Talent Agency 411

Everything you do in life - from the way you dress to the car you buy, from the friends you see to the club you belong, from the notes you write to the way you speak — either builds or diminishes your personal brand. Below are ten suggestions for building a stronger personal brand.

One: Become an expert source. Deliver a speech, write a bylined article, and become an expert source for reporters. Make sure you have a current photo, bio, resume, and speaker introduction.

Two: Become a great communicator. Research shows communications skill is the top determinant for upward social and professional mobility. Join Toastmasters or hire a communications coach to ensure that your written and verbal skills are at their best.

Three: Draft a marketing plan for yourself annually, and review it quarterly. Include specific goals, strategies, action steps, and a timetable.

Four: Develop an ‘elevator speech.” Within the time that it takes an elevator to travel one floor - about 60-seconds - be able to deliver a succinct description of what you do, how you do it differently, and the benefit it provides.

Five: Build your Rolodex. Make new business contacts and stay in touch with them. Most people with powerful brands have powerful friends.

Six: Realize that your boss can be your most powerful ally — or enemy — in building your brand. Be loyal and never speak ill of him or her - to anyone. We should make our bosses look good, and help them build their own brands.

Seven: Dress for the job you want, not the job you have. Balance your individual style with clothing that will appeal to those you are trying to impress.

Eight: Become a class act. Learn good business and social etiquette. Buy elegant personal stationery and send hand-written notes. Know how to order a good bottle of wine in a fine restaurant and drink it sparingly during dinner. (Remember, alcohol and branding seldom mix.)

Nine: Select “significant” significant others. Who you date or who you marry affects your brand. John Hancock CEO David F. D’Alessandro in his book Career Warfare: 10 Rules for Building a Successful Personal Brand and Fighting to Keep It, suggests that single people not take their dates to company events. If they do, they will be judged by the outcome of every romance.

Ten: Give something back. Giving your time, talent, and money to charitable causes is a brand-builder especially when it complements your brand strategy. Find a cause you are passionate about. When I was in public relations, I wanted to be known for my creativity. By limiting my community involvement to arts organizations I was able to reinforce my personal brand. Not only did my involvement in the arts benefit my career, I enjoyed the work. I still do.

Your personal brand is one of your greatest business assets. Nurture your brand and you will nurture your career.

“The Career Engineer,” Randy Siegel, helps clients electrify their careers and transform their lives by becoming high voltage communicators. Power up and subscribe to “Stand in Your Power!” his complimentary monthly eNewsletter at http://www.powerhousecommunications.com.

No competition?! Is this nave? Wishful thinking? A load of bunk?

Not at all.

As a coach who has consistently defied conventional wisdom as to what makes a successful coaching practice (NOT built on coaching other coaches!), let me share with you what I have learned along the way and what saves me EVERY SINGLE TIME I start to get overwhelmed or lose my business focus. It is so basic but SO critical to the success of solopreneurs and small business owners and it all boils down to that old saying, “KNOW THYSELF”. Simple, yes, but surprisingly difficult for many and a lot richer journey than you might expect.

What follows is a simple model that will help you see exactly where you can focus your business building efforts most effectively.

First, you do need to know a few things about your industry and those who specialize within it. This will give you the context in which your business exists. Consider these three major areas for your investigation:

1. Your industry as a whole (e.g. all coaches, all massage therapists, all nutritional consultants)

2. Those who share your ’specialty’ (e.g. retirement coaches, those who do sports massage, those who specialize in the nutritional needs of menopausal women.)

3. YOU.

Trap #1: Becoming a Commodity

Not uncommonly, new businesses suffer from a lack of definition. To niche or not to niche? It’s a scary proposition to enter in to a new field, or to opt for self-employment and we often want to keep our options (for revenue) open. It is natural when one enters new territory to search for any measuring stick one can find to learn how to succeed in one’s chosen field.

Unfortunately, this often means discernment gets tossed out and you can start to read every industry directive on what it takes to succeed as relevant to your business. It may not be. In fact, some of what you read may go so against your inherent strengths that you will risk being trapped in inefficiency and find yourself stalled and overwhelmed at every turn should you try to follow their recommendations.

It’s important to understand that what is common to all distinguishes none. Identify, the overlap of those skills and techniques that are the foundation of your industry, regardless of your specialty area. While it is critical that you have a strong foundation, do not allow yourself to believe that this alone will build your business. It will not. You will simply be an interchangeable entity with everyone else in your field where prospective clients are concerned which leaves them no reason to choose you on factors other than price and gives them no reason to be loyal to you.

Businesses playing to commodity will experience high turn over of clientele, poor return on investment for marketing efforts and lack of a clear direction in their business building efforts.

BEWARE: Distinctiveness today is commodity tomorrow. Once upon a time there was only one coach, or dentist, or widget maker. It was enough to just be that. As the field grows what is distinctive for the individuals in it MUST evolve.

Trap #2: Playing to the Competition OR Trying to “out-Oprah” Oprah

Once you have a handle on the foundation of your industry and have developed the requisite set of skills, the next logical place to look is at those who share your specialty area.

