February 12, 2006
Why identical twins don’t have identical first names
Though they may look the same, they’re not. Just ask their parents. Even as newborns, they could tell them apart, and as they grow up, they’re distinctions become ever more pronounced. This is why we don’t give twin babies the same first names.
In the business world, this idea would seem to carry over as the foundation for a common sensical approach to branding —that different products need to be different brands with different names. However, the only thing common about this sense is that it’s all too commonly ignored in the hopes of cheating risk and the possibility of failure.
Overextended brands are like overstretched rubber bands
Everyone’s heard of a company called Kraft. “Hey, those are the cheese people.” Yep. For years, Kraft and cheese were synonymous. It was a Corporate Branding with a position competitors would have been hard-pressed to erode had company brass been content in their cheesiness. They weren’t. Like many companies blessed with strong brands, Kraft began to think their brand name was invincible and that any product introduced under its banner would dominate their markets simply because of its name. So, Kraft began offering jams, jellies and mayonnaise among other things.
The numerical truth about Kraft’s brand extension strategy
Ohio-based Smucker’s owns 35% of the jams and jellies market. Kraft has 9%. Hellman’s mayonnaise has 42% of the mayo market. Kraft has 18%. The plan for equal domination didn’t quite work out as planned. Despite its dominance in the cheese market, Kraft was relegated to bit player status in these other categories. Their strategy of trying to leverage a great brand name into being all things to all people resulted in few real winning products.
Why doesn’t being all things to all people work?
In your family, you may have been the smart one. If you had brothers and sisters, there may have been the “social” one, the “rebellious” one or the “athletic” one, too. And invariably, those attributes seem to stick with a person throughout their life, often regardless of whether they change.
In Japan, Honda is known as a motorcycle company that dabbles in cars. In America, it’s a car company that dabbles in motorcycles. Despite the fact the company is equally prolific makers of both, the two different markets have Honda pegged as either/or. One name, one product. Burned-in and branded for life. This is because motorcycles and motor vehicles are two different product categories. It proves that conquering multiple different categories with one brand name doesn’t work. Rather, companies who wish to expand into other product areas, or a first product area for that matter, need to do so by using a strong brand identity as the foundation of its marketing strategy. Either that or create new product lines that somehow relate to your old product line, such as cheese companies putting out a line of pre-made cheese and cracker snacks. What Ritz did with Mini Ritz sandwiches, Kraft could have easily done by focusing the product’s marketing slant on the cheese in the cracker.
So what do you do with a brand once you have created one?
Those responsible for the brand defend the integrity of the brand and build on it. Just as Barbie dolls have for decades while Ninja Turtles and Cabbage Patch Dolls came and went. The Barbie brand recognizes the niche it fills in the toy industry—dolls with interchangeable clothes. Nothing else. Of course, refreshing a brand is completely necessary over its lifecycle. Barbie has a way of doing this built-in to its product—changing clothing styles. As the times change, so do Barbie & Ken’s wardrobe. But that’s just one way a brand remains strong through the years. Survey any industry, and you’ll find that long-term successful brands have at some point had to reinvent themselves along the way—like automobile companies of today in the beginning stages of moving to alternative sources for energy. This is the same thing that successful magazines do. They carve out a niche, become the leader in it and then defend it by banking on their uniqueness and further differentiating themselves from the competition—not duplicating it.
If this is the case, why do companies try to extend a brand?
Because launching a completely new brand is very risky and expensive. Often times, initial results of brand extension are positive, but the initiative commonly begins to lose ground and takes some of the overall brand strength with it.
Why creating a new brand is better for business than extending one.
In New Zealand, there is one Airline Company, but two airline brands. Air New Zealand is about top-class service with all the frills. Freedom Air, on the other hand, is the airline for the budget conscious. The two brands operate successfully and independently of each other, which allows the parent company to serve two distinctly different air travel markets.
