Branding Revolution

Branding and social media, Part 2: Brand experience, the stronger animal

Posted on 29. May, 2010 by Kelly Hobkirk.

Brands are designed to connect with people in direct and meaningful ways. The experience of connecting is among the most powerful ways your business can start a long-term relationship with people. Social media, on the other hand, is made to create indirect experiences.

Why rely on the weaker animal? Try as you might, you cannot dictate which social media tools your audience will use. Sure, you can guess that facebook and twitter might be among them, but who’s to say that your interaction on those platforms will reap the rewards you seek?

I shudder just a little when I read that social media provides a new level of interaction between a business and its customers. Why? Because it doesn’t – Well, perhaps it does sometimes, but by and large the value of the interaction has degraded to gutter churn. The feedback companies receive via social media channels is weaker and arguably less accurate than anything they received before social media existed. Turning that weaker feedback into valuable data can easily be likened to polishing a turd.

Before social media, you could get a consensus of valuable opinions and relevant feedback by surveying actual customers on a daily basis — in fact, it provided a great opportunity to have a real conversation, but now with social media, similar feedback is garbled at best and wildly inaccurate at its worst. Now, instead of surveying actual customers, companies are taking in opinions not only from customers, but also from non-customers, competitors, planted reviews, opinionated people with too much time on their hands, people with superiority complexes, and even people who would never in a million years buy their product.

When you use inaccurate data to fuel your branding and marketing efforts, you net a wasted budget and meager results. It undermines your confidence to boot. When you can rely on real, accurate information, you can enter into your marketing with greater confidence, stay true to your brand, and expect a higher ROI for your efforts.

The biggest difference between social media and real marketing

Social media gives companies another way to procrastinate from real marketing. Social media profiles are not nearly as powerful as your brand. They consistently lack the critical types of interaction that form strong brands. With branding, we create a real, truthful dialog about you and your business, then you bring it to life when people experience the true essence of your brand.

With social media, people often create an image, which is really little more than a forgery of who you are. Companies hire consultants to create their profiles, which are frequently not true to their core characteristics. The question is not, “How can you try to relate to facebook users?” The real question is, “Which part of our brand is relevant for the channel?” I read some profiles and wonder who do they think they’re fooling? And why? Social media is supposed to be about creating a real dialog, not an image, a fake, a forgery. Fake elements undermine your brand instead of enhancing it.

Brand elements are designed to create a meaningful experience. Social media is designed to create online (indirect) interaction. A meaningful brand experience is more successful in creating a hot prospect, or in essence, in connecting with real people. Experience is real, and nothing can replace it.

To read about how to create social media profiles that are consistent with your brand, check out: 5 Steps to branding your social media profiles.

Branding and social media, Part 1: Set it and forget it

Posted on 12. May, 2010 by Kelly Hobkirk.

Unless you’ve lived under a heavy rock for the last few years, you probably know that social media is now considered an essential part of a marketing plan. You may have a thorough understanding of social media, or you may be a little confused by how to incorporate it into your marketing without wasting enormous amounts of time. After all, you already have a full-time job and managing several social media profiles can feel like a babysitting gig. If you ever get confused by thinking of social media as part of your brand, here’s some good news: Social media is not part of your brand.

While social media can be a part of your marketing, it’s not part of your brand. About the only way that social media relates to your branding is brand reputation, and that’s easy to take care of. Just be nice, and tactfully defend your brand if someone attacks it. If you’re floating tweets out there, keep them relevant.

If you think of social media as an essential part of your brand, think again. Social media is networking, it’s marketing, it’s a series of interactive directories, but it’s not part of your brand. You can’t set up a few social media profiles and accurately claim you have created a key component of your brand. Why? Because in and of themselves, social media profiles are not you, and they do not replace experience with you. In fact, social media profiles are a weaker tool than virtually any key component of your brand.

And get this – when you set up social media profiles on a plethora of sites, then promote your profile on those sites, you are actually building those sites’ brands more than your own. You’re in effect saying, ‘Hey, come spend your time on this other site,’ rather than ferreting people to your next relevant brand touch point.