Where your business shares aspects with those in your field in general, you are in unfocused, general competition arena with everyone in your industry. Where you overlap with those in your specialty there is focused competition.

The temptation here is to adopt a “me, too…only better…or cheaper…or…” attitude. You see everyone in your specialty has an e-book so you set off to write yours. Or they market in a certain way, so you do also. Or they use a really great catch phrase so you adopt their language, or seek the same licensure for a program that is bringing them money.

Hear this: You can’t play their game better than they do. When you play “me, too” you will always play “catch up” and it is exhausting to jump over a bar that someone else keeps raising. You risk being taken away from your inherent strengths and your customers will be able to tell the knock-off from the original. They may come to you based on price, but you may lose them in the long run unless you discover what you uniquely bring to the table. You can’t out-Oprah Oprah. Nor can you out-Laura Laura. (Nor can Oprah out-you YOU). Don’t even try. It’s okay to be inspired and led but you won’t be able to replicate the exact steps of any successful person and end up in the same place.

YOU, GLORIOUS YOU

What this leads you to is that big section of the business arena that you share with no one. This is where personal branding lives. This is where the stuff that makes customers raving, loyal fans lives. This is where most business owners back off and scare themselves silly.

It’s easier to hang out and follow competition or to play the ‘me, too’ game. It’s hard to play by your own rules without feeling like a nut. You WILL be out of your comfort zone. Passion and creativity and a thriving, living business are not static entities. That’s just the truth. You will need LOTS of courage to be unapologetically you. You will have to understand that some folks will not hire you if you are too ‘you’…they may be looking for me, or Mackenzie, or Oprah…and the folks who don’t want us may be looking for you! You don’t want to work with EVERY one. You want to work with the RIGHT ones. Trust me on this. I used to work with everyone and it was exhausting! Now, the clients who DO resonate with you…that is powerful stuff!

Clients who are allowed to fully experience doing business with YOU (as opposed to someone like you) are a wealth of information, not just business. When you are clear about who you are and communicate that clearly you allow your customers to start a dialogue with you about what is relevant to them in your business. They will willingly give you feedback, support, referrals and product ideas because people want to help people they believe in. If you are giving your customers value, they are going to want you to be around to keep giving it to them!

When you are clear in your vision, uncluttered in your business habits and responsive in an ongoing dialogue with your customers your business will grow effortlessly. Your customers will help you know when you are becoming a commodity and they will encourage you to stretch. They will require it and so should you.

Now how do you find your uniqueness? Your uniqueness, my friends, is not in any article. You will discover it in dialogue, self-reflection, experimentation and boldness. THAT is where the fun begins!

Laura Young, M.A. is a life and business coach and owner of Wellspring Coaching. She is a contributing author to A Guide to Getting It:Purpose and Passion, Become Your Own Great and Powerful and A Guide to Getting It: Creative Intelligence, due out Spring 2006.
Laura specializes in working with individuals facing midlife transitions (personal and career), self-employed individuals on business development strategies and high level leaders on communication and leadership skills.
With doctoral training in counseling psychology, Laura has written extensively on such topics as stress management, motivation, finding one’s life purpose, achieving life balance, cultivating a healthy lifestyle and improving communication in personal and professional relationships. Please visit her blogs and website to tap in to her extensive resource base.

What’s the best branding strategy for your company?

The answer is, it depends.

The latest thinking in the field of branding (which first began to emerge as a true field of study back in the early ’50s) identifies five branding strategies that reign supreme in today’s corporate world. Although each strategy can be successfully employed by companies offering very different products and services, they all seem to work best within fairly narrow parameters that pertain to the industry, product or service and market being served.

Choosing the best strategy for your company, then, depends on matching the parameters of your product/service and market to the appropriate model.

Keeping in mind that entire books have been written on the individual branding strategies, here’s a quick snapshot of each one:

1. Mind-Share Branding. Success in this category requires owning and consistently expressing a set of abstract associations that customers relate to the product or service. However, the perceived benefits of buying and using the products (i.e., consistently low price, great selection) are very real to the customers. As the company consistently expresses the “brand DNA” through each and every transaction, it becomes firmly entrenched in the customer’s mind as the only choice in this product category.

Interestingly, mind-share branding works equally well at opposite ends of the product spectrum. Functional and low-involvement product categories (such as Tide, Southwest Airlines and Wal*Mart) and complicated, high-involvement product categories (such as Dell computers) can both prosper under a mind-share brand strategy. At each end, however, the goal — and primary benefit — is to simplify the buying decision for the customer.

Good reads: Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, Differentiate or Die and The Disciple of Market Leaders

2. Cultural Branding. Cultural branding is probably the most American of all branding strategies in that it uses cultural icons and “brand religion” to establish and sustain a brand myth with which individual consumers can passionately identify. The focus is not so much on the product or service as it is on the relationship between the cultural icon and the product and the brand myth that the consumer buys into. The most successful brand myths address acute contradictions in society that touch people at a very deep level.

Culturally branded companies run the gamut from home décor, fashion and automobiles to food/beverages, entertainment/leisure and social movements. What kind of person responds to cultural branding? It’s the meek, mild-mannered accountant who buys the Harley Davidson hog in order to unleash his “inner self” on weekends. It’s the budding playground hoopster who just knows that he will never reach the NBA unless he wears Nike Air Jordans. It’s the thirsty consumer reaching for an ice-cold Coca Cola because “it’s the real thing.”

