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Category: Branding

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Branding

The true value of good design to your business

The true value of good design to your business

PoLR are always interested to hear of any research that independently shows the importance of design or internet marketing and any facts that can back up what we do!

You can imagine our delight at reading a recent report from the design council that showed 30% of businesses now see design as integral to their companies’ success, an increase from 15% from three years previously.

The same report shows that 54% of UK businesses are planning on using design to increase their exposure and sales during the current economic climate. This coupled with an older report from the design council which states that every £100 a business spends on design increases turnover by £225 and you can start to see why businesses are believing they can help themselves by designing their way through the recession.

There are plenty articles regarding advertising during a recession that advises halting advertising at these times could have serious negative impact to a businesses survival post-recession and it would appear that many businesses are now embracing the selling power of good old fashioned quality design too.

Rethinking your design during a recession shows your customers and competitors that you are developing your brand and not standing still regardless of the economic climate. Just like those who continue to advertise during a downturn, it helps to put your company in a good position and potentially ahead of the competition when the storm is over.

PoLR have a plethora of ideas for revamping your corporate identity, website design / redesign or promoting your company online during these harder times. With our help your company could be in its best possible position for when we are in happier climes.

Contact us now to chat with one of our team members on 0141 572 8819.

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Branding

Branding for Online Media

Branding for Online Media

Having your branding recognised is undoubtedly one of the most sought after aspects of growing a business. For people to recognise you is extremely beneficial when they come to make a purchasing decision, suddenly they think “I need that service, who provides it?”

If you’ve managed to expose them to your brand beforehand or on more than one occasion then you have a good shout for being in their minds when they are looking to go with the provider of that service (or product).

It’s not something new that a company will look into their branding and ensure that it is representitive of themselves and their demographic (the specific group(s) of people they are looking to sell to). A logo and corporate identity will be established and settled upon (usually after great deliberation) and then this will be used in all company correspondence and, importantly, in the media. So they essentially have to be concerned about their branding in the media. It has to get across the message to those sought after purchasers and must be done right.

branding

A question I’d like to raise is; does this concern have to be altered or reconsidered in anyway when creating branding for online media?

It might be easy enough to suggest that you simply copy what you have onto the web and then you are retaining ‘brand standard’. I would actually tend to agree with this ethos, for the most part. Underlying issues can complicate things, however. For example, is your online target market the same as you are going for offline? I bet in more cases than not, that the demographic becomes slightly altered online compared to offline. Then there is also the issue of whether or not your offline branding is easily transferable to online branding. Your old logo might be far too complex in terms of colour which makes the visibility less effective on screen, worst case scenario is that your offline branding immediately becomes inaccessible when put online.

Online media works pretty differently also, so should your branding reflect this? How much, these days, do we see new brands being created to make the online growth easier/more possible?

This is surely quite a wide topic and I would welcome comments to the discussion. It would be my opinion that, in business, you should consider your offline media branding as a separate issue to your  online media branding!

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Branding

Social media – the modern day grapevine

SOCIAL MEDIA – THE MODERN DAY GRAPEVINE

I hate to begin a post with this phrase but needs must and all that so here goes and I apologise in advance…

Eeee, when I were a lass, there was no such thing as a t’internet let alone a computer (or two, or four) in every house. Gossip was carried out by my Mother and her friends via the back fence, the Young Wives Club and the local coffee shop. Boy did that gossip spread like wildfire and I swear it would put Twitter and Stumble to shame.

How does that relate to this post?

Well, much in the way that while gossiping over the back fence required a beautifully tendered lawn, so too does the spreading of your company reputation or brand online (with the lawn being your online presence of course!)

With online ‘gossip’ you are not restricted by a narrow geographical area, the world is your critics oyster so make sure the gossip is good. With good meaning postive not juicy!

So, how do you keep you online presence as spick and span as you can?

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Well Designed Corporate Identity

A well thought out corporate identity can work wonders for how potential clients view your company both on and offline.

A clean slick logo, business card etc can add a high degree of value to your business and to back this up is a design council report that states that every £100 a business spends on design increases turnover by £225.

Want to know more? Then read our recent ‘value of design to your business‘ post.

Professional Website

In our recent e-commerce survey, a high percentage of our respondents stated that they would be put off purchasing from a website that they felt was not a professional website design. Consider your own browsing experience, have you ever clicked onto a website and within second clicked back off? The first thing that will have struck you is the design of the website and chances are it will have been the design that dictated whether you looked further or not.

If you run a website then you are participating in e-commerce to some degree and your website has the potential to be a valuable selling tool for your business. Can you afford to leave your website as an afterthought when it is such an important representation of your company’s brand?

