Branding Corn Flakes...?

Just when I thought that I had heard it all... the design community is all a buzz with rumors of Kellogg's intention to brand each cornflake. Apparently Kellogg's plans on using high tech laser etching technology to imprint the Kellogg's logo-type on every cornflake! Will Kellogg's Cornflakes become this year's branding success story or brand suicide? I think it was Alice Cooper when discussing urban rock legends, myths and rumors once said... all press is good press... right...?

Whether these rumors turn out to be true or not... what a brilliant concept! Personally I hope it is true. A bold brand move like this has the potential to change the way we think about branding. Advertising and marketing is shameless at times... first we see logos on the bodies of hottie cheerleaders... now they may be staring back at us from our cereal bowls in the morning.

Sometimes branding happens... because we make it happen...

What's next? I don't know about you... but I can't wait to see :)

Sometimes, The Experts Aren't...

I remember the excitement in the spring of 2006 when home building projections for the next two years were off the charts according to local experts! We were all riding the big housing wave and with many clients in the residential construction industry, we thought we had it made. One of our local home builder clients was projecting 500 new home starts per month for the next 3 years and had purchased land to carry them through 2013. Oh how fast everything changed.

By summer July of ’06, this same client’s new projections were down to 300 new starts per month… ouch! But that wasn’t the end of the big slide down hill. In October, the projection dropped to 275 homes, by December it was down to 150. After the first of the year, things were looking up a bit and they sold a record number of homes in February of ’07, the experts predicted a big comeback along with some big numbers. The next month sales turned off like a light switch. Not just for this builder, but for everyone. By May, I was reading a letter projecting new home starts at 35-50 per month, they were closing nearly half of their communities along with massive lay-offs. How could it get any worse? It did… they announced in July that they would not be starting ANY new homes for an indefinite period and we lost our contract with them. Needless to say… they are no longer in business. How could the experts have been so wrong? Why were local builders blindly making huge business decisions based on these largely unfounded projections. Who were these experts anyway?

Sometimes, the so-called experts scare me. If you went to the doctor and said “I don’t feel well… something just isn’t right with me… I need your help.”… and he responded immediately with, “I happen to be a very good doctor with many years of experience, and I’ve seen a lot of sick people. I can tell by looking at you and hearing your voice that you have diabetes and need an appendectomy. We need to schedule you for surgery immediately and start you on insulin injections as soon as you are done.” This is ridiculous… right?

So why do so many so-called branding and business development experts seem to have all the answers before they have really had a chance to diagnose the current situation of their clients? Nobody knows your business like you do. When choosing a graphic design firm or ad agency, to assist you in your branding and marketing efforts, beware if they seem to have all the answers in the first meeting. Any firm worth it’s salt, will take the time to become intimate with your products, sales process and overall culture of your company before they start giving you “expert” opinions.

If you are in business in today’s competitive environment… you are doing something right. You just need to do it better. How can the experts solve your problems before they know what they are? How can they capitalize on the positives and reinforce your companies brand before they really seek to understand what’s working and what’s not?

Remember… a true expert just is… they won’t need to tell you.

The ABC's Of Branding...

The ultimate goal of any brand is to “own” the minds of consumers when it comes to their product or service. When an athlete is thirsty, Gatorade wants to own that moment in this athlete’s mind. Millions of dollars are spent every day in an effort to achieve this level of brand leadership. Some brands literally define their product no matter what their competitors try.

One day I was making a sandwich in the kitchen and could hear the television in the family room where my young children were watching Sesame Street. It was a lesson on the ABC’s. “A is for apple, B is for boy, C is for cat,” the host rehearsed. My ear pricked up as I later heard, “J is for Jello.” Wait a minute, how did Jello get their brand into the ABC lesson on Sesame street, I thought to myself. Wow, could Jello have surpassed Coke as a brand leader in their market? I think they have… they are without peer.

Many brands have owned their product in the past, only to eventually be undermined by a generic term. ALL jeans used to be referred to as Levis… now they’re just jeans. Kleenex still owns their market in a huge way… sometimes, you will hear people ask for a tissue. But when it comes to owning a product, Jello is the winner in my book. I have never heard a child walk up to their mom and ask for a gelatin dessert… ever!

All gelatin dessert products are Jello… why even try. Could any brand ever equal or surpass this branding achievement? I wonder… at my son’s high school, nearly everyone that has an MP3 player, chooses an iPod. The few that have other brands, Sony, Zune etc., still refer to the device as “their iPod."

I love Apple… they are branding genius in action.

Bad Taste In Your Mouth...?

When a new prospective client comes to our studio for the initial meeting, it is always a bitter-sweet moment for me when I discover how unhappy they are with their current situation. I feel horrible for them as they lament the history of their brand and the wasted time and money over many years and numerous efforts to create a solid image and identity for their business. But at the same time, I am excited to have the opportunity to help breath new life into a struggling brand with new design.

Design value is a hard sell for beginning entrepreneurs and marketing professionals. Until they have experienced the success if a well-designed identity system, it is hard for them to envision the return on their investment. It has always puzzled me why a person can go shopping and fill their cart with name brands… but on the other hand not want to become a name brand themselves in their own business. Generic brands have their place in the world and some savvy shoppers swear by them for certain products. They forget that their prospects will tend to choose recognizable, reputable brands when shopping for their products as well.