Does social media have a place in your marketing? Sure it does. For most businesses, that place is called networking. Use social media to boost your online presence, and social networking sites like Biznik (a particularly good social networking site) to network. It’s an exceptional site for business networking — but it is not a key component of your brand. If you’re selling something which can be purchased online, use social media to build awareness and community.

Let’s illustrate the point

Your company is on LinkedIn, facebook, and twitter. Familiarity with the channels is high, and the channels gain instant recognition. People leave your articles, profiles and website to go visit a social media channel, where they get distracted by a facebook virtual gift or a post by a friend. LinkedIn, facebook, and twitter gain more familiarity while you gain less time and net only one indirect interaction.

Sometimes people start strong relationships on LinkedIn, facebook, or even twitter, but it’s rare compared to them finding you in a more meaningful way such as meeting you, organic search results, or a compelling, truthful ad that speaks to their real needs.

A more direct scenario is better

Your website is real, truthful, and relevant, so people naturally find you on an organic search. They read your site, and they call or order. They remember you because your service rocks and your brand is strong. Simple and to the point interactions win, hands down.

If you’re worried about how your social media will effect your brand, set it and forget it. Create your profiles, keep them true to your brand, protect your brand reputation by being kind, and tactfully defend yourself if someone hits you below the belt. Beyond that, monitor your social media usage time, and make sure to spend more time on high ROI marketing methods.

To read about how to create social media profiles that are consistent with your brand, check out: 5 Steps to branding your social media profiles.

5 Steps to branding your social media profiles

Posted on 24. Apr, 2010 by Kelly Hobkirk.

It’s well-known fact that the current generation was brought up using facebook and LinkedIn to find each other. My brother used facebook as his phone book when he was in college. Now it’s how his family stays in touch with friends, in an indirect way of course. Large businesses know that the best way for them to connect with customers is still through large-scale media, but small businesses can connect with potential customers on a small scale using social media.

This post will show you how to keep your social media profiles true to your brand and connect with potential clients at the same time.

To complete this task, you will need the following:
• Logo in JPEG, GIF, and PNG formats
• Tag line
• Profile photo
• One brief paragraph describing you, your business, and your specialty
• One brief paragraph describing you personally, including both professional and personal interests, in that order
• Detailed description of your product or service
• Scissors and paste

Create consistent profiles

Businesspeople have pretty thick skulls these days, but in spite of that I wish to impart the following idea into the thickness of your skull: Create consistent profiles, create consistent profiles, create consistent profiles. Got it? Good.

You may be asking, ‘Why create consistent profiles?’ The answer is 3-part and simple.
1. Consistent profiles help people learn and remember who you are without confusing your message.
2. Consistent profiles save you bucket loads of time.
3. Consistent profiles consistently reinforce the critical info about you that people need.

Some social media sites have their own unique characteristics, and it’s fine to tweak your profile to fit those idiosyncrasies, but keep it consistent wherever possible.

Instructions:

1. Create a JPEG, GIF, and PNG of your logo. Start with a large hi-res file, and scale down. Never scale up, unless you are working from a vector file. If you are scaling your logo, do so only proportionally. You will probably never need an image larger than 200 pixels for a social media profile, so create a 200 pixel wide file (for both horizontal and vertical orientations, if your logo is used both ways).

2. Fill in the blanks using your brief and detailed profile text. Remember, consistency is key. Use the same descriptions on each profile so people know you are not schizophrenic. If you are inserting your tag line, keep the wording exactly the same as it is on your identity.

3. Use the same photo across the board. Make sure you like it.

4. If you have a video and are naturally good on camera, great. If not, no worries. Place your video on those profiles that allow it. If your video blows, don’t use it. Your brand doesn’t blow (hopefully), so don’t use any elements that might bring it down a notch.

5. When finished filling in the profile blanks, don’t touch them again until it is relevant to do so. If your profile text sucks, hire a copywriter to make it great. A good copywriter can turn virtually any boring text into rockstar text that engages the right people. Keep it real.

Is it really that simple?

It really is that simple. Keep your profiles consistent, and your brand will thank you. Your social media life can be short, sweet, and relevant without wasting copious amounts of your precious marketing time.