Reputation Management

Keeping tabs on your reputation online is a huge consideration for a company. This is a consideration whether you have gone online already. You can bet your bottom dollar that your customers will be online and therein lies the real, modern day gossip!

Dell fell foul of online chat in 2005 for their standard of customer service. Before they knew it a single blog post had spread through other blogs, links, the press and social networking to the point where they had no option but to take notice and rectify the problem that started the avalanche!

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Branding

Re-branding : Is it always a good thing?

RE-BRANDING : IS IT ALWAYS A GOOD THING?

Yesterday I was going to write this post but one thing led to another and the post merged into something else altogether. So, today I’m back on track and wondering how much it takes for a company to backtrack over a branding decision.

The reason I was prompted to write this post is in light of the new Ask Jeeves character and how he came about for the second time.

Jeeves : Then and Now

Jeeves : Then and Now

A little bit of history

Ask.com is a search engine based on the ability for a user to simply ask a question and receive an answer. You want to know how to make a perfect cuppa or how to grow tomatoes then just ask Jeeves – he’s the man with the answer!

In 2006 the Ask Jeeves character was removed from ask.com and was replaced by a simple ‘Ask’ logo in an effort to compete better with Google. When it came out that Ask were planning on phasing Jeeves out there were plenty of people that tried to petition against it but it fell on deaf ears. For three years at least…

This month, in 2009, Jeeves came home after an apparent trip round the world looking for more answers!

A change of mind

So why did the powers that be decide that Jeeve should go in the first place? Well, it apparently came down to Ask looking to be taken more seriously in the Google dominated world and so the new look was aimed to be more serious and less friendly. However, the beauty of Jeeves was in his ‘personality’ and his ‘friendly’ way of answering a users query.

It seems that Ask has backtracked with this and according to their website they have spent the time without Jeeves making the site “more personal”.

What can we learn from Ask?

Of course a company is always going to experiment with their branding over the years but what could we learn from Ask to save us wasting time and save our hard earned branding budget?

  • Listen to your fans – ask about and see what people think of your current brand. If you’re thinking of changing and everyone says ‘No’ then find out why and more importantly, would they still use you if you did?
  • Personality is good – in blogging there is endless advice about keeping your personality and letting it shine through and the same should apply to your brand. If you are a young, fun company you shouldn’t have to go for a corporate looking brand if it doesn’t match your company ethos.

Final comment

At the risk of sounding like Jerry Springer, I thought I’d end this post with one final thought. Look at the two versions of Jeeves above (with modern day Jeeves on the right). Is it just me or does he now have an incredibly smug and very punchable face!?  He looks as if he’s going to try and sell me life insurance or tell me my tax return wasn’t received on time.

He also makes me think all his answers are going to start with the following:

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Branding

Marketing – It’s more than just a sale

Marketing – It’s more than just a sale

I was recently reading through a friends university marketing notes and one point leapt out at me. It’s an obvious one, when you think about it, but still one that can be incredibly hard to explain (and be believed). It’s the fact that marketing does not have to lead directly to a sale. Like I said, obvious.

Granted, everytime anyone undertakes a marketing campaign the end hope is that it will result in at least a sale or two but my point is that it’s not the be all and end all.

When you think of marketing it’s very easy to think of it in terms of revenue brought back in and leads you to measuring marketing success by direct sales. After all, if an advert costs £10 and brings in £10 of sales then it’s paid for itself and if it brings in £20 then it’s been a success hasn’t it?

Well we think there’s more to the story than that!

So what could be more important than sales?

There are so many other results of a marketing campaign that a company can benefit from that can be longer lasting than a quick sale. Take for instance:

Brand Awareness.

I recently posted about the Message from Earth and I think it’s a terriffic example of a marketing stunt that focussed on their brand over direct sales. The aim of this was to get people talking about the promotion and the result is that they have created a marketing campaign that will span approximately 5 decades. That’s 5 decades of potential/future sales!

Reputation.

As a company in the design field, we are expected to practice what we preach and we feel the best way for us to show this is through imaginative marketing. Yes, newspaper adverts and signs on roundabouts have their place but creative marketing plan is a fantastic way to build your reputation amongst current and potential clients.It’s selling but without being in-your-face. It’s important to go with a marketing idea that enhances the reputation and ethos of your company to reinforce your company brand and in the case of the design field, demonstrate you think outside of the box.

Exposure.

A funky, fun marketing idea has the potential to open your company up to people and places that you never dreamt of before, particularly online where a good campaign has the potential to go viral. The more exposure your marketing message has the better as it will have a greater chance of landing on the right desk – not an immediate sale but the potential for many future ones as your potential clients are exposed to it more and more.

