Let’s face it, marketing can be hard! In each marketing blog post, we hope you’ll find the information you need for your business marketing success.
Your Brand is About Emotion
I know I’ve talked about it in the past, but it bears repeating, your brand is entirely about evoking an emotional response…we buy from brands we like. In fact, if your brand invokes anything less than passion, you’re missing the mark and that means you’re missing opportunity. While I work with, and talk about, this…
Top 10 Finding Brand Blog Posts in 2011
I always enjoy reading the “top posts” posts on other blogs, so I thought it might be interesting (and timely) to take a quick look at the top 10 most viewed posts on the Finding Brand Blog for 2011. So, without further ado — here they are.
Creating a Brand in a Tough Economic Environment
I don’t have to tell you that the economy in the last few years has been tough for a brand. We’ve all lived through it, and if you’re still in business you’ve figured out how to survive in this economic environment, it was probably a combination of intention, a little luck, and a strong brand position.…
Brand Book Rules (or brand dos and don’ts)
An inevitable section of every Brand Book is the “Rules” section. This is the section of the brand book where you spell out, in excruciating detail, the dos and don’ts of portraying your brand imagery. It’s primarily used by your marketing partners, but the group that will need this section of the brand book the…
Writing the Brand Manifesto and Brand Tagline for the Brand Book
Now that you’ve had the opportunity spend some time getting acquainted with your Brand for your Brand Book, it’s time to roll up your sleeves and write (or include) your Brand Manifesto and Tagline. (If you’ve been following Finding Brand for awhile now, you might recall me addressing manifestos before in The Secret Sauce.) The…
Articulate the Brand Personality for the Brand Book
Now that we’ve created our list of keywords and established the relationship between them, it’s time for our next step in how to make a Brand Book and create our brand personality. Articulating your Brand Personality is an integral component of building a Brand Book. Brand Personality starts to breathe life into the brand, making…
What’s the Difference: Brand Book vs. Brand Guidelines vs. Brand Bible vs. Identity Guidelines
A brand book or brandbook, or brand bible, brand guidelines, or identity guidelines is essential for businesses to maintain a consistent and strong brand identity. Beautiful brand books serve as a comprehensive guide that outlines the brand’s visual and messaging standards, ensuring that all brand elements are used coherently and effectively across various platforms. Creating…
Identify Your Brand Essence
Once you’ve identified your keywords for your brand and brand book, it’s important to both test them, and to demonstrate their relationship with regard to your brand position to create your brand essence. You’ll recall from our last post that we settled on the following keywords: imagination, friend, joy, clean, charity, children, dream, chubby, bathtime, and…
Identify Your Brand Position by Using Brand Keywords
With your Brand’s history complete with the brand book, it’s time to start distilling the keywords for your brand. If you haven’t done this exercise yet, a Word Cloud is an excellent way to tease them out. Identify Brand Keywords for the Brand Book Copy the text you wrote for the brand book on the…
Brand History: Start at the Beginning of the Brand Book
As I mentioned in the last post, we’re going to be building our sample Brand Book on the Rubber Duckie Brand. The reasons for choosing this brand over any other are varied but include being a “duck,” not having vigilant brand guardians searching the web for every unauthorized mention, and being both iconic and well-known.…
The Heavens Parted and Delivered the Brand Book
In December, I wrote a quick blog post called “Does Your Brand have a Brand Book?” in response to The Santa Brand Book from Quietroom. Since then, that post has been the most frequently visited post on the Finding Brand Blog, and it’s obvious that there is a significant need for a brand guidelines template. The…
When paying for facebook ‘likes’ is a GREAT thing
What is a Facebook ‘like’ worth, is always a hot topic, so many different perspectives and rarely can you find the same answer with the same dollar figure attached to it. There are so many different variables, like what business you are in. Social Media has proven to be a GREAT medium to get the…
Cause Marketing for Brands
How many times has a news story broken that reveals a profound injustice? Too often I’d argue. If you’re not an Auburn fan (or you don’t know one) you may not have heard about the poisoning of the trees at Toomer’s Corner by someone claiming to be an Alabama Fan. These trees were more than a…
3 Must-Not-Miss Components for a Non-Profit Brand
Soliciting donations is hard work for any non-profit and it’s often made all the harder because the non-profit has not laid the appropriate groundwork in creating their brand image. This oversight usually ends up costing them donations in the long run. While non-profits need to create a brand to the same degree every other business…
Informational Marketing: Position Your Brand as a Knowledge Hub
One of the most powerful ways you can (and should) use your brand is to position it as an informational marketing resource for your customers. Think about it: every one of us accumulates a significant amount of information/trivia in our given field simply because we work in that field. Remember when you were relatively new…
Does Your Brand Have a Brand Book?
I’m not quite sure how I came across this hilarious post today from The Quietroom about their Santa brand book, but I’m glad I did — for several reasons. First (and most obviously) it’s hilarious! Having written some of these brand books myself, I have to say — this is the brand book I always wished…
Why Your Business Should be on Facebook
I was chatting with someone the other day whose experience on Facebook was that of a meat-market/single’s scene. She was (rightfully) mystified as to why her business (or any business for that matter) should be on Facebook. With that experience on Facebook, I can see why she was confused. The truth is, almost everyone is…
5 Reasons Great Brands Aren’t Selfish
As you consider creating a strong and powerful brand, a significant philosophy to consider is creating an un-selfish brand. This was important before the advent of social media, but now that many brands find themselves online in social media (Facebook and Twitter) the stakes are much higher. Here are some principles to consider: People like…
Preserving Your Company’s Goodwill
There’s more to the Brand Book Tutorial Series, but this week, a diversion… We belong to a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), which delivers us a box of fruits and vegetables every week. We’ve been quite busy the last few weeks and haven’t done as good a job as we should have keeping up with it.…