Branding Your Company - Logos and Tag Lines Aren't Enough
By Scott Hepburn

Rebranding may be the most complicated and most risk-prone challenges of a business owner. You take a company or a product that people have come to know, trust and love....and you change it. Risk? Yeah. You screw this up and everything you've built disappears and you have to start from scratch.

The Situation Placement Game
By Martin Lindstrom, author of BRAND sense

Situation placement creates a brand image in the consumer's mind around an initial product, and then builds follow-up products around the constructed notion. The technique makes brands the raison d'être of those follow-up products. Your product becomes the hero, enhancing a story rather than simply appearing as an added element without any effect on the plot, as is the function of product placement. But how do you engineer this for your own brand? How do you secure space for your brand in a computer game? How do you manage to have your brand featured in a popular song or placed centre stage in a hit movie?

A Direct Touch – Which Make Sense!
by Martin Lindstrom

Just the other day a real letter arrived in the mail. It's been a long time since I received one of those. You know, the kind with handwriting, stamps, and a closed envelope. It felt kind of strange and mysterious, with just a smidgen of excitement, and conjured up a mixture of feelings associated with the passing of time. We've slipped into the digital age, with barely a thought. Sometimes to our detriment, because real letters still work. I'd go so far as to say, real letters have never been in better shape.

Disney, Kellogg's, and Gillette are three completely different brands with one commonality. Over the past decade, they've established a branded language, whether they know it or not. In my latest book BRAND sense, we found 74 percent of today's consumers associate the word "crunch" with Kellogg's. Another 59 percent consider the word "masculine" and Gillette as one and the same. Americans formed the strongest association of masculinity to Gillette, by an astounding 84 percent.

Let's face it - traditional advertising no longer works. An article in the Times, published in June 2004, reveals that the overall effective influence of television commercials has decreased by some 52% over just ten years. In stark contrast, the cost of producing television commercials has increased by more than 130% over the same period. This is a clear indication that the traditional paths of brand building are slowly drying up, forcing marketers to think of alternatives.

Advertising ain't what it used to be. Let's face it. Despite the fact that we're using more and more marketing resources, the returns on our advertising dollar are ever diminishing. According to the Newspaper Advertising Bureau, in 1965, 34 percent of consumers in the U.S. could name the brand of a commercial aired during a show. Thirty years later only 8 percent are capable of doing this. By 2007 it's predicted that 20 percent of consumers will be eliminating ads from their television screens with devices like TiVo. It's time to rethink the entire process. Snappier graphics, faster editing, more convincing testimonials or bigger and better discounts will no longer do it. Something new is required.

Touching Brands Your brand is only as strong as your toilet paper
by Guy Smith, Silicon Strategies Marketing www.SiliconStrat.com

There is a legendary story about Starbucks, their brand, and toilet paper. From within the bowls of Starbucks, their branding guru had summarized the Starbucks brand into an extremely concise brand statement: A great coffee experience. This brand statement encompassed the Starbucks store design, bean selection, barista personalities . . . even their toilet paper.

Seems some smart MBA type hired into Starbucks wanted to downgrade from two-ply to oneply toilet paper in their store restrooms. He calculated a significant cost savings based on deep analysis of the comparative cost of toilet paper, the number of Starbuck stores, how many rolls per year were needed, ad nausium. But Starbucks kept the thicker two-ply paper to preserve their “great coffee experience.” Stated perhaps too bluntly, Starbucks was worried about all branding “touch points.”

Your brand – as perceived by the only legitimate judges, your customers – is the sum of all their interactions with your company. Every place where a customer can interact with your company is a “touch point,” and that touch point affects how you are perceived. A lousy experience with one touch point can negate all the brand equity you build in other touch points. When Microsoft releases a security patch that creates more openings for hackers, their brand is diminished.

This is why toilet paper matters.

Brand strategy is key to business success
by Betty Moore, Founder, Ignition Point

There is rarely a more critical time to get your marketing strategy right than during your company’s startup phase. During this time, money will likely be tight, and the pressure will be intense to generate sales while building credibility and confidence among your target audiences. While the usual marketing plan elements still need to be fleshed out, the birth of your brand deserves special attention to help ensure early success.

This is probably the most overlooked and misunderstood part of the launch of your company. Your brand needs to be engineered to appeal to your primary target audience. Decisions related to positioning, value proposition, and unique selling proposition are integral to the branding effort.