Archive for 'Branding'
The Branding Revolution is over!
Posted on 16. Jan, 2012 by Kelly Hobkirk.
Hello readers. It turns out the business world needs less of a revolution and more of an understanding of branding, so I am winding up the Branding Revolution blog. I tried to create something that would affect a profound change in the way people viewed their brands. While there has been some success on that front, I’ve uncovered more effective ways of communicating the core ideas behind this blog.
In staying true to my own …
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Is your brand perfect? Let’s hope not!
Posted on 08. Jan, 2011 by Kelly Hobkirk.
I often wonder what the man was thinking in the moment his eyes rolled up. I seriously doubt it had anything at all to do with, ‘I could have done it better.’
Is any brand perfect? I hope not. Perfection is the end of aspiration, and luckily, perfection is entirely subjective. I might question the lack of symbolism in your company’s logo, but you love that logo. It’s part of your identity that you interact …
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Do you have a real brand, or pretty pictures and a smooth story?
Posted on 04. Nov, 2010 by Kelly Hobkirk.
Many companies today lack a real brand. Sure, they have a logo and a website, a business card and perhaps a tag line. Maybe they have a brochure or other collateral, maybe not. That sounds like some of the components of a brand, doesn’t it? Sure it does, but the truth is none of these items constitutes a real brand.
So what is a real brand?
Well, to answer that, you have to back up …
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Exercise for rediscovering and redefining your personal brand
Posted on 01. Oct, 2010 by Kelly Hobkirk.
[Heads up: This post is three times as long as a normal post, but I promise it will be worth the read. If you skip to the end, you will be completely lacking context and it won't make any sense at all, so give yourself a good five minutes to take it all in. If it wasn't worth it, send me a rock in the mail.]
This is a great exercise to do …
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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 …
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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 …
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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 …
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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 …
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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 …
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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 …
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