Less really is best
A niche brand may not offer the sheer number potential of a more generalized brand, but it does offer something a lot better—sustainability. Over the long term, as your brand becomes synonymous with a specific kind of product or service, more people will turn to you for that product or service…and continue to do so because they believe they’re getting quality only a specialist can provide.
A jack-of-all-trades really is master of none. So if you are a master, or wish to become one, do it. Be it. Just not to everyone.
Though they may look the same, they’re not. Just ask their parents. Even as newborns, they could tell them apart, and as they grow up, they’re distinctions become ever more pronounced. This is why we don’t give twin babies the same first names.
In the business world, this idea would seem to carry over as the foundation for a common sensical approach to branding —that different products need to be different brands with different names. However, the only thing common about this sense is that it’s all too commonly ignored in the hopes of cheating risk and the possibility of failure.
Overextended brands are like overstretched rubber bands
Everyone’s heard of a company called Kraft. “Hey, those are the cheese people.” Yep. For years, Kraft and cheese were synonymous. It was a Corporate Branding with a position competitors would have been hard-pressed to erode had company brass been content in their cheesiness. They weren’t. Like many companies blessed with strong brands, Kraft began to think their brand name was invincible and that any product introduced under its banner would dominate their markets simply because of its name. So, Kraft began offering jams, jellies and mayonnaise among other things.
The numerical truth about Kraft’s brand extension strategy
Ohio-based Smucker’s owns 35% of the jams and jellies market. Kraft has 9%. Hellman’s mayonnaise has 42% of the mayo market. Kraft has 18%. The plan for equal domination didn’t quite work out as planned. Despite its dominance in the cheese market, Kraft was relegated to bit player status in these other categories. Their strategy of trying to leverage a great brand name into being all things to all people resulted in few real winning products.
Why doesn’t being all things to all people work?
In your family, you may have been the smart one. If you had brothers and sisters, there may have been the “social” one, the “rebellious” one or the “athletic” one, too. And invariably, those attributes seem to stick with a person throughout their life, often regardless of whether they change.
In Japan, Honda is known as a motorcycle company that dabbles in cars. In America, it’s a car company that dabbles in motorcycles. Despite the fact the company is equally prolific makers of both, the two different markets have Honda pegged as either/or. One name, one product. Burned-in and branded for life. This is because motorcycles and motor vehicles are two different product categories. It proves that conquering multiple different categories with one brand name doesn’t work. Rather, companies who wish to expand into other product areas, or a first product area for that matter, need to do so by using a strong brand identity as the foundation of its marketing strategy. Either that or create new product lines that somehow relate to your old product line, such as cheese companies putting out a line of pre-made cheese and cracker snacks. What Ritz did with Mini Ritz sandwiches, Kraft could have easily done by focusing the product’s marketing slant on the cheese in the cracker.
So what do you do with a brand once you have created one?
Those responsible for the brand defend the integrity of the brand and build on it. Just as Barbie dolls have for decades while Ninja Turtles and Cabbage Patch Dolls came and went. The Barbie brand recognizes the niche it fills in the toy industry—dolls with interchangeable clothes. Nothing else. Of course, refreshing a brand is completely necessary over its lifecycle. Barbie has a way of doing this built-in to its product—changing clothing styles. As the times change, so do Barbie & Ken’s wardrobe. But that’s just one way a brand remains strong through the years. Survey any industry, and you’ll find that long-term successful brands have at some point had to reinvent themselves along the way—like automobile companies of today in the beginning stages of moving to alternative sources for energy. This is the same thing that successful magazines do. They carve out a niche, become the leader in it and then defend it by banking on their uniqueness and further differentiating themselves from the competition—not duplicating it.
If this is the case, why do companies try to extend a brand?
Because launching a completely new brand is very risky and expensive. Often times, initial results of brand extension are positive, but the initiative commonly begins to lose ground and takes some of the overall brand strength with it.
Why creating a new brand is better for business than extending one.