Now, take the scissors and paste, and go make something. Don’t eat the paste.

On believing in yourself

Posted on 14. Apr, 2010 by Kelly Hobkirk.

If you’re an entrepreneur, at some point you have no doubt had people tell you that your idea was crazy, you wouldn’t make it, or you should do something else. Plenty of über-successful people have heard this kind of thing. Think if Steve Jobs had listened to naysayers who called the Mac a toy. iPod and iPhone were also “supposed” to fail. Good thing someone believed in them.

Sometimes in brand strategy meetings, I encounter people who don’t believe in what they are doing, or they are severely lacking in confidence because they have listened far too long to people who do not believe in them. That’s one of the cool things I love about strategy: it can expose problems, illuminate new perspectives, and provide people with a unique opportunity for self-reflection and massive inspiration.

One of the most important lessons I learned early on in my career was that if you seek advice, seek it from those who truly believe in you. People who believe in you reinforce your belief in yourself (rather than instill any sense of doubt or negativity). You need little more than belief to carry you through the tough decisions and rough times that it takes to succeed.

I might have been a ditch digger

Before I went to school for graphic design and advertising, I had my detractors. My older brother told me I could never make a living as a graphic designer. It was too hard he said. Another relative told me, “Art isn’t a career.” People told me I shouldn’t move away from home. I took it all in with a grain of salt.

Instead, I followed my heart, and I listened to the people who believed in me: my dad, mom, and my trusted teacher. They totaled three people whose voices stood out above all the rest, all the people who would rather I succumb to fear than follow my dreams.

I recall seeing a handwriting analyst on a drunken lark late one night with some friends. She told me I would never make it as a graphic designer and that I should focus on manual labor! Good thing I tossed that advice right into the ditch.

After graphic design school, I was fortunate enough to find my way to good professional mentors. They consistently told me that my portfolio was atypical for an art school graduate; that my thought processes were different, and my solutions stood out from what they usually were subjected to in meetings with aspiring art directors. My adviser repeatedly pounded into my young impressionable brain the idea of opening my own studio.

After gaining some professional experience in senior level design and advertising positions, that’s exactly what I did. My previous positions as graphic designer, two stints as an art director, and another as marketing director gave me the well-rounded background and confidence I needed to really excel.

Do you believe in what you are doing?

I met a physician a few years back who wanted to hire me to design an identity for him. During the intake interview, I got the feeling that this doc was severely burned out. I asked him if he enjoyed his work. After a very long pause, he replied, “No, you know I really don’t enjoy it anymore. Patients don’t value what I do enough. I would rather be doing something else, and I just want to make a lot of money at this point in my life. I would like to do something else.”

Imagine if those thoughts were driving your daily motivation while you stayed in a job you don’t enjoy. It’s no crime to get burned out. But if you no longer believe in what you’re doing, it’s healthy to rediscover your belief or shift your focus.

Love what you do, do what you love

If you love what you do, on the other hand, it’s easy to keep believing in yourself. Your interactions with your your personal brand or your corporate brand, as well as your clients and peers, reinforce your beliefs, providing inspiration and motivation on a daily basis.

Doing what you love makes work seem like play. Listen to the wisdom of people who believe in you, even when their advice may be tough to hear, and believe in yourself!

More baby talk: Your brand is your business language

Posted on 07. Apr, 2010 by Kelly Hobkirk.

You may be scratching your head about my babies to branding analogy, or you might just think I’m nuts for making this connection, but this is important because it drives home the very reason why branding is so critical to business success – why it is so important to undertake the process of branding right from the moment of immaculate business conception.

See, we humans have an innate need to categorize and label durn near everything. We start labeling and categorizing from the very moment we become conscious, out-of-the-womb babies. Actually, strike the ‘durn near,’ and just keep the ‘everything.’ We label EVERYTHING. Every single thought, emotion, person, thing, and action we come into contact with gets labeled in our brains. This is how we identify with literally everything in our lives.