Good reads: How Brands Become Icons and The Culting of Brands

3. Emotional Branding. Want your customers to consider you a friend rather than just some faceless entity they buy from? Then aim for the emotional branding strategy. Here, the goal is to build deep interpersonal connections with each individual who interacts with the brand, so that you end up with a relationship partner rather than a customer.

Emotional brands have real personality. They are often expressed through a character or persona (Mickey Mouse, Ronald McDonald) that appeals to people of all ages. Emotional brands work best with services, retailers and specialty goods — such as Disney and Starbucks — where the company can tap into powerful emotions and create compelling experiences that evoke strong loyalty to the brand.

Good reads: Emotional Branding and The Experience Economy

4. Viral Branding. Thanks to plenty of media buzz, viral branding has rocketed to the top of the charts as the latest brand strategy of choice. However, the fact that the media has embraced it does not mean that all companies should. As the name implies, viral branding works by spreading the word through “brand viruses” such as influential spokespeople, early adopter customers and other forms of grass-roots marketing. Accordingly, it achieves the best results with new fashions, new technologies and premium and super-premium brands that eschew mainstream markets.

Viral branding appeals to people who see themselves as cool, hip and fashionable. It attracts those who get a charge from “discovering” a new brand and leading the vanguard of early brand advocates. Who stands out in the viral branding category? Google, Hotmail, Absolut Vodka and Vonage are names that immediately come to mind.

Good reads: Tipping Point, Spreading the Idea Virus, The Anatomy of Buzz and The Influentials

5. Sensory Branding. Singapore Airlines and Kellogg’s Cornflakes in the same branding category? Hard to believe, but true. Sensory branding takes the focus off the product or service itself and puts it squarely on the sensory experience it creates for the consumer. Hence, this category includes a broad and a diverse range of products and services, from fashion, cosmetics and high-end retail to automotive and travel/hospitality.

Sensory branding goes beyond the ordinary to create a full connection with one’s environment through the senses. We’re talking full-on sensory engagement here! Not just with the over-stimulated senses of sight and sound, but also connecting with touch, taste and smell. In some categories, the buying experience (how, when and where the product is purchased) helps to create the brand. Here the brand doesn’t really begin until customers actually use the product or service. The end result is an experience so full, rich and satisfying that customers refuse to consider any other brand.

Good read: Brand Sense

Choosing Your Branding Strategy

As an avid student and practitioner of branding, my experience is that all strong brands can usually be linked to a clear focus on one of these models. However, while it’s usually best to focus your branding efforts on one model, aspects of the other models can be used to strengthen a brand.

For example, the mind-share model of branding tends to rely on the sight and sound senses. But it’s fairly easy to add a distinctive touch or smell from the sensory model to strengthen the brand.

Regardless of which strategy you choose, building a strong brand depends upon applying the appropriate model to your product category, the unique circumstances of your customers and your market. I hope I’ve given you at least a good start in identifying which model is right for you.

Get your free whitepaper: The 10 Biggest Technology Marketing Mistakes… and How to Avoid Them

Rod Whitson serves Townsend as President and Chief Brand Strategist. Townsend is expert at helping organizations with innovative products and services develop differentiated, compelling value propositions. Townsend is the largest integrated marketing agency in Southern California. Rod has personally led recent branding engagements with Intel, BAE Systems, Merck, DowPharma, Marsh & McLennan, and the University of California system. He has also worked with a host of successful and not so successful early stage technology and life sciences companies. Since Townsend’s founding in 1993, it has helped clients create market valuation in excess of $80 billion.

Visit Rod’s blog, Branding the Complex

© 2006 Rod Whitson - All Rights Reserved Worldwide

The Key Ingredient

You’ve heard it yourself. He’s the life and soul of the place, a grand man
altogether. She’s the heart of the business, a formidable woman. Sometimes, it
seems to me that the more successful hotels or restaurants are those that are
closely identified with their larger-than-life owner or founder. In Ireland, the
personalities of P.V. Doyle, Myrtle Allen and Paddy Fitzpatrick stand squarely out in
front of the places they created. Elsewhere, Conrad Hilton and Heston Blumenthal
do the same. Did I say ‘closely identified’? Sometimes, in our minds, they are the
business. We find it impossible to imagine these establishments without them.

In many ways, these characters make the business of branding the hotel or
restaurant a simple matter. No need to worry about the tricky question of
differentiation for they are one of a kind, outstanding in a field that they’ve paced
out, planted and grown. If you need to know how the brand should behave, just
study the owner and watch what he or she does. He is the brand in action, she is the
brand made flesh. The story of their lives is your brand manual, each entry a lesson
in how to greet a guest, treat a supplier or promote the business.

However, whilst it has many obvious attractions, this can be a dangerous
strategy. What happens when the defining character passes away or moves on? Who
do we look to for direction? The world of business is full of stories of withering
decline following the departure of the main man or woman. They leave a gap that
cannot easily be filled.

