerful advertising tool, but if the product fails in some way, the damage control could be costly and timely.

 

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It’s all in the name: luxury is about signalling status

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By Rob Wilson

Brands are the engines of the luxury market. The red-soled Louboutins, the Mulberry tree, the Ferrari horse… without them, would people still buy the products they are emblazoned on? Maybe, but certainly not as many.

Luxury has always been about signalling status. Therefore, as a concept it is always evolving as people’s ideas about what confers status change. From the opulent luxury of most of the 20th century, recent years seem to have shifted to less conspicuous forms of consumption. This presents a challenge to luxury brands. Now they not only have to emphasise their quality, but also demonstrate their credentials in other ways that will appeal to the less conspicuous luxury consumer.

Marketers have often targeted campaigns at people based on broad demographic factors – their age, their gender – but we have found a much more effective way is to connect with people through their passion points. Whether that’s football, food or fashion, if you can connect to people through one of their passions it will create a much stronger connection between them and the brand. Through connecting with these communities of shared interest, you can also have a more effective influencer strategy. Whether you work with more traditional celebrities or social media stars, by targeting a particular community of interest you can ensure your influencers feel truly relevant to your target consumer. When we worked with Breitling to launch its flagship store, we worked with celebrities that were truly relevant to its target audience, whereas when we launched Garnier Moisture Bomb we worked with everyday women as that is who was relevant for its brand and the community it wanted to talk to.

Luxury brands need to appeal to younger audiences or risk falling sales. Luxury brands can often be seen as outdated to younger generations because of product perceptions or the heritage they celebrate. We are working with Johnnie Walker to help it change perceptions of whisky as a drink that isn’t for everyone and open it up to new audiences. Delivering campaigns globally, we are helping it highlight the different ways and different occasions to drink Johnnie Walker, emphasising that it is a drink for everyone and anyone.

To recruit younger audiences, luxury brands need to respond to our changing spending habits. We are living in the experience economy. The latest figures from Barclaycard, which processes around half of all of the UK’s credit and debit transactions, show a rise of 20% in spending in pubs in April this year compared to last year, with restaurants, theatres and cinemas also seeing rises. More than ever, the experience a brand delivers is key to convincing people to part with their cash and when your product has a luxury price tag, people expect a luxury experience.

Through research we conducted for one of our luxury clients, we found that the retail experience is a particularly important part of the buying journey for luxury consumers. Across the range of different people we spoke to, most expressed a desire for a personal experience, where needs could be openly discussed, as well as a rich experience where they could learn about the brand stories and values underpinning a product. If a brand can achieve both these things they are much more likely to convert.

Every bit of the brand experience, from in-store to brand communications, online to packaging matters, is an opportunity for a luxury brand to damage its luxury reputation. Whether that’s a bad retail environment or a piece of packaging that doesn’t feel as hand crafted and special as the product it contains, it is very easy for brands to lose their luxury status in the minds of potential buyers.

Delivering a total luxury experience wherever a consumer interacts with your brand is a difficult task, but it is a must for luxury brands. Some luxury brands are embracing the experience economy already – this summer Cartier partnered with the London Design Museum to curate an exhibition called Cartier in Motion, telling the story of their unique approach to watchmaking and the evolution of the modern wristwatch. We will see more luxury brands turning to experiential marketing in the future.

Luxury is a highly emotive concept. It is all about the experience, the touch, the taste, how it makes you feel. And it is all too easy to break the luxury feel at some point in the experience a consumer has of your brand.

By Rob Wilson

Rob Wilson is strategy and creative director at RPM.

This article was originally published in The Drum Network luxury special. You can get your hands on a copy here. To be featured in the next special focused on the charity sector, please contact [email protected].

Sourced from THEDRUM

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Brand Launch: Creating a New Professional Services Brand

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By Lee Frederiksen

Branding a professional services firm comes in two flavors:

1) Rebranding an existing firm or service line, and

2) Launching a new one.