Brand Context

Think about your day. You wake up, possibly naked, completely unlabeled. You look over at your significant other (if you have one), and your mind calls up the label you have for that person, whether it is ‘wife’, ‘boyfriend,’ ‘Julie’, ‘Pat,’ ‘Robert’, or whomever. You get up, stumble into where? The ‘bathroom.’ You pick up what? ‘Toothbrush.’ To brush what? ‘Teeth.’ Next, you walk to ‘kitchen’, where you eat ‘cereal.’ These are basic labels. Without them, you would have no way to relate to or describe the things you desire and need every day.

Add some more detailed labels to the above items, and your labeled day starts looking like this relationship:
Wake, think about Julie, walk to bathroom, brush teeth with Sonicare and Colgate, walk to kitchen, eat Healthy Valley brand cereal, grind Victrola organic coffee beans in Braun grinder, put on your Lucky brand jeans, Banana Republic shirt, and Nine West shoes or Nike sneakers, read the Wall Street Journal while drinking Victrola coffee, find your keys, and drive your Honda on I-5 to work at (insert company name here), go to lunch with Bob at Cafe Lulu, drive his Prius back to work, punch the clock, and head home to your house in the Ravenna neighborhood of Seattle.

There are over twenty-five labels in the above paragraph. 25 labels! In the span of what? Half an hour of your day?! Without them, the paragraph could not possibly exist because there would be no description, no language.

Now, this is the cool part, the part where it all comes together, where you see that you absolutely must brand your business right from the very start if you want people to know, buy, love, and talk about you.

The moment you’ve been branding for

Remember those 25 or so labels I just mentioned two paragraphs up? They make your day describable. Without them, there would be no way to describe your daily thoughts, emotions, and interactions. You would have no way to relate to the things you buy. No way to relate to the people you know. No way to even describe what happens after the moment of waking.

Think about it another way: If you asked a brand-spankin’ new, freshly born baby to describe the birth process, they couldn’t do it! A baby has no categorizations, no labels, no relationships, no language, nothing, nada, zip, zilch. Babies can’t speak right away. They have to learn the language.

Now, try asking a baby to describe your company. You know they can’t do it because they can’t speak your language. Asking your customers to remember your company without first branding it is precsely the same thing. Without knowing your business language – your brand – they cannot do it. And you will not become a compelling part of their dialog.

Brand = Business Language

Your brand is the language of your business. People have to learn your language to be able to speak it. The more articulate your business language – or brand – the more useful and memorable your business becomes.

Your brand positioning tells people how to categorize you. Your logo and identity give them the easiest of ways to remember and relate to you. Your tag line helps them further categorize you. Your website is the place where they can connect with your brand. Your marketing increases awareness of your brand.

Your customers rely on your brand to be able to categorize and label you so that when they need you, they know exactly which thought to recall, which logo identifies you, what you do, what you provide to their day, why they need you.

If you rely on word of mouth for much of your marketing, you can see that without developing your business language – your brand – right from the start, people won’t know how to talk about you. If you develop your brand, people will learn your business language, and an important part of your marketing will suddenly have a powerful dialog, a way to exist, be remembered, and remain in people’s thoughts and conversations.

Brand love: we are all a bunch of babies

Posted on 05. Apr, 2010 by Kelly Hobkirk.

Imagine you are a baby. You are sheltered in their mother’s womb for nine months. Everything you need is provided in a warm environment. When born, you transition from everything you need being completely taken care of to 100% needy in the span of just a few minutes. If that’s not a shock to the system I don’t know what is.

What happens next? You are cleaned off, checked over, wrapped in a blanket, held and coveted. Everyone around you is joyful and smiling. You are fed, held, and instantly loved.

Then you learn how to learn. You are taught, and you grow into a full-fledged, working, breathing, consuming adult.

We spend the entirety of our adult lives working to get that same feeling, that same attention, utter bliss, love. There are a plethora of ways to define and attain those feelings; products and services designed to fulfill our desires and needs. If you brand your business, products and services just right, you can be among the tons of entrepreneurs and companies ready to provide them.

If you fail to brand or do so without integrity, you will get beat out by those who do it right. They’re the businesses who understand that telling their story in a true and meaningful way will create an almost magical bridge between their business and clients – people who are looking to connect, to capture that feeling of being held and coddled, taken care of, loved.