So how do we find another way to breathe life into our business and safeguard
its future? This was the challenge facing Declan and Bernadette Fagan in early 2005,
as they made plans to add to the success of their business, The Temple Spa in Co.
Westmeath. The pair had tended to the steady growth of Temple from a farmhouse
offering bed and breakfast accommodation to one of Ireland’s first dedicated spas.
Now, they wished to stretch a little more and sensed that it was time to develop an
identity for the business that was less reliant on their own, immediate delivery of it.
They invited us to help and we met with them in late spring to begin work together.

History Ready-Mixed?

Their already difficult task was made even harder by the fact that they
proposed
to move their accommodation and spa facilities from the farmhouse that had
housed the business since its beginnings some fifteen years previously, to a new
building across the farmyard. For their guests, the image of the eighteenth century
farmhouse stood for all that was best about Temple and the prospect of both
stepping back from the business and stepping out of the building that had been its
home for so many years was a daunting one for its owners.

So, where were they to look to in order to find a story for their business? At
first, the answer seemed obvious. The farmhouse at Temple stood on a site that had
its origins in the seventh century when it had been closely associated with St. Kieran
of Clonmacnoise. The ecclesiastical centre founded by the saint is only a short
fifteen miles away and the earlier title of the place, Teampaill Mac An Tsaoir, carried
his family name (meaning Son of the Carpenter in Irish). Even better, there was
evidence to suggest that members of the family of the saint had set up house on the
site of the current Temple, which stands just off the nearby esker line, one of the
natural roads left behind by the glaciers that were the routes of transport and
pilgrimage in earliest times.

A ready-made story, straight from the tin and ready to eat! This was too good
to be true. And so it proved. We raced off to the history books to research the life of
St. Kieran, sure that we had found a personality whose story could become the story
of Temple. There, we discovered accounts of an extraordinary character whose life
read like one great adventure story. Kieran had founded monasteries, commissioned
great books, performed miracles and left an indelible mark on the face of early,
Christian Ireland. However, we also discovered his reputation as a driven holy man
and scholar of impossibly high standards, who was possessed of a fierce
determination and inflexibility that would try the patience of, well, a saint, I
suppose.

Or A Family Recipe?

We were in a fix. How could we square the story of the life of this formidable
and difficult-to-live-with saint with the story of our much gentler Temple? Should
we look elsewhere? Despite the misfit, it seemed to us that we were somehow in the
right territory. And then, we wondered. We imagined what it must have been like to
live and work at Clonmacnoise in the shadow of a saint. In many ways, monasteries
were the cities of their time and St. Kieran’s community crowded together at the
crossroads of a network of some of the earliest routes of both pilgrimage and trade.
We imagined the place as a hive of activity, busy with the comings and goings of
hundreds of people. Towering over this bustling society was the figure of a living
saint, fierce and demanding. It is not difficult to imagine that a man living in the
shadow of this ancient metropolis might have experienced something we now know
as stress.

Nor is it difficult to picture this same man, waking one morning and quietly
removing himself from the hustle and bustle of Clonmacnoise to seek out a place of
retreat where he might spend time alone with his own thoughts. He wouldn’t have to
travel too far before he found the place that is Temple and it would have struck him
then, as it strikes us today, as the perfect place for a man to put away his worries
and his routines and simply be.

In time, of course, others would hear of the quiet corner that this man had
found for himself and would make their own way from Clonmacnoise to spend some
time there before returning to the rigours of their everyday lives.

The Way To A Man’s Heart

Did it happen as we have imagined it? Probably not, but it could have done.
More importantly, this is a story that helps make sense of what we now know of
Temple and what Declan and Bernadette need in order to grow their business. Their
new story becomes much more a story of place than one of history. It is a place that
predates the farmhouse that has been the face of Temple for the last number of
years and one that continues to offer the same quiet appeal now that the business is
moving across the farmyard to new accommodation.

In the story of our holy man seeking exile from the madding crowd, there is
much that rings true for both the owners of the business and their guests. His move
away from the hectic worlds of commerce and academia has echoes in the escape
from modern pressures. His seeking out of a quiet place in which to heal speaks to
his more contemporary cousins, beaten down by the stresses of life.

We can easily imagine him in the Temple of today, occupying himself with
simple household tasks or basking quietly in a corner of the garden that briefly
catches the sun. This gentle man has his own faith, but is just as comfortable with
those of other faiths or none. All he asks is that they step lightly in his world.

A Second Helping

On a practical level, the story offers Declan and Bernadette a new model for
behaviour and communications in their business that owes much to their own values
and practices but is bigger than them and therefore less dependent on them. It
helps them to describe their business in a less self-conscious way.

They can now talk of Temple as a place apart, a way of life and a state of mind,
somewhere that their guests can return to both by road and in their mind’s eye. The
story deepens the connections that Temple has always enjoyed with those who have
visited. It takes the emphasis off the spa element alone and celebrates the broader
range of peace and quiet, great food, treatments, guided (and free-range) walks,
yoga and fine wines that Temple has to offer. This in turn has prompted the
reframing of Temple Spa as Temple Country Retreat & Spa.