These two approaches to a brand launch are similar in overall process but distinct in their twists and turns.

brand_launch.jpg

Brand Launch Defined

Brand launch is the process of creating a professional services brand where none currently exists. Since you are starting from scratch, you have a unique opportunity to choose how you wish to position your firm in the marketplace, which clients you want to serve and what services you will provide to them. It is the perfect time to develop a compelling value proposition.

Rebranding, on the other hand, involves an existing firm that already has clients, staff and at least some equity in its brand. Rebranding involves updating your identity, marketplace positioning and/or messaging. These changes can apply to the entire firm or a single practice or service. Of course, you have to consider how the new brand will affect existing client relationships, any brand equity your firm has accumulated over the years and your marketing momentum. That’s not the case with a brand launch, where you are starting from scratch with nothing but that big empty flip chart. Your brand equity is zero. And cash is almost always tight.

Both brand launch and rebranding are distinct from a brand extension, in which you add a new service line to an existing firm’s offerings. For example, if XYZ Systems introduces XYZ Cloud Services, that’s a brand extension.

How to Botch a Brand Launch

A brand launch offers a golden opportunity to make a great first impression. Yet many firms manage to botch it — beginning with their firm name. A lot of professional services take a time-honored approach and name their firm after their founders. Or they use a generic service-related term (such as “professional,” “systems,” “technology,” “services” or “associates”) in their name. The resulting moniker is usually long and clumsy, and it soon gets abbreviated into a forgettable string of letters. A long name is a liability on the web, too, where it spawns a domain that’s hard to type and remember.

Speaking of the web, many firms disappoint prospective buyers up front by underinvesting in their most important marketing tool — their website. A cheap-looking, undifferentiated website is a big turnoff. In fact, our research on referrals shows that a third of prospective buyers rule out a firm that was referred to them on the basis of its website alone.

When they need credibility the most, many startups miss all the opportunities to build it. It’s the equivalent of showing up at a formal event in your sweat pants. Yes, there is a better way.

Brand Launch Benefits

It may not seem that a new brand has many benefits to offer. With no clients, no track record and no cash, what’s to envy? But a new professional services brand does offer three compelling advantages:

  • The thrill of new. In many cultures, and especially in the US, people are attracted to things that are new. It’s no coincidence that “new” is right up there with “free” as a killer marketing word.
  • Strongest positioning platform. It is far easier to introduce a radically different positioning with a new brand. You don’t have to worry about how existing clients are going to react to the change, so you are free to shape your market positioning as you wish.
  • Less brand equity at risk.If your positioning is not quite right out of the starting gate, it is much easier to adjust it without confusing the marketplace. This is why an existing firm may choose to launch a separate brand for a radically different positioning rather than put its existing brand equity at risk.

These advantages can be very helpful as you consider a strategy for your new brand launch.

Brand Launch Strategy

Launch strategy is very different for professional services than other types of businesses. In most cases, you have a reduced set of considerations to deal with. For example, service firms rarely use product packaging or need to convince retailers to carry their product. There are no storefronts or end cap displays to worry about. So a lot of the literature on launching a new brand doesn’t really fit your situation.

Unfortunately, just because you have fewer issues to contend with doesn’t mean that a launch is easier — just different. Most of those differences arise out of the nature of professional services.

For example, the way a consumer experiences a restaurant, hotel or clothing manufacturer is very different from the way a the client experiences a trial layer, accountant or computer security consultant.

In the professional services world, your brand is your reputation (what you are known for) multiplied by your visibility within your target audience. It is built more on trust and expertise than customer experience. If you want exceptional service or a “wow” experience, you go to a spa or a fine-dining restaurant, not to your auditor or structural engineer.

Expertise is the number one selection criteria of professional services buyers and it is the factor that “tips the scale” in about 74% of final selections. But there is a problem with expertise. It’s invisible. You can’t see it, feel it or tell if someone has it by looking at them. That means you have to make it tangible and visible to your target audience.

Given these differences there are a few key considerations to address when crafting your brand launce strategy.

  1. What is the key value proposition for your target client?

Why will they choose your firm over the many other alternatives? Is it price alone? This is always risky unless you have a sustainable cost advantage. For most new professional services launches, the answer revolves around offering some sort of superior expertise.