It’s not hard to brand right, but it’s much easier to brand poorly – just like it’s easier to reject than to accept. The cool thing about babies is that they can accept nearly anything. While I’m not suggesting that you talk to your clients like they’re babies, I’m saying that keeping it simple – keeping your brand true and real – is a much more sound brand strategy.

People appreciate honesty and integrity. Wrap them in the blanket of your true story, your real brand. Take care of them, and they will welcome you into their lives on a regular basis.

Objectivity, the key to examining your personal brand

Posted on 02. Apr, 2010 by Kelly Hobkirk.

Objectivity has long been one of the most important qualities that graphic designers and consultants bring to the table. Its value cannot be understated, especially when it comes to personal branding.

Your identity is a tough thing to objectively examine because you are personally invested in it on a daily basis. You have a close relationship with your identity. This is important though because you are asking your prospects and clients to have the exact same type of close daily relationship with you and your brand.

Most people are not capable of objectively examining their own personal brand because 1) They are too close to their own beliefs and rituals to have true objectivity, and 2) They lack experience in brand development (especially the effective variety).

Give it a try

There is a good chance you’re thinking you are the exception, the one person in the world capable of objectively examining your identity. You might be right, but realistically, the chances are not so good.

Don’t get me wrong – I encourage you to try it. In fact, I will be starting a series of public examinations of my own personal brand right here on Branding Revolution. Just like you, I am one ambitious mofo.

I fully expect to discover some things during this exploration that will make even me uncomfortable, but that’s a natural part of the process. It’s what we do with the knowledge gained that counts.

I’ve worked with hundreds of entrepreneurs and companies on local, national and international levels during the last 25 years, and honestly, I have met only a small handful of people capable of an objective self-examination of their identity. I have met a ton of people who thought they could do it, tried, and failed miserably at it. I’ve met people who accepted their own biased examination as the gospel truth, which inevitably leads to self-delusion and an ineffective personal brand. I admire people’s optimism and efforts nonetheless.

Now you might be thinking, ‘OK then, I’ll ask my friends for help.’ Think again. Your friends are already personally invested in your identity. They have thoughts and perceptions of you – both positive and negative – that no one else has. They prop you up, push you down, and are closer to you than nearly anyone. They are great for gaining alternate perspectives, but they are insiders, too close to you to be objective.

I am blessed with a gift for examining, processing, designing, and verbalizing people’s identities and helping them discover their personal brands. I am exceptional at it, yet I am aware that no one can know what everyone thinks about each aspect of them self. When I want an objective opinion about myself, I seek outside feedback. I highly suggest that if you are serious about discovering, exploring, and developing your personal brand, you seek external, professional help. That said, you can start laying the groundwork for discovering and defining your personal brand today.

You have your own set of impressions based on your intentions. The people who interact with your personal brand have different perceptions and experiences. It is entirely possible to align both yours and your clients perceptions and experiences. In fact, that is one of the primary goals of personal branding. It is not an easy thing to do by any stretch of the imagination, yet it is extremely empowering and worth the effort. If you can gain additional perspectives from an objective outside resource, all the better.

You can start by reading this post and doing the quick exercise it contains.

3.5 Steps to discovering your personal brand

Posted on 31. Mar, 2010 by Kelly Hobkirk.

What does your personal brand look like?

The short answer: It looks like you. You are the most clear picture of your personal brand.

Now for the longer answer that I can’t give in an elevator: A personal brand is much like a corporate brand except, well, more personal. It’s a combination of your visual and verbal dialog, combined with your actions, but when a brand is taken to a personal level, the elements that make up those three core ingredients are much more intricate.

When I zero down this equation to one person, I’m looking at nearly every detail that effects how people experience you and how you experience yourself. I also look at what makes you the person you are.

How do you get a snapshot of your personal brand? A quick picture is worth the roughly half hour it takes to put together. Here are 3.5 not-so-easy steps to discovering your personal brand. The last half step is SUPER IMPORTANT, so don’t skip it! It’s that first little baby step that you have to take if you want to evolve and grow. I promise you it will feel good.