In New Zealand, there is one Airline Company, but two airline brands. Air New Zealand is about top-class service with all the frills. Freedom Air, on the other hand, is the airline for the budget conscious. The two brands operate successfully and independently of each other, which allows the parent company to serve two distinctly different air travel markets.
Less really is best
A niche brand may not offer the sheer number potential of a more generalized brand, but it does offer something a lot better—sustainability. Over the long term, as your brand becomes synonymous with a specific kind of product or service, more people will turn to you for that product or service…and continue to do so because they believe they’re getting quality only a specialist can provide.
A jack-of-all-trades really is master of none. So if you are a master, or wish to become one, do it. Be it. Just not to everyone.
December 20, 2005
Does having an ebook cover or mini-site header graphic design on your website increase your sales or does it hurt your business in the long run?
Having been a Boston Graphic Design consultant for over 12 years now, here are a few things that I’ve learned that it all comes down to; professional images. Do your graphics look good enough? Do they have the right designs?
What do I mean?
Well let’s say that your websites sells an audio product - cd about a recent interview you did, Now lets assume you have some great website-designs but what would happen if you had an ebook cover on your website, well you would probably get a few sales, but it wouldn’t sell great.
Now lets see what would happen if you had an image of a cd with a cd case. How much better would your sales increase, well first thing would be that your customers would see the cd product and know instantly that the website sells an audio product, there are hundreds & thousands who are actively seeking audio products. Your sales would increase just by showing the graphics of an audio cd.
Now by all means I wouldn’t recommend going out and creating an audio cd, unless you have people actively seeking your target market and you can write a decent sales letter.
If you take all of the popular and hot selling products online & offline what do they all have in common?
You guessed it - website graphics, which consist of;
-header panel
-ebook cover
-order button
-background image
-footer image
Just by having any of the above graphics on your website, you can dramatically increase your Website sales, People have reported that their sales have increased by as much as 443% (the above example is for a customer I did some graphics for) Now by all means I wouldn’t recommend creating your own graphics, if you’ve never done it before, I would recommend hiring someone to do them for you; there are hundreds of highly designed people who could do them at a reasonable price.
Now if you’re looking to save some money creating website graphics, then by all means go ahead, there are lots of software which will help you to do the job right.
Here are just a few;
Adobe Photoshop 5 or above so that you can use the action scripts Action scripts - ebook/cd/ezine/spiral/membership card covers Royalty free stock images - from as little as $1.00 per image Special ecover software - software which creates graphics without Photoshop
Here are 3 steps to create great graphics.
Step 1 -
Open Photoshop and select the action script you want. Then open the images you are going to add to the graphics, if you don’t have any try istockphotos.com.
Step 2 –
Enter your text on the template which the action script created. Rearrange the text and images to where they look good on the graphics. Choose the colors which will make everything stand out and look very professional.
Step 3 –
Once everything is looking good, simply save the image for the web and you’re done!
The above 3 steps are exactly all you need to do, but if your not familiar with them then you will need to find tutorials for them, and maybe do a little bit of research for them on your favorite search engine.
Boston Web Design by Brand Identity Guru
Having been a Boston Graphic Design consultant for over 12 years now, here are a few things that I’ve learned that it all comes down to; professional images. Do your graphics look good enough? Do they have the right designs?
What do I mean?
Well let’s say that your websites sells an audio product - cd about a recent interview you did, Now lets assume you have some great website-designs but what would happen if you had an ebook cover on your website, well you would probably get a few sales, but it wouldn’t sell great.
Now lets see what would happen if you had an image of a cd with a cd case. How much better would your sales increase, well first thing would be that your customers would see the cd product and know instantly that the website sells an audio product, there are hundreds & thousands who are actively seeking audio products. Your sales would increase just by showing the graphics of an audio cd.
Now by all means I wouldn’t recommend going out and creating an audio cd, unless you have people actively seeking your target market and you can write a decent sales letter.
If you take all of the popular and hot selling products online & offline what do they all have in common?