  1. How will you make your expertise visible?

If you are competing on expertise, visibility is essential. If you are competing on price, you at least need to position your expertise as equivalent to the competition’s: “We do the same work at the same quality level only it costs less.”

There are lots of techniques to build visibility. From books and webinars to videos and networking, you can use an educational approach to get the word out and demonstrate your firm’s expertise. To learn exactly what techniques work best and how to implement them, check out the Visible Expert course in Hinge University, our online training resource.

  1. How will you pace your brand launch?

Will your launch be a gradual build or a “big-bang” rollout? The decision should be driven by the marketplace and the resources you can afford to put toward it. Some services have short time windows because they can be easily copied by competitors. Others have short lifespans because they address issues that come with a sunset date (think Y2K consulting services at the end of the last century). Both of these situations favor a big-bang introduction. In most other situations, however, a gradual build makes sense. Gradual builds eliminate the need for a large outlay of time and money before revenue has a chance to accrue. Big-bang introductions, on the other hand, often come with large up-front expenses.

Your decisions on these key strategic choices will become the backbone of your brand launch plan.

Building Your Brand Launch Plan

Much like the rebranding process, a brand launch has three phases. But with a launch, those stages tend to play out over a shorter time period. Think days and weeks, not weeks and months, as you build the key elements of your plan.

Phase1: Get the Brand Strategy Right
This phase is aimed at making sure you have positioned the firm properly and have a compelling, easy-to-understand value proposition. As with any branding exercise, it starts with research. Since you don’t have existing clients, you must rely on interviews with prospects and influencers.

Often, your initial positioning will be built around the founders’ reputations and experience. In this case, you can research clients from past engagements to uncover key positioning elements.

Next, you will develop a core set of brand documents. These include a positioning statement and your messaging architecture, which identifies your primary audiences, the key messages to each, barriers to overcome and the proof points that equip you to defend each message. Together, these documents form the strategic foundation for your new brand.

You will, of course, lack case studies — a deficiency you will need to address quickly as you build a base of clients.

Phase 2: Build the Brand
In this phase, you develop your firm’s name, tagline, logo, website, marketing materials and identity tools. It’s fine to develop the most essential pieces first, then add the rest later. This allows you to conserve cash and (because you are not locked into an expensive set of business collateral) gives you room to evolve your messaging as you gain more experience.

In most cases, the most useful tools will be your website, a pitch deck and a single-sheet overview of your firm and its story. Since you are unlikely to have a wealth of case studies, you may want to talk about why you founded your firm and what compelling benefits you bring to your clients. That may not be enough to build critical mass, but it should give you enough material to convince a few initial clients.

You may also want to consider exploring online video, which can be an excellent medium to tell a new firm’s story.

This stage is usually capped off by the development of a brand rollout plan. This plan lays out exactly how the brand will be introduced and developed, including which audiences you will target with your rollout, and in what order. A detailed launch calendar is a great tool to use in your planning process. In the context of a brand launch, the rollout plan takes on a lot of significance, so be sure to allow sufficient time to do it right.

Phase 3: Brand Rollout
Next, you’ll need to implement the plan and introduce your brand new brand to the world. In our experience, most folks are excited by the initial reception of a new brand. If your new brand is well positioned, it will appear fresh and innovative to the marketplace — and offer prospective clients a benefit that is both unique and compelling. That tends to get people excited.

When new brands stumble at this stage, their problems can often be traced back to a failure to get the strategy right. These firms rush to market with a “me-too” market positioning that fails to deliver any real differentiation or competitive advantage. Attempting to be just like your competitors without the benefit of a track record is not a formula for success.

Minor adjustments to the messaging and positioning are quite common during rollout. These adjustments are a normal part of the evolution of a new brand and not a sign of failure.

Building the Strength of Your New Brand

Success can be a double-edged sword. If you have tapped into a healthy market and are offering a compelling set of new benefits, you very well may experience a surge in demand for your services. That’s when delivering on your brand promise can become a challenge. More than a few firms have stumbled at this stage.