Finally, the accent on place enables the owners to deflect attention from the
newness of the recent work and any concerns in the minds of returning guests that
this represents an upheaval - after all, this is just the latest in a long series of gentle
changes made since Temple was first inhabited some 1,500 years ago.

About The Blend

Adding To The Mix is part of a series of articles in which Gerard Tannam takes
a look at how to cook up a great brand, samples some of the ingredients you’ll need
to make one of your own and weighs up the impact of branding on different parts of
the business mix.

More articles in this series can be found in “The Blend’ at http://www.islandbridge.com/brandwidth.asp

Gerard is the founding Managing Director of Islandbridge, a business that
delivers brand direction, planning and communications across a wide range of
sectors including property, retail, hospitality, retail and tourism. Recent clients
include Temple Country Retreat & Spa, Platinum Hotels, Liberty Limousines, The
Westport Woods Hotel, The Arbutus Hotel Killarney, Liffeyside Properties, Sapphire
Cove Resort, The Smile Conference and DIT School of Hospitality Management &
Tourism’s MagicTouch Partners.

All businesses have to have some sort or other logo of their own. This logo is the media wherein they introduce themselves to their clients. It is a known fact that visual processing is a very important way of gathering information as a good design is always remembered for ages. Keeping this in mind, most of the multinational companies spend millions of dollars on the development of their logo and any other branding material they need.

There are some logo design tips that ensure that the logo design becomes a successful logo for your business. Have you ever noted that most of the greatest logos around are simple? This is because it is then easier to remember and recognize a simple logo than to identify a complicated logo design. The typeface of the logo design too makes a lot of difference in the success of the logo. Make your logo design using vector graphics as these graphics can be easily resized without suffering any loss of details and image quality and take lesser memory capacity in the computer.

However, it is better if you employ a specialized logo design firm to help you in creating your logo design, than you trying to do it yourself. This is because they know how to produce a better logo than you can, and actually, a logo design is not always very costly! Remember, the successful logo has to be one that is able to communicate your image well to the market. It should work well not only in color, but in black and white too as forms and faxes are all in black and white, should be able to draw a second glance from your potential clients and should work well both in large and small formats as in a t-shirt and a business card!

It is always good to spend time going through business cards and letterheads from other companies before meeting your logo designer, to decide what you may need in your logo. When thinking of your logo design, keep your target market in mind, and what designs may keep their attention and respect. Have an idea of the material you intend to use the logo on like forms and brochures. The paper of the logo design also goes to your image as paper is not only seen, but can also be felt. The color you use in the logo affects your logo design as the colors you use send different messages to people.

Make your logo design as unique as possible as it increases the likelihood of getting a trademark protection. Make sure you check up with the trademark lawyer to ensure you do not run into the risk of infringing another company’s trademark symbol or logo. If you run a small business, you may not be keen in investing in enlisting the services of a logo designer. In such cases, you should try to use some high quality royalty free clip art, combined with a suitable typeface for your company name. However, clip arts do not give the effect a custom logo gives, as they can be easily duplicated or stolen

Thomson Chemmanoor a professional Logo Builder who owns and operates the follow websites http://www.articlenetworks.com and http://www.logodesignexpert.com To know more details visit these websites.

The Brand: A source of value for the consumer

Although we are primarily dealing with brands and their optimization, it is important to clarify that brands do not necessarily exist in all markets. Even if brands exist in the legal sense they do not always play a role in the buying decision process of consumers. Other factors may be more important.

For example, research on ‘brand sensitivity’ shows that in several product categories, buyers do not look at the brand when they are making their choice. Who is concerned about the brand when they are making their choice? Who is concerned about the brand when they are buying a writing pad, a rubber; felt tip pens, markers or photocopy paper? Neither private individuals nor companies. There are no strong brands in such markets as sugar and socks. In Germany there is no national brand of flour. Even the beer brands are mostly regional.

Inherently, brands exist as soon as there is perceived risk. Once the risk perceived by the buyer disappears, the brand has no longer any benefit. It is only a name on a product, and it ceases to be reference mark, a guide or a source of added value. The perceived risk is greater once the unit price is higher or the repercussions of a bad choice are more severe. Thus the purchase of long lasting goods is a long term commitment. On top of this, because humans are social animals, we judge ourselves on certain choices that we make and this explains why a large part of our social identity is built around the logos and the brands that we wear. As far as food is concerned, there is a certain amount of intrinsic risk involved whenever we ingest something and allow it to enter our bodies. The brand’s function is to overcome this danger which explains the importance of brands in the market for, for example, spirits such as vodka and gin.

The Brand: A source of value to the company

Why do financial analysts prefer companies with strong brands? Because they are less risky. Therefore, the brand works in the same way for the financial analyst as for the consumer, the brand removes the risk. The certainity, the guarantee and the removal of the risk are included in the price. By paying a high price for a company with brands the financial analyst is acquiring near certain future cash flows.

If the brand is strong it benefits from a high degree of loyalty and thus from stability of future sales. At Volvic, 10% of the buyers of this brand of mineral water are regular and loyal and represent 50% of the sales. The reputation of the brand is a source of demand and lasting attractiveness, the image of superior quality and added values justifies a premium price. A dominant brand is an entry barrier to competitors because it acts as a reference in its category. If it is a prestigious or a trendsetter in terms of style it can generate substantial royalties by granting licenses, for example, Naf-Naf earned over six million pounds in net royalties in 1993.