You guessed it - website graphics, which consist of;
-header panel
-ebook cover
-order button
-background image
-footer image
Just by having any of the above graphics on your website, you can dramatically increase your Website sales, People have reported that their sales have increased by as much as 443% (the above example is for a customer I did some graphics for) Now by all means I wouldn’t recommend creating your own graphics, if you’ve never done it before, I would recommend hiring someone to do them for you; there are hundreds of highly designed people who could do them at a reasonable price.
Now if you’re looking to save some money creating website graphics, then by all means go ahead, there are lots of software which will help you to do the job right.
Here are just a few;
Adobe Photoshop 5 or above so that you can use the action scripts Action scripts - ebook/cd/ezine/spiral/membership card covers Royalty free stock images - from as little as $1.00 per image Special ecover software - software which creates graphics without Photoshop
Here are 3 steps to create great graphics.
Step 1 -
Open Photoshop and select the action script you want. Then open the images you are going to add to the graphics, if you don’t have any try istockphotos.com.
Step 2 –
Enter your text on the template which the action script created. Rearrange the text and images to where they look good on the graphics. Choose the colors which will make everything stand out and look very professional.
Step 3 –
Once everything is looking good, simply save the image for the web and you’re done!
The above 3 steps are exactly all you need to do, but if your not familiar with them then you will need to find tutorials for them, and maybe do a little bit of research for them on your favorite search engine.
Boston Web Design by Brand Identity Guru
November 17, 2005
For the past year I have been developing websites to be standards compliant. People ask what that exactly means. It means your website is up to code according to the WW3 http://www.w3.org depending on the document type. This group creates standards for the web. Your website can be out of code and look fine. Similar to filling up with 89 octane rather than the suggested 92.
HTML is a programming language that does not follow certain strict guidelines. For example a simple paragraph element <P> hello </P>. This element is allow to be left open <p>hello <p>hello</p> with no real consequences. This openness is left to the browsers to make up or not make up.
XHTML.
The language XHTML is a transitional language between HTML and XML. XHTML is XML-based markup language that works and looks like HTML with some differences. Browers works XHTML and HTML as the same language. The difference mostly are elements need to be closed paragraphs<p>, table cells <td> and even elements that have no closing <br /> for example.
What is the reason for the transition? XML is the future of the web. XHTML 1 allows for backwards compatability while moving forward.
HTML is a programming language that does not follow certain strict guidelines. For example a simple paragraph element <P> hello </P>. This element is allow to be left open <p>hello <p>hello</p> with no real consequences. This openness is left to the browsers to make up or not make up.
XHTML.
The language XHTML is a transitional language between HTML and XML. XHTML is XML-based markup language that works and looks like HTML with some differences. Browers works XHTML and HTML as the same language. The difference mostly are elements need to be closed paragraphs<p>, table cells <td> and even elements that have no closing <br /> for example.
What is the reason for the transition? XML is the future of the web. XHTML 1 allows for backwards compatability while moving forward.
October 5, 2005
Do you have any idea how important your company logo is? It appears on everything from your corporate identity system, brochures to your website, reaching customers, prospects, vendors and the press. In other words, your logo gets to everyone and as they say you only have one chance to make a first impression. Present yourself clearly and dynamically, and you'll look like a professional, even if you are a small company.
Here are some characteristics of a good logo design:
1. Your logo should reflect your company and it’s positioning. If your logo contains a symbol--often called an "icon"--it should relate to your industry, your name, and a defining characteristic of your company or a competitive advantage you offer.
What's the overriding trait you want people to remember about your business? If it's quick delivery, consider objects that connote speed, like wings or a clock. Consider an abstract symbol to convey a progressive approach--abstracts are a great choice for high-tech companies. Or maybe you simply want an object that represents the product or service you're selling. Be clever, if you can, but not at the expense of being clear.
2. Avoid too much detail. Simple logos are recognized faster than complex ones. Strong lines and letters show up better than thin ones, and clean, simple logos reduce and enlarge much better than complicated ones.
