Quote:Originally Posted by cbscreative
It amazes me how people miss this, even big companies that ought to know these things.


I can attest to that. The aforementioned company I used to work for discovered via these focus groups that they had tremendous brand equity in the three-letter acronym of the company name. In spite of this, the CEO set out to re-brand the company under a different name, which emphasized a new line of services we were offering. All this did was create brand confusion, not only in the eyes of our clients, but internally as well. They eventually dumped the brand and reverted back to the original name. (And we threw 1000's of dollars of letterhead and envelopes into the dumpster.)

Quote:Originally Posted by cbscreative
I have to admit, in between my busy schedule and getting my workflow done, I am fine tuning this for my own company. I use technical expertise to make my web design and graphic design stand out. I offer computer consulting as it relates to the jobs I do for my clients. It's an extra value service, not a stand alone service. I find it challenging to communicate this. I do well with the "older" crowd because it helps bridge the gap, but the younger people with shorter attention spans want to instantly know whether my company does web design, graphics, or computer consulting.


Trying to brand yourself is like trying to read the label from the inside of the bottle. For companies truly serious about this, a brand consultant is essential. For you and I, that's probably out of the question, but you still need outside help, even if it's just input from trusted business associates.

Steve, keep in mind that no one buys web design or computer consulting. They buy the outcome or result that these things produce. If you can get your market to associate the emotion this outcome produces with your company, you have a powerful emotional brand. That's why this type of branding works so well for fashion and fragrances, because appealing to the opposite sex is highly emotionally-charged. It's a tad bit more difficult to do this with web consulting, in my experience.

What I've chosen to do is avoid even trying to brand my company and instead build a person brand. Doing so forces me to ask, what do I want to be known for, personally, by the people I come into contact with? What are my values, and how do they align with those of my target market? (This is really no different from what a company would do.)

Part of my brand identity is that I'm not simply someone who builds websites, but because of my business background and experience, I take my clients' big picture objectives into account to produce the results they want. So branding boils down to both saying and doing what you want to be known for. If I were Apple, I'd be "saying" that using media like television, radio, etc. Since I'm not, I say it at networking functions and face-to-face encounters every chance I get.

The other part of that is the "doing." No amount of "saying" will overcome not delivering on what you've said you will. Of course, with intangibles like sex appeal, advertisers rely on the perception of their customers, which is not necessarily based on reality. With you and I, we have something tangible to deliver and can't rely on that.

Quote:Originally Posted by cbscreative
On the web, you have 3 seconds to brand yourself. Pick your target carefully so you can get 5 seconds, 30 seconds, or even several minutes. Target audience means a lot. No branding can reach all people, but good branding can reach the people you need to reach.


The same is true of, say, billboard advertising. Yes, you may have precious few seconds to get your message across, but those 3 seconds do not brand you. It's a repetition of those 3 seconds repeated over and over that does. It goes back to "saying " what you want to be known for, over and over again.

So to tie this back into what Ann was asking, the first step is discovering what her customers value most. WalMart, for example, figures that most people value low prices, so that's become their "brand." What do antique furniture buyers value? Is it the process of hunting or shopping for just the "right" piece? Is it having their friends "ooh" and "ahh" over it? Learning that is the easy part. Figuring out how to build a brand around it is a bit more challenging.