Investment in production, productivity and R&D. Thanks to these, the company can acquire specific know-how, a knack which cannot be imitated and which in accounting terms is also an intangible asset. Sometimes the company temporarily monopolizes the product by registering a patent. This is the basis of marketing in the pharmaceutical industry but also companies like Ferrero, whose products are not easily imitated despite their success.

Visit what is brand management or marketing brand management for more information on Branding your product or service.

We should all recognize the marketing efforts of John Deere especially as we have spoken before with regards to their TOYS. They have a complete line of nearly every tractor or agricultural attachment they make available in small, micro size.

http://www.johndeeregifts.com/category-category_id/236946

By instilling brand name with kids they are creating a culture of future customers and brand name recognition. The reason I bring this up, since it is not a new issue is that these toys are on the shelves of Wal-Mart and they are really selling well, right up there with Match Box and Hot Wheels. Other smart companies are NASCAR and Harley Davidson, which also have many die cast products flowing off the shelves. And it makes sense all the way around. NASCAR is now following the Baseball Card idea for drivers and that is also a big hit, really big. I talked to a guy who was a wholesaler traveling the country stocking stores up on these kids cards as impulse items and the customers also cannot keep them in stock. NASCAR also has board games like Monopoly and penalties of the dice for pit stops, tire flats, crashes and the game is very fun to play and kids and dads really love it. Generally such toys are out of stock.

If you think about it here is one Brand Name signing up with another brand name to further both brand names, such synergy strategies is used also by our team. Very smart marketing that they do not seem to understand at the top American business schools and the Thesis Projects and Dissertations on the subject really are lacking and the HBR - Harvard Business Review has done a poor job of understanding these things. The doers are doing it and the academia is talking about something they do not even understand. Any reality based executive who has read almost every book on branding and discussed with branding executives and/or met people who have had family in the Toy Business who really did not understand how synergies work or which brands will work good together or why. NASCAR is so popular that the Republican National Committee ought to sponsor a car and driver. Just like they should be selling Die Cast Toys of Air Force One, the Presidential Tour Bus, Presidential Limo, Black Secret Service SUVs, Farm animals on the Ranch and action figures of the main players. Many NASCAR novelty and toy items are perpetually out of stock and you can ask anyone, why, because it has managed it’s brand very well and it has crossed all areas and social self segregated segments; Rich and Poor, South and North, East and West Coasts. Good branding, very good. Dads like to buy toys they wish they had when they were young, but those toys did not exist yet. Hasbro has made an agreement with 29 NASCAR Drivers. Folks this is big business; but most of all it is smart branding and all of us should stand up and take notes.

John Deere is taking up lots of shelf space in Wal-Mart, quite incredible really. The number of toys is incredible including books and Play ground toys. Think of it. Amazon who sells books sells John Deere and NASCAR Toys and John Deere has developed books teaching kids about farming and life and hard work ethic, exactly what kids need to learn if they are to grow up raise a family, run their own farm take their kids to NASCAR events, hire the Car Wash Guys and eventually buy themselves a Harley Davidson. Let me know when all this starts making sense to you’all.

http://www.johndeerekids.com/

Kids and Brand Names go together, they always have and also realize that big corporations who wants to continue brand name and sell to the masses must never forget the kids whether they are established Brands and the Largest Corporations in their field. Think of McDonalds “Play Places’ as well. Think about it.

“Lance Winslow” - Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs/

Why pay a high priced PR agent when you can get free media placement to promote your product, service, or book?

Follow these top ten tips for 2005 and it will
be your most profitable year yet!

1. Write an attention grabbing headline.

Realize that your headline must immediately
“hook” a busy producer or editor at first glance.
If your headline doesn’t hook them, they won’t read
further.

2. Be certain that your book is appropriate for the target audience.

Do not send a media release about your romance novel to a radio show that interviews only nonfiction authors. Wishful thinking is well and good, but realize that shows KNOW their target market.

3. Realize that there is a difference in format when sending a release by email and by fax.

A faxed release and release sent by mail can be
identical. However, an email release requires careful
crafting to get right and is an art onto itself. The key
concept to remember is twofold. First, the subject line spells the difference between the release being opened or deleted. Second, you must target delivery of the email release carefully, or you risk being banned forever to the recipient’s “bozo” file.

4. Be certain to include key information in a book
release such as your ISBN number, publication
date, page count and binding, and if you like
a small .jpeg of the cover.

5. You can increase your chances of
being booked on a radio station if you offer
to give away books on the show in your
release.

6. For media releases aimed at reviewers,
include information on how they can
get a book to review by email or fax.

7. Do not follow up to see if the recipient
received the release. If this is a show or
publication you are keenly interested in,
call them with “new information”
designed to create more excitement
in featuring you.

8. Keep a notebook with you and
jot down names of appropriate media
contacts as you read publications and
hear radio interviews.

