It feels good to share your thoughts. Make a great point. Impact someone else’s perspective. This is especially true in the world of presentations. You’ve spent time polishing your thoughts, working through the visuals, getting them just so…and then you’re ready to present someone with your 20 min walk-through on the difference between Branding and Marketing.

Good plan. But bad idea.

Ever been to a conference and the speaker actually starting involving the audience? Whether he grabbed someone on stage, asked people questions, and so on – participation gives you the feeling that you were a part of something; its more than just being at something.

As counter-intuitive as it is, presentations need room for conversation. Its the difference between a Monologue and a Dialogue (thank you Larry Bolden for the concept). The fear we all have is that by making it a dialogue, you invite critique, cut into your time, break your flow, won’t accomplish anything, and on. But if you think about it, by doing so, what we’re really doing is making the whole event a one-sided happening. If we make it two-sided, true, we are less efficient. But since when was efficiency the most important component anyways? Isn’t trust, via relationship, always job #1?

Its an important perspective that has changed the way I view even simple conversations. Chopping up my words and points to invite others to speak into the conversation. Speaking in sentences rather than paragraphs.

This is not easy, but then again, neither is building relationship and trust.

Try it out next time you’re on a call or presenting.

You’ve heard a million and one definitions on what branding is, and you’re still confused. What is brand? It’s not your logo, it’s not your website, it’s not your Twitter, and it sure as heck isn’t what your cousin learned in Photoshop class at SCAD.

To state it the most simply: a brand is who you are. Or more importantly, who others think you are. It’s everything, including those things listed above (hopefully with the exception of the Photoshop tricks).

With that out of the way, why should you care? And what’s with the delicious cuts of pork?

In an effort to harken back to the days when very little went to waste, there’s been a growing interest in a more down to earth culinary movement. A huge part of this is what British chef Fergus Henderson refers to as “nose to tail” eating. (In fact, Abbatoir here in Atlanta highlights this philosophy). Sounds like a novel idea, right (trendy foodies might have you believe so)? Well, not really — we’ve just gone down the wrong path for so long it seems that way.

And so it goes with branding. Distracted by new fads, lacking patience, or simply confused by the new cut-throat world of marketing and consuming, we often forget the importance of thinking of brand as a whole. Sure, it’s made up of those tasty cuts like pretty design and a good strategy, but don’t forget about every single one of the other little pieces, and the guts required to make it all happen.

Chef Henderson has explained his philosophy as such:

“If you’re going to kill the animal it seems only polite to use the whole thing.”

Treat your brand with respect. Pay attention to the whole hog, to every touchpoint, large or small. For every part is a valuable asset.

It’s no secret that we live in a crowded marketplace, and the battle for the customer’s mind-space is a brutal one. Crafting the right message about what you do is a critical task. But an important step on the way to defining what you do is actually defining what you don’t do. I find it interesting that when I describe companies and brands to people I know, more often I use descriptors of what they don’t do.

We are a shoe retailer, but don’t have any physical stores.

We taste just like Coke, but don’t include any sugar.

We’re an airline, but don’t have any advanced seating.

We’re an innovation conference, but we don’t let just anyone come.

What are other examples that come to mind?

Have you ever thought about Color as part of your sales force?

Probably not, but according to the University of Loyola, Maryland, the impact of color is critical to brand marketing and can increase recognition by up to 80%. According to Color Matters.com, and an article I read on Brand Channel.com as much as 90% of a person’s assessment of a product is based on color alone, according to the Institute for Color Research.

That means that 80% of your costumers are more likely to recognize your brand and 90% more likely to buy based on the color. That’s a big sales force!

A strong brand is birthed out of a consistent alignment of visual and verbal messages, and the same holds true with color. With that in mind, here are three quick thoughts on color:

Be greedy.

What’s the one color you can own? Just like an ad, you can only say one thing in order for someone to remember it. Focus your color palette to one color and blanket your material with it. You can determine and set secondary and tertiary colors, if need be, but everyone should undoubtedly be able to say what your color is.

Be strategic.

What does your color represent? There are tons of resources on color theory. Color contains a deep emotional connection that speaks with out speaking. It truly is louder than words, so be intentional with what those words say.

Be considerate.

What colors do your competitors use? Look at the market horizon and position yourself in the gap. There is a reason Kobuta tractors are orange (because John Deers are green).

What’s another example of a color owned by a brand?

Sooo…Windows 7.

I’ve been reading the reviews so far and apprently it’s delivering on promises. Minus the virus issues which just come with the territory, most user reviews are happy. They love the new interface, find it more user friendly and stable. This is all great news for Microsoft whose proven a much better punching bag than OS the past three years.

But there is one new feature that needs some explanation. This video:



Whose idea was this? Alex, you responsible? This does not make Microsoft “cool.” Are they really telling me to throw a tupperware party for Windows? It’s like those Saturday morning infomercials for food processors. Was the marketing budget already spent on Seinfeld?

Finally the product is relatively good. But this? You were so close! 

You may be surprised to hear it – Unilever is my favorite Brand Identity. Its not the style, color, or font that appeals to me. I wouldn’t frame it on a wall or decorate my house with it. But that isn’t the point. Its solves a strategic business problem for Unilever, providing them with focus & direction.