Be careful before you trust your brand to a generic design firm at a reduced rate. Remember, you will spend thousands upon thousands of dollars reproducing your logo over the years. It pays to get it right!

Generic design firms come in all shapes and sizes. R & D has always stood for “research and development.” Many discount design firms have relegated their R & D process to more of a “rip-off and duplicate” exercise. So, think hard before you hire that low-ball design firm to create your business image, design your next brochure or write your next ad. I could write something trite here like “you get what you pay for,” but, I have always enjoyed the saying pictured below in this graphic much better. I first saw this hanging on the wall in the front office of a local body shop I was using to repair one of my vehicles. I have never forgotten it…

Black And White...

When it comes to the nuts and bolts of your brand, the actual logo image itself is at the center of attention, or at least it should be. In order to make sure that your logo is always the star-of-the-show, it needs to be designed in a manner that is easily reproduced across a wide variety of media. All too often, we have clients come in with a slick new logo that is hardly usable unless they are uploading to a website or printing in full-color. In most cases these logo designs have all sorts of gradient blends and shading that cannot be reproduced well if at all in a grey scale or line version when necessary. PhotoShop is indeed both a blessing and a curse.

At our design firm, Tactix Creative, we actually made a rule that a designer could not use PhotoShop to create a logo, and that every logo presented to our creative director must be easily rendered as a simple black and white line-art image. Only then was a designer able to start treating the logo with other colors and/or additional embellishments. Sure, you may want to treat your logo in PhotoShop at some point for added pizazz in certain applications. But don’t ever let a designer paint your brand into the “full-color or nothing” corner! It will be nothing but a headache and you will most likely end up redoing it at some point.
Designers need to remember that they are not creating fine art pieces. They are designing for reproduction purposes. Your logo needs to be at home anywhere and everywhere you may need it. Whether on your website, business card, black and white invoice or a low-res fax… your designer owes you a usable version of your logo/brand for any potential environment. This may sound like a no-brainer to everyone… but we deal with these problem images nearly everyday in our firm.

Make sure when your new logo design is done, that you receive electronic files in their native format, and demand vector image files when at all possible. Gradient blends are evil :)

What Goes Around...

“Others are merely reflections of ourselves… you cannot truly love or hate something about another person without loving or hating that same thing about yourself.” Wait… does that mean when a client does something I don’t like… that I don’t like it because they are just like me? I believe it absolutely does.

Graphic design is always about solving problems in the end. Many of the problems sound something like… “It seems like all my customers care about is price, I need to help them understand why doing business with us is more valuable than my competitors.” Invariably, this will be the client that is all about price when it comes to his design project. I mean EVERY time… it’s amazing.

Here’s another one… “Everyone thinks they can do it themselves, they don’t realize that if they hired a professional like us, the would have a better product and actually save money in the end. How do I get my clients to quit micromanaging everything and let us do our job?” Without fail, this will be the client that drives us to drink with endless, inane revisions and relentless micromanagement. They are also the ones that wonder why you can’t read their mind.

So, next time you get frustrated with the party on the other side of the business table… go take a hard look at the culture in your own company. Your frustration may be a simple matter of self-fulfilling prophecy. Tightwads hate tightwads, micromanagers can’t handle micromanagers and do-it-yourselfers are irritated by other do-it-yourselfers.

So, what is the answer? I advise all of my clients to follow a little bit of advice from Ghandi; (I revised it to fit business environment), “You must BE THE CHANGE you wish to see in your clients.” Take the time in your organization to define what you consider to be the “perfect customer,” then go breath that culture into you own company. You will be amazed at what happens.

The culture of your company is a huge part of your brand and can become the cancer or the cure in all of your business relationships. It’s up to you.

When it goes around… don’t be surprised when it comes around.

Creative Failure...

Tolstoy once said “ All happy families resemble each other, but each unhappy family is unhappy in it’s own way.” So, why would I include a touchy-feely quote about happy families when I am supposed to be blogging about branding and marketing? It’s simple… plainly stated, “in many ways, failure tends to be more creative and unique than success.”

When we look at the big brands, we notice some very common templates in the way they advertise and take their products to market. Sure, they get creative with the imagery and the angle, but the overall approach usually fits into one of a few molds. From an administrative standpoint, most successful business ventures share a similar discipline in the way they structure their companies. As a result, most of us look to these successful businesses and brand leaders as a model when we approach a new venture. Why reinvent the wheel… right?

Well, it seems that many business ventures fail for that very reason. They confuse creativity and differentiation with reinventing the wheel. In an effort to be different, their business models and subsequently their brands become distorted to the point of failure. So, like Tolstoy’s quote about successful families… we discover some well very defined models for brand-building and advertising success. But on the other side of the coin… wow, there are a million uniquely creative ways to fail. Learn from the big boys and you’ll save yourself a lot of time and money, and even more aggravation.

Don’t reinvent the wheel! Just make the wheel your own and make it better than the competition.

Remember… “Doing it the right way may not guarantee success, but doing it wrong almost surely guarantees failure.”