9. Journalists and producers need you
and your news, but will lose respect if
you hammer them with releases that
don’t apply to their market or beat.
Discriminate.

10. Keep a “swipe file” of
clever advertisements or headlines
you can refer to when you need
a creative boost.

—

Publishing Guidelines: You can publish this article in your print or electronic ezine as long as you include the resource box/signature line below. If you are using this for your web based ezine, please hyperlink to http://www.BuildingBuzz.com and send a courtesy link to mailto:mdvari@deg.com

Marisa D’Vari is author of the new book Building Buzz: How to Reach and Impress Your Target Audience (Career Press, 2005 .
Access a complimentary 76 page reports on free media placement, as well as additional articles, at http://www.BuildingBuzz.com and can be reached at mdvari@deg.com

The public buys far more than just your products, services and so-called image promotions. Whenever they interact with anyone or anything associated with your business, they are automatically branded emotionally, good or bad, by the totality of your business character.

Whether you are a small business or a large operation, it is immaterial. If that brand is found lacking at any time in the customer-relation scenario, their return to you as a future-paying customer will be highly unlikely, not to mention all of their word-of-mouth associations. If that doesn’t get your attention, then you and your business are in trouble already.

Brand marketing and brand character are certainly familiar busness terms, but they are business-school jargon, nonetheless. All of those buzz words may sound great at board-rooom presentations and seminars, but often mean something else to customers.

While the highly-paid marketing gurus tell you to concentrate on presenting your product or service imagery, they fail to warn you that it is your organizational brand that does the real imprinting. What’s most notable is that the total character of your particular business imprints that brand on your customers’ emotions, a realm far beyond typical business education. That’s why I believe you should expect every business consultant to posess this kind of perspective.

As every interaction with your public is a so-called “moment of truth” or, better yet, “moment of judgment”, the public knows when they’re being burned by a hot poker; and they judge accordingly. A form of business branding is, therefore, created by you and your organization at every turn. It’s both an active and passive event. The customer merely views it, experiences its presence, engages his or her emotions, and then determines YOUR fate.

So, it’s time to make yourself aware of the quality of your business trademark as much as your products and services. It’s the only way to really distinguish your organization from the crowded and competitive business arena we call world markets!

Obviously every company promotes its products and services to gain market share for the purpose of profit. That’s no sin. Without realizing it, though, a poor organizational brand quality can scuttle that endeavor, especially when it is exposed as an integral part of the market-to-purchase-service process.

You can’t hide it. Emotional branding of your customers is especially created or dessecrated with every interaction at every level, whether that interaction is direct or indirect.

So, realization that business-branding occurs all the time is your first step, but a most-important one. While typical brand marketing of a product focuses mainly on product imagery, it is your public interactions that can force all of the expenses associated with marketing that imagery to crumble in a single moment. Point: As your organizational character is reflected, so goes your future success or failure!

In other words, dealing with the public especially exposes your organizational brand for what it really is. In total, every talk and every walk that your company engages in, regardless of size and business sector, refines or tarnishes your business-brand image. Here’s where the true corporate or business character, as displayed by your people in the form or disposition and attitudes, sets you up for profits and losses.

Lose the heart of the customer and all of that development, testing, marketing and expected profits will go literally up in smoke. The key here is learning how to recognize your business brand and keep it shining from within, not just on the surface.

Surprisingly, many highly educated organizations don’t realize WHY their business brand is broken. It’s pitiful to watch. Assuming it’s production or process related, management know-it-all vanity seems to get in the way from seeing the simple truth.

The Power of People and Emotions

Every business has managers TALK about the importance of people, but actually focus or WALK away from the people factors like character; and people define the totality of your business brand far more than any tool in your marketing arsenal.

It’s true that many CEOs and managers realize the importance of appealing to emotion. However, the branding tool that they usually choose to do the job is their product or service itself. They even attempt smiles and free coffee mugs which are not enough, because that’s not what customers want or need. Well, there’s much more!

First of all, assuming that values touted in mission and philosophy statements are sufficient for success can be a dangerous assumption in today’s competitive arenas. Character needs to be perfected at every turn, internally and externally.

For example, your programs may be internally late, not due to the inabilities of your people, but due to internal cutting politics, indecisions and a constant state of change induced by managers like a form of rearranging deck chairs on a sinking ship. I know this first hand.

In my 36 years of associating with various product development and product marketing teams, including 12 years with the successful Saturn Corporation, I have personally witnessed just how brand-marketing strategies have caused many fine organizations to lose focus. How? They have been led to conform to the lopsided thinking that branding applies more to a form of product and service imagery that induces lust more than warm emotions.

Externally, a business truly has to focus on product, price and marketing imagery, but directing all of it toward customer lust to buy is certainly a double-edged sword. For one, lust is the wrong emotion to appeal.

By its nature, lust is a sentiment that is never satisfied, and never enough to keep customers always buying from you. Here’s why: Those who lust are also fickle! Eventually the truth about your pricing, fair value, reliability, service and care can cause YOU to be judged by them walking with their feet and their wallets.