Their brand is not one you talk about in conversation. Apple, Starbucks, & Coke are house-hold names and find their way into the mainstream much more often. But Unilever isn’t trying to become a house-hold name. Rather, they let their individual products do the talking – everything from Hellman’s & Slim Fast to Axe & Surf. They are a house of brands (as opposed to a branded house). Their Identity is smart, flexible, unique, covers a wide range of product categories, and leaves room for future product development.

In her book on Designing Brand Identity, Alina Wheeler states that “Unilever leads its brands through a single idea: ‘adding vitality to life’. The vitality theme is used to invent new products that deliver vitality, as well as in the recruitment process to train employees how to pass on stories that underlie this idea. Unilever’s ‘U’ brandmark is composed of twenty-five individual marks that express the vitality theme in many different ways. The visual identity exists on all Unilever products and is deconstructed imaginatively on a range of applications.”

Smart. Intelligent. Purposeful. Strategic. The mark of a great Identity.

You need a strong brand. When everyone zigs, zag. Design your competitive advantage.

With every marketing person seemingly graduating to branding experts these days, the once new buzzword is now de rigueur strategy for any business. But this is just a recent phenomenon; the barrage of new branding manuals will soon disappear along with other industry trends. Right?

Well, not really. For even before the time of man, nature has been in the business. A recent New York Times article discovers that fish are more intelligent than we suspected, and that they are particularly adept at color perception. What is most intriguing is why certain fish possess particular color patterns.

As it turns out, some brightly colored fish make a living by providing a valuable service to what may otherwise be their predators: they clean them. In fact, cleaner fish like the cleaner wrasse form an important part of coral reef communities. They establish small territories as “cleaning stations,” which are visited by all sorts of “client” fish that have their parasites removed.

By providing a needed service (getting rid of parasites), the cleaner fish turn larger, carnivorous fish into loyal clients. But in the busy coral reefs, how does one get noticed?

Scientists found that blue and yellow were the most contrasting ones on coral backgrounds to clients like barracuda or surgeonfish and that the contrast was enhanced against black backgrounds. And as it turns out, cleaner fish are significantly more likely to have blue or yellow coloration, and all species they examined that make their living solely from cleaning also had a contrast-enhancing black lateral body stripe adjacent to these colors, whereas none of the 31 noncleaner species were so marked.

By testing with variously painted models in a reef community, scientists found that the model that most closely represented the natural blue-streak cleaner wrasse pattern was visited more frequently than any other model color scheme.

So while branding has almost been diluted to the point of a meaningless fad, the core idea will always hold true. A successful brand is built on offering a valuable service, survives with good strategy, and gets noticed with well-thought-out design. It’s only natural.

A Brand is someone’s gut feeling about a product, service or company.  It’s much like a personal reputation. One’s reputation can’t be dictated by himself, but what one does will influence the reputation that he has.

So the concept of managing a brand is all about managing perception.

We work with all types of organizations big and small developing brand identities.  The #1 issue I see in all of the companies we work with is that people haven’t defined what they want the perception of them to be.

I often hear statements like “Third quarter sales are down” or “We’re better than that evil competitor who is stealing our business”.  But all too often these people can’t define what they want the perception of their brand to be.  So before you start complaining about how things aren’t as they should be or how people don’t understand your value, ask yourself, “What perception do we want people to have?”

Until that is defined, it’s going to be hard to find alignment between your vision and your customers seeing the correct value.

One of our key philosophies in creating charismatic brands is alignment; A consistent message, voice, and experience throughout all places of interaction. Alignment is also a key component to creating Brand Champions. One helpful way to asses your entire “brand experience” is to map out every single touchpoint of the process. When do you first engage with your audience? What happens next? Then next? Then next? (you get the point)

Once thoroughly mapped out you can begin to score each individual touch-point on how well they engage your audience. Maybe your initial and latter touchpoints are strong, but somewhere in the middle it gets a bit soggy. Maybe you start strong and trail off like a SNL skit. Regardless of your scoring, you can prioritize which touchpoints to focus on and improve. You now know where the gaps are in the wall, and like my good friends from GI Joe said, “Knowing is half the battle”.

We recently did this exercise for ourselves, and below is the out pouring. It’s important to know every map should be different and a comfortable and honest scoring system is crucial.

Have you ever done this? If so, Which ones need the most love? If not, how can you start the process?

I was talking with my parents this weekend and once again trying to explain branding. I said it’s kind of like marketing, PR, advertising and design all in one. I said it’s the gut feeling you have about the brands you buy…that’s the brand. To which they responded with the “i have no idea what he’s talking about, just smile and nod” look.

I can understand that. It’s a confusing word. I mean its a noun and verb. You have the whole branding iron thing with the cows. It’s building something, designing something and selling something. It’s just not as easy to explain as other jobs like say a doctor. There’s no identifiable work environment, tools used, or product produced. If only it were as easy as saying, “I make cars… specifically the transmissions for the F-150.” Convo over.

My parents have always been able to understand logos and websites. But while logos, package design and commercials are all tangible parts of branding, they’re not really the whole story. The “act” of branding is also about strategy and positioning. In short, determining what that “gut feeling” ought to be.

But this is all very much out there from my parents point of view. They might say the brand of “branding as a profession” is confusing. I would tend to agree. Because in a sense we all do branding. When we like a brand we tell our friends about it. We tell them it was great and the reasons why. What we say or don’t say about it becomes what it’s known for. We define that brand. But here’s the deal, those of us who do it for a living make sure you say the right thing.