The other major challenge is retaining your focus. As you help clients with their critical problems, they may ask you to take on issues that lie at the periphery of your core offerings. Do you accept the assignment?

It’s tempting. After all, diversifying risk is important, right? Be careful. You can easily dilute your brand by taking on too many non-core tasks. While there may be short-term financial benefits to stretching your service offerings, the real value of a brand comes from its distinctiveness and clarity.

A Final Thought

A brand launch is the perfect time to set your firm or practice on a course of lasting success. You have maximum flexibility and the advantage of being novel and exciting. However, while a brand launch offers many potential benefits, it comes with significant challenges, as well.

The most important thing to remember is to concentrate on getting the strategy right. Do your research well. If you can offer a compelling value proposition to an appreciative group of target clients, everything else is easier.

This article originally appeared in Hinge Branding and Marketing Blog.

By Lee Frederiksen

Sourced from BLUE

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When Brands Tempt us to Lie, Cheat and Steal

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Get your company reputation in order, or you might find that even your satisfied customers will betray you.

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

While many people consider themselves generally moral and honest, even the most upstanding citizens will likely become willing to lie, cheat and steal under certain circumstances, according to evidence from a new study in the Journal of Consumer Psychology.

If consumers believe that a company is harmful in some way – to the environment or to people – then they feel justified participating in illegal activities, such as shoplifting, piracy or hacking, according to findings in the study.

“People are much more willing to do something that risks their own integrity if they believe a company is unethical,” says Jeffrey Rotman, a professor in the business school at Deakin University in Australia. “And this desire to punish a harmful brand occurs even when the consumer has not personally had a bad experience with the company.”

Rotman’s team discovered this effect in one study in which participants were introduced to a fictitious pharmaceutical company that produced drugs to treat Parkinson’s disease and a bacterial infection called Brucellosis. Some of the participants learned that the company planned to increase the price of the drug by 300 percent to generate considerably more profit, even if it meant that certain customers could no longer afford the medication. Other participants learned that the company would not raise prices despite the profit benefits.

The researchers discovered that the participants who were told that the company was raising prices were significantly more willing to punish the company via unethical means, such as lying, cheating or stealing.

So why do consumers violate their personal code of ethics in these situations? The researchers conducted another experiment in which participants read a report stating that on average, internet speeds are consistently below advertised speeds. The federal report explained that this occurs because many ISPs intentionally cap speeds at 20 percent lower than advertised speeds. One group of participants was told that their internet speeds had in fact underperformed, and they were asked to sign a letter to the ISP asking for a 10 percent discount on monthly fees. The other group was told that their internet speeds were as advertised, but they should still sign the letter based on the findings in the federal report. Even though their internet speeds were good, they were encouraged to lie to justify the discount and capture the company’s attention.

Typically, people feel emotional consequences when they engage in unethical behaviour, but the researchers found that negative feelings, such as guilt, were absent because people felt that the company was cheating customers. “People felt morally justified lying to the ISP because the report claimed that the company was not delivering promised speeds,” Rotman says.

The researchers discovered that this desire to punish companies perceived as harmful is also reflected in the real world. Participants rated how harmful they perceived a variety of different industries, such as pharmacies, supermarkets and home improvement stores. On average, the more harmful the ratings, the greater the rates of theft were in these industries.

“There is growing distrust among the public of certain aspects of business and government, and these findings suggest that if people perceive these entities as harmful, they might feel justified in being unethical,” Rotman says. “My hope is that organisations will make it a priority to build a reputation that allows consumers and businesses to be on the same side.”

 

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5 Free Tools That Make Graphic Design Easy for Small Business Owners

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By Evan Ferguson.

Graphic design is one of the most important elements to a small business owner’s branding strategy, yet it’s often taken for granted. Everything from marketing emails to web design to social media posts need to incorporate elements of design and help to mold the image of your business.

Statistically speaking – bad graphic design can seriously harm a business’s earning potential. Studies have consistently found that users rank well-designed websites as more trustworthy than poorly-designed sites. On top of this – good graphic design has been shown to be directly correlated with brand recognition.

