The Ultimate Guide To Business Cards – Print & Design (Infographic)

Here’s a really cool infographic by Businesscards.com developed with the main intention to address the common disconnects in branding projects between less technical small business owners and the graphic designers that they hire.

This really helpful guide is meant to walk business owners through the points in the creative process where they are likely to struggle the most.

Click here for the original link to the infographic.

Living Our Brand: Fulfilling The Promise Our Stakeholders Perceive We Make

I was looking through some of my older presentations before and had come across one slide that said,

“Living Our Brand: Fulfilling The Promise Our Stakeholders Perceive We Make” – Leigh Wong

Allow me to unpack that a little for you:

1. It is not enough to have a great brand strategy – one must live it out too!
2. Living out our brand happens in two parts: first, it’s about fulfilling a promise to our stakeholders. I know there are many, many, many ways of understanding what a brand ultimately is – but suffice to say, one of the better ways of understanding what a brand is, is that it is a promise made between our stakeholders and our brand. So, living our brand means keeping and fulfilling that every promise.
3. Second, living out our brand must also be understood in the context of our audience/stakeholder/customer/end-user. The promise we are making is not necessarily the one that we think we are making, rather it is the promise that our stakeholders perceive we are making!

So, when you want to think about living out your brand, you’ll really need to think about it in at least these terms described here.

Great Type-Based Logo Designs

Over at Noupe.com, I found a great showcase of type-based logo designs. I like their little blurb describing what logos are about:

A logo is the visual representation of the company that reflects the company’s business or products, all the while building up the credibility of the company. An effective logo design is one that aesthetically satisfies the target audience and possesses the potential to penetrate customers’ minds as a selling agent. It should also be simple and memorable.

For the brand logo designs, these are my favourite ones:

(This one is quite possibly my favourite – a word entirely made out of numbers!)

I like the clever use of negative space to accentuate the brand here!

This one clearly and cleverly depicts the brand name.

My only complaint about all the ones above is that none of them really indicate exactly what the brand is about. It’s a pretty name cleverly depicted – there is no chance to turn the viewer’s initial impressions (i.e. “Wow, so clever!”) into action (i.e. raised brand awareness, equity, etc.).

Even so, which are your favourite ones?

5 Brand Health Checkpoints To Determine When To Rebrand

I was Twitter-surfing when I came across a link that took me to this helpful article over at Ragan.com: 10 Signs Your Brand Needs An Overhaul. (It caught my attention particular because I’m in the midst of looking into a “rebranding” or “brand refresh” campaign following a merger between two large institutions).

From their helpful list of 10, I’ve decided to distill them down a little further into a helpful list of 5 “checkpoints” for Brand Health Checks you’d want to look into from time to time!  Having regular brand “health checks” are fundamental to ensuring your brand’s vitality, relevance and overall equity.

The 5 checkpoints:

1. See if you’ve “Lost The Plot”: If you find that most people in your company (worse still if this includes the Senior Management and/or Board of Directors!) can’t tell what your logo represents or what the company means to your external and internal stakeholders… you’ve lost the plot. A great test of this is to see if you could randomly ask 5 people across the spectrum of job grades and functions to communicate your company’s essence in 20 words or less. If they can’t, or they come up with vastly divergent responses, then it’s time for a brand refresh.
2. You have No Plot to begin with: Perhaps a little worse than Losing the Plot is not having one, or having a weak one, in the first place. Often, what you thought was your key differentiator is the same value proposition claimed by your top five competitors. Look at your competitors and weigh their messages against yours. Chances are, you’re all using the same combination/variation of “unparalleled service,” “unmatched expertise,” “outstanding solutions,” or whichever buzzword-du-jour. Perhaps even, all of your marketing messages are centered around what you do, not why you do it. Remember, all of your competitors do the same things as you – why you do it (and how) is what sets you apart. As mentioned in my previous post on Simon Sidek’s “The Golden Circle” TED Talk, remember that “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do what you do.”
3. Things have changed, you have not: Now, I am not advocating changing your brand essence just to suit the times – far from it! The key word I’m thinking of here is “relevance!” Does your brand’s proposition continue to meet your customers’ ever-changing needs? Perhaps, in the last five years, your market has changed, expectations about your product or service have changed, or your value proposition has changed. But you haven’t changed anything about your brand messaging to ensure that it remains relevant and at the top of your customers’ minds. Alternatively, maybe you’ve grown and your business development needs have become more ambitious, but you’re still acting like a small company selling small contracts to small clients. What you never needed before—but need now—is a unique brand position.
4. Your brand communications appears schizophrenic: The symptoms are numerous. Perhaps, you’re constantly apologising for your website (“Sorry, the site design is crap, was done for cheap by a freelancer could be improved and the content has not been updated”), or the overriding message in your marketing collateral is different from that of your website—and far different from what your team members communicate in face-to-face meetings. More commonly, nothing matches: You’ve added various marketing tools to your toolbox over the years (trade show booth, new logo shirts, a sales pamphlet, an e-newsletter, redesigned business cards, etc.), but when you place them all side-by-side, none of them look remotely alike. Time to refresh and align, folks!
5. You haven’t thought about any of this stuff, until now.