1. Look into your eyes

If you want a picture of your personal brand, get up out of your chair, walk to the nearest full body mirror, and take a long hard look. Look at your excited eyes or the subtle wrinkles around them when you smile. Check out your posture before you straighten it up. How is your energy – both before and after coffee? Now, look down at your shoes and the clothes you wear. Notice how they make you feel. Got that feeling in your mind? Good. That’s a big part of how people see you.

2. Look out from their eyes

Note: It is nearly impossible to do this objectively by yourself because you have a daily relationship with your brand, yet I encourage you to give it a try.

Take a long hard look at your business card, logo and website – the most basic core elements of your brand identity. Remember, your identity speaks for you when you are not there. Your brand identity is a huge part of how people perceive you because most of the time, you and your clients are not together. Most often when people interact with your brand, you are not there, but your brand identity is. Does your identity speak to you, your audience, or both?

Read the copy on your site. Is it vibrant, exciting and positive, or does it put people to sleep? Does it drone on about the same old things, or are you bringing something totally unique to the table? Are you hiding your best secrets, or are you putting it right out there, hands open and on the table, driving home your unique qualities and winning approach?

3. How active are your actions?

Think about the things you say and the tone of your voice. Ask yourself some of questions, such as: Do you have integrity? Do you make empty promises, or do you follow up on your commitments? Think about how you treat people and how you respond to their needs. Do you speak with wisdom and authority? Are you quiet and reserved? Think about the sum total of your actions. Got all those things in your mind together? Write them down.

Add it up
Now, add up the results of items one, two, and three. Without gaining the incredibly important objective opinion (you can do that later), you will have a super quick capsule of your personal brand.

Your Assignment (the all-important .5)

You can start defining your personal brand today. It isn’t easy, but it is worth it. Tell me what you see when you look at yourself, your logo, business card and website. Tell me how you treat yourself and everyone you come into contact with.

Do you like what you see? Is it real? Do other people like it? Do they see the same things as you? Is there something you would like to improve?

I challenge you to think differently about your personal brand. Think about how to make it better by investing in real, meaningful, icky, scary, empowering change. Tell me in the comments one thing you can do to improve your personal brand – so it’s stated, and might actually become real to you. (If you’re shy, just put “Superhero X” in the name field.)

There, didn’t that feel good?

Game-changer: Living and loving your brand

Posted on 26. Mar, 2010 by Kelly Hobkirk.

Do you love your brand?

You might be thinking, ‘What? No, I don’t love my brand! It’s a marketing tool. It’s made up, created by some artsy graphic designer. I love my spouse, my kids, but my brand? Heck no!’

That’s OK, but write this down as something you need to think about changing.

Do you live your brand? Chances are you do. And if you live it, you are connected with it. If you are connected with it, you might well love it, even if you don’t know it.

Loving your brand is absolutely essential to your business success. If you don’t love your brand, no one else will either. And that’s really the whole purpose of a brand – to be loved.

You don’t have to hug and snuggle up with it each night, but you do need to share your deepest thoughts with your brand. You need to have an inner dialog with it (you probably already do). Your brand dialog is what you think each time you connect with your brand.

A picture of negative brand

Many years ago, I worked for a company that essentially had a negative brand. They had a logo that beat people down within the company and discouraged customers from buying into the brand. The logo was an icon of a setting sun, most often presented in blood red or black. It had nothing to do with their industry, and it presented a negative metaphor, which ironically rang true. No one ever knew if they would have a job the next week, and customers didn’t know if they would be able to get service or warranty repairs.

When you talked with the salespeople, they were focused solely on short-term sales. They wheeled and dealed and almost always lowered their selling price. To listen to them, their selling sounded strained and almost sleazy. No matter who was hired in the role of manager, that person openly said that they did not believe in the company. Accounting was regularly tasked with cooking the books for the financiers. The receptionist, in full view of the retail entrance, had the bizarre duty of peeling off non-canceled stamps from returned postcards – ostensibly to save money.

I am not making this up.

Do you have a mental picture of this company? Now think about if you worked there. How much would you love your job? Really – how much? Chances are, you would hate your job at that company. You would be rocketing your resume out all over town. You would be there for no other reason than to collect a paycheck. Your inner brand dialog would harm your motivation and performance.