With good design meaning more trust and more brand awareness – it pays to invest in graphic design if you’re a small business owner. But herein lies a dilemma. Smaller companies tend to have less disposable funds, which means they’re more likely to have less resources allocated to graphic design. While large businesses can hire experienced, professional designers – an up-and-coming brand doesn’t have this luxury. That’s where free online tools come in handy.

With so much riding on the design of your brand, knowing how to create cost-effective, yet professional-looking graphics is critical to success for a small business. Check out the list below for some amazing tools that will make graphic design a breeze for small business owners.

Burst

Burst is an image-hosting database that offers hundreds of professionally-taken public domain photographs. Images on Burst come with a creative commons zero license for free commercial use. This means the you can download professionally taken photographs for use in everything from marketing to web-graphics to print advertisements.

Finding quality photographs is no easy task. Shooting professional photographs on your own can be costly and time-consuming. If you’re a small business owner, you know that money and time are two things you can’t afford to waste.

You could pay for stock-photos, but with expensive licensing fees and complex legal requirements – purchasing stock photos can end up being more hassle than it’s worth. With Burst – you can browse stock photos, download them and upload them into your marketing materials – all in a couple of clicks.

Canva

Canva is a free graphic design tool that can be used to make everything from Facebook posts to album covers to advertorial posters. Offering a number of ready-made templates for things like marketing emails and social media posts – Canva has become an increasingly popular tool for non-experienced graphic designers looking to give their designs a more professional polish.

Canva’s strength is in its easy-to-use drag-and-drop design interface that allows users to select from millions of fonts, graphics, icons and photographs. With Canva, you can easily arrange elements onto a template to create professional-looking designs.

It’s wildly fun and incredibly easy to play around with text, images, icons, borders and shapes to create your own designs. Even if you’re not the creative type – Canva offers a number of ready-made, preloaded professional templates with fully-customizable text and formatting options.

PicMonkey

PicMonkey is a free online photo editing tool that can be used on any desktop computer or through a mobile app. While there are paid versions of the app with more features – the free version still offers a ton of basic photo-editing and touch-up tools.

From PicMonkey’s use interface, you can upload your own photos, crop them to your liking, adjust their brightness and contrast, add filters and a whole lot more. My personal favorite feature to PicMonkey is the portrait editing capabilities. PicMonkey has special portrait touch-up tools to fix blemishes, remove wrinkles, reduce shine, boost blush and more. Professional photo-editing can be costly and time-consuming – but with PicMonkey you can give your photographs a professional edge in a matter of minutes.

Piktochart

Infographics have become one of the most widely used tools for businesses and organizations in both digital and print media. You can attribute this popularity to the convenience of using infographics. They’re a clear, effective and artistic way to present data without losing the attention of your reader. With internet-users being bombarded by information and attention spans steadily decreasing – infographics are quickly becoming the modern tool for presenting information in a fun and interesting way.

Professional-looking infographics can be tricky to create with expensive graphic design software – and that’s where Piktochart comes in. With Piktochart – you can create beautifully-designed infographics using a ready-made templates and your own data sets that you can input manually or import it from a spreadsheet program. Piktochart makes it easy for any business owner to present their info in fun and interesting way without having any prior knowledge of graphic design.

Coolors

Any graphic designer will be able to tell you about the importance of color when it comes to branding. It’s nearly impossible to think about an iconic brand like McDonalds and not think of the bright, golden-yellow arches accented by a vibrant red background.

The truth is that graphic designers make very calculated decisions about which colors to use. Professionals have spent years studying – not just color harmony in design – but the psychological triggers associated with certain colors and ways to make an audience experience a certain mood based on the colour palette being used.

Without being a professional – simple design decisions like which colors to use together can seem daunting. That’s where Coolors comes in handy. Coolors is a free tool that allows you to upload any image and automatically generate a harmonized color scheme by sampling colors in the image. From there – you have the option to save your color palette or make adjustments to one or more of the colors in your pallette and auto-generate complementary colors. This means you can create complex, harmonious color-schemes without having any sort of graphic design experience

By Evan Ferguson

Evan Ferguson – aka @HarveyStewartTO is a writer and digital artist based in Toronto, Canada. He’s written about content marketing, futurism, and technology. He graduated from York University in 2012 with a degree in Journalism.