Price gouging especially personifies negative-emotion branding, and occurs when a company prices their products or services so that managers can make salaries and benefits beyond their true worth. I guess that’s supposed to be just too bad for the public. That’s capitalism, many say. In reality, gouging then becomes the business brand; and attempting to save the business face by donating to charities and politicians is viewed merely as an attempt to gain absolution. Some rebates kind of fit into that category, in my opiniion. The prices were a gouge to begin with!

A more sinister brand occurs when business allows itself to use manipulatable accounting practices like RONA (return on net assets) as the main benchmark for management bonuses. First, it allows accounting trickery through postponing of programs and reducing of head count to fake its financial health so that bonuses can kick in. That makes the company books manipulatable at the expense of the customers, the stock holders as well as employees. In essence, their manipulation put off the day when prices would naturally reflect fairness.

Well, the public is not stupid. They have a long memory when it comes to someone taking their money and delivering poor value, disrespecting them at the time of purchase or service. They even recognize when you route your employees. And they certainly know when they’re being gouged or manipulated just to sustain a business’ plan that is intended to win at all costs, namely theirs.

How many times have you paid full price for a quality product, but it still failed? How many times have you paid a high price while the company cut its employees to shreds with downsizing everything except upper management’s perks? That brands you as a nasty hot poker, because they know they’re paying for those perks.

Like I said, the customer is not stupid. As a result of their awareness, you are now expected to deliver quality products, quality services, and quality in their total buying experience; and that now includes quality pricing; hence, value pricing at employee discounts. After all, the public knows they’re overpaying for literally everything.

Failure to comply to customer expectations in any way brands you as an abuser, but brands them as being gullible, disrespected and undignified. Talk about negative emotions!

This concept of business or organizational branding is an image niche untouched by many business books. Now, don’t get me wrong. Plenty of training is going on, but not about total business branding, especially ethics and fairness in pricing for value rendered.

Yes, we have mission statements, philosophy statements and just a touch of team-oriented, feel-good training sessions. Yet, many businesses still seem to miss the mark, maybe not in every corner, but enough to make many CEOs cringe at market-share and earnings-reporting time; which only proves that customers have the last say, further proving that higher education does not always guarantee business success.

Few managers and business owners really take the TOTALITY of their business brand to heart, including personal communications and relations. Emphasis is so heavy on trying to make a profit that they overlook the one element in the formula that might assure that profit.

As products, processes and quality increasingly take the center stage, more and more companies have become oblivious as to why they are losing market share, and will risk being blown out of business entirely.

There is always a cause for every effect. Don’t let the negative-branding syndrome happen to your business or your company, even if you just work there. Make a commitment to improve the business brand. Don’t forget that every internal issue will come to light in some way that you may not now even imagine.

You can help yourself and your business by first paying attention. Accept the reality that the public fully recognizes when another product or service is better, and that they always vote with their pocket books. It is their right as much as it is their duty for economic self preservation.

Your product may be innovative, but a greedy price mark-up, for example, can dry out their emotions quite readily. That is just as much a brand failure as a recalled tire.

Yes, a failure to keep the customers’ emotions positive can be deadly to your bottom line. So, the time to be more alert is now!

And speaking of emotion, why do some products fail to sell, while others prosper? Simple: Contrary to today’s business doctrines, product quality is no longer enough! Content is no longer enough. The only way you can segregate yourself from your competition in this new century is to better the totality of your customers’ business experience; as that summarizes your business brand and appeals to your customers’ hearts where their buying and staying emotions originate.

So, the next time some market guru challenges you to brand market your products and services, make sure to include your total business brand. And make darn sure it isn’t just any old hot iron.

Frank Sherosky is a research author with over 36 years experience in the automotive corporate world. In 1997, he wrote “Perfecting Corporate Character: Insightful Lessons for 21st Century Organizations” before anyone heard of Enron and Tyco fiascos. He may be reached at http://www.authorfrank.com

June 13, 2005 — Jane Chen (Producer) of the Red Doors Movie stated, “The necklaces have been a huge hit. Several people have offered to buy them. They are great at parties and at screenings - the red glow looks really cool in a dark room. Everybody asks about them when they see them so it’s a great entre into talking about the film”.

Not only has A&R Designs worked with the promotion of the Red Doors Movie but they have worked with Tribeca Film Festival for last year’s 2004 festival awards. Red Doors tells the story of the Wongs, a bizarrely dysfunctional Chinese-American family living in the New York suburbs. Ed Wong (Tzi Ma) has just retired and plots to escape his mundane life. However, the tumultuous, madcap lives of his three rebellious daughters change his plans. From the beginning A&R Designs took this marketing project to a whole new level by creating a marketable product that the public would buy into based on key elements surrounding the Red Doors Movie.

The Movie & Entertainment Industry relies on ad specialty companies like A&R Designs to help generate sales, awareness, create interest and promote a theme to achieve their marketing objectives. Behind every success, A&R Designs has always been the front runner when it comes to developing and creating a marketable promotional product for every type of special event. There is no doubt that A&R Designs is truly a company that knows how to get the job done when it comes to marketing.

Angela McKenzie
A&R Designs
Tel: 1-866-503-8687
Fax: 703-995-0715
Web: http://www.arpromotionalproducts.com
Email: amckenzie@arpromotionalproducts.com