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.
Sugary-Sweet or Saccharine? Sugarpova and Vanilla Air
Two interesting pieces of sugary branding news out today — Maria Sharapova is apparently considering legally changing her name to be Maria Sugarpova for the duration of the U.S. Open to bring attention to her candy line, Sugarpova. (The Guardian) AirAsia Japan is changing their name to Vanilla Air. (Economic Times) Sharapova’s Sugarpova is a…
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…
The Power of the Brand Narrative in the Brand Book
There is considerable power in a brand narrative, as a brand building strategy for aligning stakeholders and creating consistent messaging. In my experience, a good brand narrative is the superior force multiplier – and storytelling branding is profoundly influential. This is because people naturally want to be part of something bigger, they want to matter,…
Being Part of It Matters
Ever notice how there’s something special that happens during a live show, something that simply can’t be bottled and captured? How you just “had to be there”? That’s because, as humans, we want to be part of something special, part of a story, a narrative. And being at a live show represents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity…
Why You Need a Brand Narrative
For thousands of years, humans have utilized stories provide context, meaning, and raison d’être in our lives. Our world is constructed of personal, community, institutional, and political narratives. Think for a moment, about the power narrative has played in your life today. Chances are pretty high that upon arriving at work this morning, you met…
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…
Make a Date to Review Your Plan
For the last several posts, I’ve been expanding on each of the questions I posed in my post “How Effective is Your Marketing Plan?” Did you follow through on the strategies you laid out in your plan to reach your target demographic? (Did you do what you said you were going to do to try to…
Visual Identity on a Budget
Brand strategy and positioning, image attributes, and brand architecture can become overly complex when there are hundreds of thousands of dollars involved. Many small to mid-size companies (with fewer than 500 employees) want the same thinking and quality that define a major branding initiative. It is just too expensive. Seeing no alternative, these companies search…
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…
Your Brand Manifesto: Your Secret Sauce
OK, so you’ve found your new brand position and tagline. You’ve taken the time to discuss it with your key stakeholders and get their buy-in. Now what? Well, my friends, now comes the FUN part! The first thing you’re going to need to write is your brand manifesto. In a short paragraph, what does your company…
What does your brand position say?
Let’s start with the basics, what is a brand position? Your brand is the space your business occupies in the business world. It can be friendly, open, full of hope and aspiration. It can also be sloppy, uncoordinated, and unimpressive — and everything in between. The trick is choosing your brand position intentionally and not…
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.…