But although your logo should be simple, it shouldn't be simplistic. Good logos feature something unexpected or unique without being overdrawn. Look at the pros: McDonald's, Nike, Prudential. Notice how their logos are simple yet compelling. Anyone who's traveled by a McDonald's with a hungry 4-year-old knows the power of a clean logo symbol.
3. Your logo should work well in black and white (one-color printing). If it doesn't look good in black and white, it won't look good at any color. Also keep in mind that printing costs for four-color logos are often greater than that for one-or two-color jobs.
4. Make sure your logo's scalable. It should be aesthetically pleasing in both small and large sizes, in a variety of mediums. A good rule of thumb is the "business card/billboard rule": Your logo should look good on both.
5. Your logo should be artistically balanced. The best way to explain this is that your logo should seem "balanced" to the eye--no one part should overpower the rest. Just as a painting would look odd if all the color and details were segregated in one corner, so do asymmetric logos. Color, line density and shape all affect a logo's balance.
I've designed hundreds of custom logos for every type of business. Please let me know your thoughts or feel free to ask questions by clicking on the comments box.
Here are some characteristics of a good logo design:
1. Your logo should reflect your company and it’s positioning. If your logo contains a symbol--often called an "icon"--it should relate to your industry, your name, and a defining characteristic of your company or a competitive advantage you offer.
What's the overriding trait you want people to remember about your business? If it's quick delivery, consider objects that connote speed, like wings or a clock. Consider an abstract symbol to convey a progressive approach--abstracts are a great choice for high-tech companies. Or maybe you simply want an object that represents the product or service you're selling. Be clever, if you can, but not at the expense of being clear.
2. Avoid too much detail. Simple logos are recognized faster than complex ones. Strong lines and letters show up better than thin ones, and clean, simple logos reduce and enlarge much better than complicated ones.
But although your logo should be simple, it shouldn't be simplistic. Good logos feature something unexpected or unique without being overdrawn. Look at the pros: McDonald's, Nike, Prudential. Notice how their logos are simple yet compelling. Anyone who's traveled by a McDonald's with a hungry 4-year-old knows the power of a clean logo symbol.
3. Your logo should work well in black and white (one-color printing). If it doesn't look good in black and white, it won't look good at any color. Also keep in mind that printing costs for four-color logos are often greater than that for one-or two-color jobs.
4. Make sure your logo's scalable. It should be aesthetically pleasing in both small and large sizes, in a variety of mediums. A good rule of thumb is the "business card/billboard rule": Your logo should look good on both.
5. Your logo should be artistically balanced. The best way to explain this is that your logo should seem "balanced" to the eye--no one part should overpower the rest. Just as a painting would look odd if all the color and details were segregated in one corner, so do asymmetric logos. Color, line density and shape all affect a logo's balance.
I've designed hundreds of custom logos for every type of business. Please let me know your thoughts or feel free to ask questions by clicking on the comments box.
September 21, 2005
http://del.icio.us is a social bookmarks manager and more. The site allow a personal collection of bookmarks appended with "tags".
These tags are user applied with multiple meanings. For example, our site www.brandidentityguru.com I would apply 'boston website graphic design'.
You can group tags in a variety of ways to give you different views into your categorization of the web.
Want to search the web for website design companies?
type the URL http://del.icio.us/tag/website+design+company
This will return all bookmarks tagged website design company. The advantage over other search engines is the human factor. The advantage is filter system where people bookmark the site with relevant tags. Sometimes the search has positive results, however it provides another avenue to search the web.
These tags are user applied with multiple meanings. For example, our site www.brandidentityguru.com I would apply 'boston website graphic design'.
You can group tags in a variety of ways to give you different views into your categorization of the web.
Want to search the web for website design companies?
type the URL http://del.icio.us/tag/website+design+company
This will return all bookmarks tagged website design company. The advantage over other search engines is the human factor. The advantage is filter system where people bookmark the site with relevant tags. Sometimes the search has positive results, however it provides another avenue to search the web.