Sourced from Smallbizdaily

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A Winning Brand Requires Telling a Never-Ending Story About Your Business

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By Charles Franklin

By now, most of us realize the importance of branding for a business. It helps current and prospective customers identify your product or service. Branding also helps establish your business’ presence in a crowded world. Few books explore the “why” behind this logic, however. That’s where A Winning Brand: How to build a Powerful, Personal Brand in Today’s Modern, Digital World begins. The book explores the reasons every business (and really every person) needs to invest in sharing the best version of its brand with the world.

What is A Winning Brand About?

The wisdom behind A Winning Brand came to Kraig Kleeman at one of the lowest points in his life. He was experiencing a medical crisis and struggling through the relationships in his life. At the time, Kleeman didn’t have a social media presence.

His luck would change when he changed his strategy. Kleeman transformed into a new brand, “The World’s Greatest Cold Caller”, leveraging his skill in cold calling. As he started to promote the value behind his new brand, people took notice. They started calling him “The World’s Greatest Cold Caller” and Kleeman never looked back. The more value he offered as a sales consultant, the more clients he had. The more clients he had, the more they told others. He had successfully become a winning brand.

This cycle of success is what every business should strive for. Many businesses, however, miss the mark. They focus too much on why their brand doesn’t work. They don’t consider the value that people derive from that brand. The value people derive from your brand is the key asset, not the fancy graphics or pretty colors. That is the point Kleeman is making. Business owners need to invest in value before they consider any other aspect of the brand.

The value of your brand is created when you understand the two most important parts of a brand, the promise and the customer’s perspective. Kleeman’s book starts the process to help readers add even more value to their planning

Kleeman, known as The World’s Greatest Cold Caller, is a sales consultant, author, speaker, and the host of Kraig Kleeman TV, a YouTube channel featuring sales instruction. Known for his love of rock and clothing featuring a peace sign, he created a unique brand and sales system, which serves as the foundation of his techniques today. Kleeman’s system, the Must-React system, has been credited with helping sales professionals earn millions in revenue. Kleeman also used his skills to develop a million-dollar company, Express Direct, from scratch.

What Was Best About A Winning Brand?

A Winning Brand is a great read that really reinforces the need for reflection and experimentation with your branding. Many business owners assume that branding is a once-and-done process. It’s not. Branding, as Kleeman emphasizes, again and again, is a story, an evolving story. Evolving with that story requires reflection and bold experimentation. Without reflection and experimentation, your brand is at risk of losing relevance, value, and ultimately, profit.

What Could Have Been Done Differently?

“A Winning Brand” dismisses the assumption that you have to be a certain type of person to have a brand. Kleeman would disagree with this perceived barrier. We all have a brand and we establish (or destroy) that brand with our everyday actions. To address this reality, the book does a great job of helping to connect personal branding goals with the social media channels — LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter etc. — most appropriate to amplify them. This approach could be extended a bit further, however into other aspects of the business. For example, what kind of customer service, etc. best amplifies a personal brand?

Why Read A Winning Brand?

If you are a business owner in the first stages of creating your brand or in the process of refreshing your brand, A Winning Brand covers the essential planning questions you need to address. Once you’ve completed planning for your brand, A Winning Brand also details social media strategies (particularly on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram) for transforming those plans into a functional strategy. Learning to build a winning brand position for your business (or your own personal brand) is one of the key takeaways from this book. It is not enough to build a brand, Kleeman’s book suggests. Branding in the always-connected, always-moving world requires a balance between evolving your brand’s message for your audience and staying true to the values that you want to follow for the life of your brand.

By Charles Franklin

Sourced from Small Business TRENDS

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3 Branding Goals I Know You Can Accomplish This Year

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By Jeff Shuford.