It starts at the top

Here’s the kicker: All of these negative duties and dialogs come from the top. If the top dog doesn’t believe in their brand, employees won’t either. If you are infusing any negativity into your brand, it trickles down, and your clients and prospects will see and feel it. Your brand’s negative messages give people pause.

If you’re reading this, chances are you are an entrepreneur, president, marketing director, or VP at your company, or at the very least, you are probably in a position to directly effect your brand, leading by example.

Learning to love your brand requires more than just stating it – you have to truly live it. You have to make it permeate every aspect of your professional dialog. When you do that, you can shape a positive brand experience for everyone. It’s truly game-changing stuff.

It’s High Time for a Revolution in Branding

Posted on 01. Mar, 2010 by Kelly Hobkirk.

It’s time to get real, get honest, time to make meaningful connections. It’s time to believe in your brand.

How can I, Kelly Hobkirk, brand development specialist, graphic designer, writer, entrepreneur possibly claim to be starting a revolution in branding? It’s a bold claim coming from a guy who hasn’t the street cred of an Ogilvy, nor the blogger prowess of a Rowse. I lack the notoriety of some of the larger players in graphic design, yet I am quite an accomplished, award-winning designer. (I might be famous, it’s just that few people have ever heard of me.) Until now, no one has heard of a need for a revolution in branding, but it’s high time.

Why would I make such a claim? A branding revolution. Well, in my twenty-five year design and advertising career, I have worked with a metric ton of entrepreneurs, small to medium size businesses, and a couple handfuls of massive corporations with international reach. In all that time, with nearly all of those businesses, I have observed one alarming consistency: Few people actually believe in their brands.

How can that be?

What is your brand?

Brands started out as a way to mark ownership of cattle, or essentially as a sort of crude logo. The term ‘brand’ has evolved since then to mean a whole lot more for you and your business.

Simply put, your brand is your characteristics and beliefs, expressed visually, verbally, and by your actions.

Your brand is the pillar of your beliefs. It is the single most effective marketing tool you will ever have. If you don’t believe in your brand, you probably would be well-served to find a new job.

Why your brand is monumental

What happens when you don’t believe in your brand? Employees don’t believe. They work to collect a paycheck. They work less hard and sell less effectively because it’s hard to dedicate yourself to selling something you don’t believe in. Customers don’t believe in you either. Sales drop. Brand loyalty ceases to exist. Brand equity tumbles. Your position in your market is devalued. Your company is worth less, and people don’t care about you.

If you don’t believe in your brand, you have an express ticket to a sharp downward spiral, which can lead only to failure. This is a scary fact, and it can get a whole lot worse.

Brands have become weak

The three most common problems with personal brands, small business brands, and even large corporate brands are:
1. Lack of foundation in reality
2. Poor design lacking in sound strategy
3. Squandered opportunity

During the last few years I’ve watched a stunning amount of companies not just shoot themselves in the foot, but blow their feet clean off by developing brands with little or no foundation in reality. The result is a seemingly deliberate disconnect. Why would anyone do that?

Many companies skip strategy altogether, moving from some vague idea of who they are to an identity that fails to accurately portray them. This is really a shame because when it is developed right your brand is the most powerful, affordable, and valuable marketing tool you and your company will have during the entire life of your business.

If you are not personally invested in your brand, guess what? No one else will be either. Your employees won’t believe the spiel you feed them, and neither will your customers and prospects.

Branding is hard work

It is not hard to believe in your brand. But it is hard to create a brand you can believe in. It truly is hard work, and it’s an ongoing process.

Why is it so hard to create a brand with meaning? Most people do not understand their brand. They have no idea what is its purpose, what it stands for, how far it can reach, and how it effects them on a daily basis. Many companies do not understand what a brand actually is, and they lack an understanding of the process of branding.

Many graphic designers also are confused about what branding is, so when a company turns to a graphic designer for brand development, they often have no idea what they’re getting into. Sometimes they hire a designer who hasn’t the foggiest idea what branding is.

