Bradley H. Smith >

Don’t let your brand ego damage sales: the Kellogg’s and Kashi example.

The ONLY place Kashi acknowledges they are a Kellogg’s property is in the investor relations materials – never on the cereal boxes.

Kudos to Kellogg’s for recognizing that their shareholders like the Kellogg’s/Kashi financial brand story – but the healthy earthy crunchy folks who EAT Kashi cereal (and associate Kellogg’s brand with sicky-sweet-unhealthy cereal) do not. This was a very savvy and brand-humble decision by Kellogg’s marketing.

 

Not every “product” you may own fits under your brand, especially if you are active in M&A.  Some can be assimilated overtime, but be wary if the house brand it so concrete in a wrong direction.

 

Typos are not fatal to your brand. Unless you are in makreting.

Sorry if you are reading this guys, but you spammed a LinkedIn Group. No one is marketing is going to believe these folks know what they are doing. 

 

2005? Update it gents. This says "old content."

Don’t abuse your personal brand and place fans at financial risk.

Subjectively, I am not a fan of Glenn Beck at all – to be clear. Objectively, I think this (image below) sponsorship is an egregious use of “celebrity” to pump a product. Will he take responsibility for the product’s promise – or lack of performance?

How much financial risk should you ask from your fans? Pimping someone’s financial future (INVESTMENT) is very different than buying a $15.00 bottle of perfume from a pop star brand or booking a cheap hotel with Captain Kirk. The “personal brand” needs to be credible to the product / service.

 

He’s turned into Ed McMahon.

Meet promises to build a good brand.

Exceed expectations to build a great business. 

Even in the (web) world of mega-pixels and 2,056 color palette, design your logo to the lowest common denominator.

How will your visual brand look in a single color, small on a pen?

 

Also, plan ahead to alter your logo for strange ratios. This is especially true for sponsorship logo requirements.

Your brand will open the door, not close the sale.

Crisp business-to-business brand building is essential for a key reason: it will save the sales people valuable time on the phone with a prospect. They won’t need spend time telling your “company story,” just right into the “product story.”

Sales people only have a very limited time with a prospect.

 

Bring your own badge holders to trade shows - only wear YOUR brand.

Go to Staples and buy some empty badge holders and perhaps plain lanyards too. Small detail with HUGE visual difference. You're spending THOUSANDS of dollars on you brand presence. Why wear another company's brand? 

 

What brand do you want people to see? 

 

If you're spending time, money and effort on an outreach campaign, use it on your site visually in an obvious manner.

Oh for pete’s sake, no one clicks on a "see our current ad" link.

For real cross-media message reinforcement (which you want...) integrate the visuals, even subtly. Continuity demonstrates an organized thought process which is a good B2B brand.

 

This campaign series I launched is still running. The clever web developer made the faces randomize on each visit.

Don't just put a "logo brand" in your email signature. Put in a real message.

Client support people communicate to your current clients hundreds of times a day. Use that space for upsell, upcoming events, cross-product promotion, etc. Have the image feed in dynamically and you can easily chang it out without bothering the client-facing folks.

 

Note: keep the message light and informative. Soft-sell. The receipients KNOW you already. Keeping the message fresh makes the cleint-facing folks feel like they are delivering content, not just an ad.

Everyone toasted my brand at the industry annual evening cocktail event.

Branding at evening events has true tactical problems, including low lighting and not “ruining” the mood with crass logo plastering. I found these wonderful battery operated goblets. They were high quality, thick plastic ( = classy) and complemented the black-tie affair perfectly. Everyone needs a drink.

 

These are not inexpensive however, equal in costs if I rented four "strateiclly placed" large LCDs to play a brand video loop, etc. These are far more intresting. People. Had. Fun. (and they carried my brand around with them, 1,500 little billboards!)