Developing a robust brand is essential in today’s highly connected, cutting-edge digital landscape. Just ask the celebrities that lose millions of dollars in endorsement money due to adverse press or damaging allegations only minutes after the unfavorable news breaks. A year ago, Chipotle Mexican Grill experienced a food safety crisis that nearly destroyed its brand forever. Although the famous restaurant chain is still feeling the adverse effects of an E. coli outbreak, Market Force reported that the chain was rated No. 1 among its competitors in a recent 2017 study

How can a restaurant chain that suffered the ultimate food safety black eye bounce back so effectively? Two words: brand reputation. Chipotle’s branding goal during the outbreak was to remain in its customer’s minds as the healthier, more socially responsible alternative to fast food. Establishing and achieving branding goals early on will inevitably leave your clients with a positive perception about your company for years to come (and will help your brand during and after a PR nightmare).

Establish your brand’s reputation early and often.

While establishing my technology company, my focus was solely on developing a remarkable product and providing an outstanding value to my customers. Like many entrepreneurs, I neglected to focus on the purpose behind my products and the passion behind my brand. Consequently, I undervalued the importance of establishing a compelling brand story. My website exhibited a lack of personality, and my employees were focused more on making sales than developing relationships.

The turning point came when we were over-negotiating on a mobile application package with a client. Our price points were far lower than our competitors, and our portfolio and client referrals were immaculate. What seemed to be the problem? We lacked an established brand reputation. No brand reputation equaled a lack of trust in the potential customer’s mind. After never successfully acquiring the new client, I decided to focus our attention on building a brand as opposed to a company

Hire a celebrity endorser or spokesperson.

My technology company is fortunate to have a couple of notable NFL veterans that contribute to the success of our brand. After bringing on a celebrity endorser, my business has been featured on Sports Illustrated and the NFL Network among other distinguished publications. Frankly, it all goes back to having a celebrity endorse our brand.

There are celebrities in every industry. Some influencers are local celebrities, like the lawyer that’s always on TV, and some are national celebrities, such as athletes, movie stars and music artist. Luckily for you, celebrities consistently post on social media regarding their future whereabouts and interests. Start attending the same events and functions as the celebrity that you are targeting and you are bound to meet. While networking with the star, align your brand with his goals and beliefs. If the celebrity can see himself aligning well with your brand, you will gain a colleague and a valuable brand evangelist. A brand evangelist can easily convert into a celebrity spokesperson if there is an exchange of actual or perceived monetary value.

Here are a few reasons to bring on a celebrity endorser or spokesperson:

  • You can gain access to the celebrity’s network of followers, fans and business partners.
  • Bringing on a well-known name behind your unknown brand can accelerate your brand’s recognition immediately.
  • Your brand gains a new angle for news stories and media opportunities.
  • Your brand gains the perception of success by association.
  • You can receive valuable business insights from the celebrity regarding your brand’s digital and physical footprint.

Latch onto news stories regarding your target market and industry.

The news cycle is always in a nonstop rotation. Running a veteran-owned company keeps me continually digesting news and data. I have discovered that any and all information that surfaces regarding veteran business matters in the media is ideal for promoting my business. Furthermore, it also presents an excellent opportunity to be invited on TV or radio as a subject matter expert.

Latching onto recent breaking news is not complicated but will require creativity. It also requires, at the very least, that you answer the following questions:

  • How will you use the news story to promote your business?
  • Is your goal to educate or to advertise?
  • Do you want your customers to think about your brand when they think about the news story?
  • What do you want people to remember about this news story?

I host a successful weekly TV segment that covers veteran issues and highlights emerging military entrepreneurs. My producer and I book guests based on their business successes and the current military news cycle. For instance, we booked a Marine veteran that transitioned into civilian life successfully after reading a report concerning veterans that struggle with life after they leave the military. I booked another veteran entrepreneur to discuss his journey from homelessness to entrepreneurship after a report surfaced regarding the increase of homeless veterans. The media needs your story; use the news cycle to accelerate your brand, and to increase your brand’s digital footprint.

By Jeff Shuford.

Sourced from Entrepreneur

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