Branding is not something you pick up in a week or two, and it cannot be learned exclusively from reading. Good brand development requires an in-depth knowledge of strategy, graphic design, typography, web design, outstanding copywriting, a keen eye for detail, an understanding of people, business experience, and life experience, among other elements.

Most people believe that no matter the state of their brand, it must be a positive thing, but that’s not even close to the truth. Some brands are poisoned. Some brands are buried. Some brands lost their way so long ago that no one knows the way back. Some people believe that brands are worthless. I don’t know where this belief originates, but after spending about ten minutes with a person, I can usually figure it out.

Turning a brand around — revolutionizing it — is not an easy thing to do, but the effort is well worth it. Are you ready to revolutionize your brand?

Why is branding so hard?

Brands do not grow on websites. They are not available for $40 on ebay. You cannot design a logo, slap it on a business card and a website, and claim that you have a brand. You cannot set up a few social media profiles and claim that you have a brand. Yet, that’s what people are doing. They’re creating empty brands.

If you are shortchanging your brand development, you are shortchanging your success. You are telling yourself, your employees, and your customers that you are not worthy of their attention. Are you worthy?

My guess is you probably are worthy. Then I invite you to take this ride on Branding Revolution to change your life and your business.

Some key topics we’ll be addressing on Branding Revolution include:
• Finding meaning in your brand
• Personal branding
• Small business branding
• Staying true to your brand
• How your brand fits into your marketing
• Keeping your brand strong

It is important to understand not only your brand itself, but to some extent the process of branding. You don’t need to become a branding expert, but some insights will go a long way towards helping you get the most out of your brand or personal brand.

What are your experiences with branding? If you find this post inspiring, please add your comments. Thanks for reading.

Eat your brand: Recognizing your brand’s influence on you

Posted on 21. Mar, 2010 by Kelly Hobkirk.

Your brand is kind of like breakfast, the most important meal of the day. Your brand is the motivational fuel that gets your business through each day.

Take it in, each and every morning, just like the eggs and toast, protein shake or coffee you crave at the start of each day. Each of us interacts with our brand every single day, whether it’s Monday, Friday, Saturday or Sunday.

Monday-Friday, you have a relationship with your brand. You think about it, you see it, you interact with it. Saturday, that relationship probably changes. Your brand relationship on Sunday is very likely different from Mon-Sat.

As you drive to work, you may be thinking about a ton of things, but chances are that some of your thoughts are centered on some part of your company’s brand.

Monday is the day I use to set the tone for the week. I generally get a ton of work planned and started. Monday is the day that Train of Thought is in my mind all day, from the moment I wake until I put the computer to sleep late in the day.

Tuesday is most often the day when I connect with my craft. I sit at the drafting table and draw or paint. Traditional craft one of the big differences that sets my brand apart.

Wednesday through Friday I work my tail off. Saturday and Sunday are days I use to recharge my soul. It’s time away from my corporate brand, days used to connect with what makes me, well, me.

All week long, when I see my logo, I know what it stands for, and as a result, I am reminded of what I stand for. Train of Thought’s identity provides motivation, it tells me why I need to stay on task, and it reinforces the importance of following the creative path, practices and procedures that have led to our success.

Exercise: Get a clear picture of how you interact with your brand each day.

1. Carry a pad of paper and pen all day.

2. Write down every single way you interact with your company’s brand. If you think about work, write down your thought. If you imagine your office, write down how you imagine it. If you have positive or negative thoughts about how a meeting will go, write them down. If you think about a person you have to interact with, write down your thoughts about the person and the interaction. Is your identity on your company car? Write it down. Does the paint in your office match your identity? Write it down. Do you think about how your efforts need to reflect your company’s reputation? Write it down. Each and every time you see your company’s logo or identity characteristics, write it down. Think about the feelings your brand identity evokes.

By day’s end, if you are writing down every single thought that has to do with your brand, you should have at least 70-100 entries. If you have significantly less than that, you may be taking your brand touch points for granted, not staying true to your brand, or you’re not engaged in your marketing.

This exercise works for both corporate and personal brands. Give it a try. You might be surprised at just how much your own identity is wrapped around your brand. If you try it, and you find the results surprising, add a comment below.

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