Put simply by Business Coach (and friend of PoLR), Forbes Bryce:

  • The 1st time your prospect sees your ad he ignores it.
  • The 2nd time he sees your ad he notices it.
  • The 3rd time he sees your ad he reads it.
  • The 4th time he sees your ad he remembers it
  • The 5th time he sees your ad he thinks about it.
  • The 6th time he sees you ad he wants it.
  • The 7th time he sees your ad he buys it.

With our mask competition, we had people voting from Southampton to Sydney and one heck of a lot of people in between. That’s a lot of exposure for a wee company from Glasgow

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Branding

Marketing with several markets in mind

Marketing with several markets in mind

I was reading an article the other week that gave advice on designing websites for women. It claimed that a pink, pretty site with lots of images and obvious calls to actions were what was required to keep women amused online. I found the article quite condescending, I’m female and have never been into anything girlie and pink and kind of resent the stereotype (and hate even more that it was written by a woman).

I also remember reading a similar article (in the same magazine) a few years previously, that went so far as suggesting that a unisex website should have two faces to it, one for the women and one for the men. Imagine if your gender determined what skin your Facebook profile had or when us ladies logged onto the BBC site we we forced to view it through a pink, easy to read and girlie site to aid you us in reading the latest headlines. Surely there’d be an outcry at this stereotyping but that’s exactly what this article was suggesting. Pah!

But I digress, my point isn’t to whinge about the article as it was apparently based on a lot of research and I’m not going to argue with it…so, I’ll wheest for now and get on with the point of this post 😉

We all know that with any design, marketing or branding process, researching and knowing your target market is the most important part. Knowing what you’re selling and who you would like to sell to is one thing, really knowing your target market and getting into their shoes in order to appeal to them is another.

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Branding

What to include in an email signature

What to include in an email signature

We’ve been asked a fair amount lately by clients about what the text at the bottom of our emails is (signature) and what should be included in it! Since it’s been coming up in conversation I thought it was as good a time as any to write a short post giving an answer so here goes…

What is an email signature?

An email signature is a block of information that you can attach to your email program for use each time you compose an email. As the signature is attached to your email program it automatically adds itself to the end of each email and means you do not need to keep re-typing it each time.

A signature is essential an online business card that you are putting in front of each and ever mail recipient. If you don’t already use one then it’s worth considering adding one as an additional marketing technique for your company.

A signature helps you get more information over to your recipient that a simple ‘Kind Regards’. Sometimes it is impossible not to have to use a detailed signature, particularly if you work for a company with a definite set of branding guidelines or have to include certain legal information (below).

Legalities

Since Jan 2007 it has been a legal requirement for a company to display certain information on all it’s website and electronic documents. For more information see out-law.com but in brief, the information required is:

  • Registered name
  • Company number
  • Registered office

Many people/companies also opt to include a disclaimer to say that the email is private and confidential etc You can download a sample disclaimer to personalise for your signature from Business Link.

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What to include.

There is nothing you HAVE to include in an e-mail signature other than the legal considerations mentioned previously but sometimes adding that little bit more will look a little more impressive. Try not to overload your signature though as let’s face it, who wants to wade through loads of text at the end of every mail?

You do have loads of options should you wish to add something a bit extra for example:

  • Logo
  • Awards
  • Social media account name – let people be able to easily connect and network with you.
  • Eco ‘Please do not print’ note
  • Blog feed
  • Beg! – While your sending a signature why not add in a semi-cheeky request from your receipient for a link from their site? if you don’t ask you don’t get!
Categories
Branding

The Psychology of a logo

The Psychology of a logo

“People make up their minds within 90 seconds of their initial interactions with a product.” (Singh 2006)

Taking the above statement into consideration gives some idea of the importance of having a good logo for your business. You and your logo shall become inseparable, it will be on all your business cards that you hand out to potential clients or contacts, it will be on all your signage, it will be your letterhead, it will be on all your promotional products, and of course it may be on your own product. A lot of factors have to be taken into consideration when designing your logo, as you can see your logo and you should have a long and fruitful friendship. 

“ In a climate of intensifying competition, where there is little functional differentiation in product performance and consumers have become more marketing-literate, articulate, powerful and even cynical, explicit brand claims are scrutinised, deconstructed and dismissed unless they offer genuine news and credible benefits.” (Braithwaite 2002)

There are certain characteristics that your logo should encompass, it should be:

Unique, your logo is your differentiator in today’s competitive market.
Relevant, your logo should be relevant to your market and it should portray clearly the image you want to associate with your business.
Appealing, your logo should be appealing to your target market, do not make it too specific to one market segment though or you may alienate potential customers.

