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.
What are the initial steps of brand building?
Apple, Coca-Cola, Nokia, Starbucks are examples of some brands that when mentioned can bring an image (probably the logo) into anyone’s mind. These are brands or companies that have spent time and energy brand building a strong and ‘loyal’ reputation for themselves over the years. A strong brand can make your gain a loyal “following” without putting…
Choose Your Brand, if Not Now, When Will You? [VIDEO]
So many of our clients get stuck when it comes time to evaluate the design services and choose their brand position and their logo. Understandably, the moment where you choose your brand is a big decision! What seems to happen is that people try to compare their new brand and logo to an existing one —…
Super Bowl 2015 – The Year of Big Idea Marketing
This probably won’t surprise you — but I watched the Super Bowl 2015 ONLY for the commercials. I don’t particularly care who is playing – or how they play. But the commercials? I’m all in! What I loved about Super Bowl 2015 (and Super Bowls in general) is that it seems to be the one time of year when…
Press Release: Finding Brand: The Brand Book Tutorial Hits Amazon’s Shelves Today
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Marketing Managers, CMO’s, and Business Owners now have a reliable guide to help manage and grow their brand: Finding Brand Eagle Point, OR. – September 4, 2013 – Brands are defenseless. Companies wipe their feet on them, they throw them in the trash, and they don’t have the patience to let them…
What is a Brand Book?
What is a Brand Book? Why do I need a Brand Book? What goes into a Brand Book? All of these are legitimate questions that many marketers struggle with. At its core, a Brand Book is an integral element to a well-functioning brand. It’s about articulating the elements of your brand in a concise and…
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…
How are You Better than Your Competition?
I don’t care what industry you’re in when you look at the landscape of those businesses that do what you do; you compare your business to the work that they do. And you have opinions about their work – either you respect it, or you don’t. But the thing is, you know how your business…
What’s Your Brand Story?
From start to finish, a well-executed brand is really just about telling a good story. Well-written stories are fairly predictable in their format, they have a beginning, middle, and end. The pieces of the story that are being told are consistent with, and advance, the storyline. They don’t pursue irrelevant tangents, and each paragraph and chapter…
Social Media and Brand Strategy
Social media is a very hot topic right now, and rightfully so. I’ve heard more than one company wonder out loud though if it belongs in the Brand Strategy. In my opinion, the answer is a resounding YES. If it’s not part of your integrated Brand Strategy, you’re missing a vital channel for furthering your…
Consistent Branding at Different Locations
If you’ve got more than one location, it just got at least three times as hard to keep your brand consistent. “If I have two locations, shouldn’t it just be two-times as hard?” you ask. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work out that way. Having more than one location usually, means that you have to split your time…
Tiny Brand Moments
In the midst of running a business, it’s admittedly difficult to maintain the focus on what your brand stands for. After all, you’ve got customers needs to meet, deadlines to manage, and in some cases, employees to direct. That is why it is critical that you take the time to make sure that everything you’re…
Lessons in Brand Authenticity
I stumbled across a question posed on LinkedIn this morning that got me thinking. The question was: How do you see social platforms evolving in the future? And while I answered it from a personal standpoint, I neglected the answer from a brand authenticity perspective – an oversight I aim to correct here. Social Media…
Brand Evolution
You’ve got your tagline; you know what your brand position stands for, and you’ve looked hard at your business to see what fits and doesn’t. (If you haven’t, it’s OK, you can catch up here.) So now comes the BIG QUESTION: Do you update/change your logo and business name or work with what you’ve got?…
Brand Identity: Branding by Walking Around
Branding by Walking Around is your opportunity to create the landscape your brand will come to life on. It’s the very foundation of your brand position.