Brian Solis Interviews Guy Kawasaki on Enchantment

“Apple is an anti-social company” – so says Guy Kawasaki in this interview with Brian Solis. That, of course, kept me hooked!

I followed an incoming link to this blog that took me to this blog post on The Brandbuilder Blog featuring a video of Brian Solis interviewing Guy Kawasaki on the subject of Enchantment (also the title of his book). As a avid, life-long student on the art and science of influence – this interview was very insightful for me. Solis’ thoughts, concepts and articulation of social media infrastructure as well as Kawasaki’s take on influence makes for a very engaging video (you really don’t feel the 30-minute length!).

The greatest TED Talk ever sold (Morgan Spurlock)

I really, really enjoyed this video when I watched it. TED, of course, always has very thought-provoking talks to begin with – but this really hit home with me. I was especially cringing to see the reactions from the agencies/consultants interviewed… gosh, what a skewering of branding, marketing and communications practitioners everywhere! (Yet, it does get really hopeful and positive at the end of the video – there are some great people/practitioners/agencies out there still).

Some key takeaways for me:

• Many people who say they are into transparency are liars and BS-ers. True transparency is very frightening… most of all, because you have to eventually relinquish control.
• Ask yourself: What is your brand? (It’s not so easy to answer, unless you’ve really thought about it… and continue to think about it as you evolve and grow)
• If your people can’t answer quickly and with certainty what your brand is… you really need to look into that. Otherwise, you don’t have a brand.
• Take some risks!

Hope you enjoy this video as much as I did!

Brands Will Last Forever… Right?

I was reading this article, 5 Industries On Life Support via Yahoo! that really got me thinking about whether brands can last forever? You see, one of the core tenets of branding – in my humble opinion – is that it needs to stand for or mean something. Beyond the fact that the logo looks attractive and memorable, there must be some rational and emotional meaning attached for a brand to truly resonate with the customer. The trick, of course, is finding that delicate balance between having a brand mean something that is neither too generic (happiness, success, etc.) nor too niche (“the friendliest turtle shell scrubbing brush in this city”, etc.).

This, in turn, led me to think further about whether brands can last forever – since a brand is supposed to stand for something, what if the times change? How can you successfully transform or reinvigorate the brand accordingly? (Well, I suppose I just gave you all the answer as to why branding and rebranding experts will continue to be around for a long, long time! Read here on how to choose a brand consultant).

This line of thought then reminded me of the following clip from the movie, Other People’s Money, starring Danny Devito. I especially liked how Devito’s character, named “Larry the Liquidator”, talked about obsolescence with the example of “the last company around [...] that made the best goddamn buggy whip you ever saw”. Enjoy the clip:

What do you think? Will brands last forever? What must they do to keep relevant and be built to last?

Logorama (Video)

A not-so-safe-for-work video (for the language, actually) that offers some weekend fun as you try to see how many brands you can name and identify.

It also makes you realize just how much brands permeate our world!

Making Social Work For Big Brands

I saw this over at Slideshare and thought it was a very helpful primer for big brands trying to navigate social media. It’s especially helpful because social media is often seen as “too messy” by large corporations, which may be why it has been picked up much faster by smaller, more nimble Small and Medium Enterprises (as well as individuals).

Enjoy!

Cool Ambigram Logos (via StockLogos)

An ambigram is a typographical design or art form that may be read as one or more words not only in its form as presented, but also from another viewpoint, direction, or orientation. The words readable in the other viewpoint, direction or orientation may be the same or different from the original words. Here are some of my favourite ambigram logos via a post on StockLogos (click here for the full listing).