Great consideration has to be taken when you decide which image to associate with your business, people use imagery as a way of aiding memory, a good image which encompasses the above characteristics will have a greater chance of being recalled by a potential consumer.
“STARBUCKS!”
See, I was just testing you there but I am sure you can instantly recall Starbuck’s prestigious logo.

Imagery does not just help in producing an aesthetically pleasing picture, it has been scientifically proven that certain images produce physiological changes, Braithwaite 2005 states that, imagery of various kinds produces physiological effects of heart rate, pupil dilation and blood sugar. This may surprise you but the right imagery coupled along with the right colour could be unbelievably paramount in the success of your company’s logo. It has been shown that red stimulates appetite and yellow attracts attention, hello McDonalds. Blue and green suggest calmness and hygiene, white suggests purity, sterility and youth. Black is a multi-dimensional colour that can mean classic or new, it also has an ominous characteristic symbolizing death. Orange is energy, enthusiasm, ‘get-it-done’ attitude, and balance. Indigo symbolises intuition and violet has connotations of magic. Colour also has very strong ties to culture so attention has to be paid to which country you are operating in and what colours are going to be the most productive for your business. The human subconscious turns colour instantaneously into messages and this whole process happens faster than it takes to read a single word. Therefore selecting the right colour is one of the most difficult decisions a business will make and is not one to be taken lightly.

“Prudent use of colours can contribute not only to differentiating products from competitors, but also to influencing moods and feelings.” (Singh 2006)

The correct use of images and colour in your logo will go a long way in helping to establish profitable and sustaining relationships with your customers. It is maybe useful to think of some of the most successful logos in graphic design history, what do they all have in common? Simplicity.

shell logoShell – Raymond Lowey 1971

innocent logoInnocent Smoothies – Deepend 1999

london underground logoThe London Underground – Edward Jonston 1918

apple logoApple – Regis McKenna Advertising

In conclusion, get the right imagery, use the right colours and make it relevant, unique and appealing to your target market and you are most definitely onto a winner when it comes to successful logo design.

Categories
Branding

Importance of Brand Personality

Purely for illustrations sake lets think about vodka for a while, two well known vodka brands lets say Stolichnaya and Absolute; same fundamental product yes but two different branding personalities. Absolute vodka’s personality would be young, hip and cool in comparison to Stolichnaya’s brand personality which would be more intellectual, conservative and more mature.  These brand personalities have been created by and conveyed to the target consumer by the brands themselves via their brand personality statements and through careful characterisation of the brand.

What is brand personality?

Academically speaking brand personality is “the set of human characteristics associated with a brand.” It has been proven that consumers imbue brands with human personality traits and in turn create them into symbolic brands. From a consumer point of view brand personality is a way for them to express their personalities and define their lifestyles through material possessions. Whereas in past years, status in society would be communicated or dictated via class, caste or family connections. From a company’s point of view brand personality is a method of communicating the benefits associated with your product, in terms of it’s attributes or of it’s connotations of status. Companies also use brand personality to distinguish the brand from competitors which is essential in today’s saturated domestic markets; brand personality can also be used to create loyal customers by encouraging them to buy your brand through positive associations with the consumers personality which can be either aspirational or actual.

Brand personality is made up of two elements, what your company wants your customers to think/feel about your brand and what your customers actually think/feel about your brand. Brand personality is communicated over time using all elements of the marketing mix; product, price, promotion and place (distribution). You must communicate the desired personality though your product, it’s quality, use, packaging. Through the price of your product, pricing strategy, high or low cost, aspirational pricing? Place is also very important in the creation of brand personality, where are you going to sell your brand and through what distribution means. There have been many valid arguments that promotion is the most important aspect of the marketing mix when it comes to the creation of brand personality. The use of advertising is one of the easiest ways to establish clear associations with your brand and communicate it to mass audiences.

Along with the advertising element your company’s website is also one of the best platforms for you to clearly convey your brand’s personality. The design, images and copy that you have on your website all combine to communicate the personality of the brand, if customers associate with that then they will be be on the way to being converted into loyal consumers.

In order to come up with a clear brand personality strategy it is often useful to create a lifestyle portfolio for your brand. This involves taking your brand, your product and imagining what it would be like if it were a person, try to personify the brand. Think in terms of; what books would this person have on their bookshelf, what would they dress like, what music would they listen to and where would they live? This is useful for creating a direction for your brand to go in and the creation of a strong brand personality.

Brand personality is essential for building a strong brand, creating loyal customers and diversifying form the competition. These associations and beliefs that the consumer holds about your brand will go some way in achieving brand equity which is the total value of the brand as a separable asset. This will allow clear measurement and evaluation of the effectiveness of the marketing efforts that have been expended on the brand, an invaluable method for future success and growth of the brand.