Throughout my career I’ve been involved in numerous naming and branding initiatives and am always struck by not only the intrinsic challenges of getting a group of people to agree on a particular name/brand for a company, product or service – but also by the enormous amount of angst and emotion that becomes part of the process.
In truth, the process of coming up with a name – whether for a company, a product, a campaign, a department or whatever is a process (more…)
Travelers’ well-known logo – a red umbrella – remains a key element of its new branding campaign which launched last year. I first learned of the campaign recently when friends told me about some wonderful commercials with a dog that was intent on protecting its bone from real and imagined risks. The message: (more…)
Location. Location. Location.
Traditional marketing wisdom would lead one to believe that where a business is located makes a difference. And that makes logical sense, most of the time. A recent experience, though, suggests that location can be trumped by other things – (more…)
Sometimes it can be the smallest of things that leads to a lost opportunity. Small things that can, I think, be easily corrected.
I had a personal example of this recently while working on a proposal for a branding project. I needed to gather some price information for some elements of the project. In two cases, I contacted two different individuals, asking for some estimates. In each of these cases, one of the people got back to me right away – the other, not at all. (more…)
Our water heater went out recently and my husband researched and ordered a part online from – www.plumbingsupply.com. Not the kind of company that one might, necessarily, expect anything special from, right? After all, a plumbing part is a plumbing part.
But the day the part was delivered – I heard my husband exclaim first: “Hey! The part is here!” and then, shortly after that, “Wow! Isn’t THIS cool!” (more…)
Identifying the key benefits that answer the question of WIIFM (“What’s in it for me?”) for your customers and prospects, the first step in writing compelling copy. The second is positioning what you have to offer relative to what your competition has to offer.
In considering your competition you need to consider (more…)
Whenever I’m called upon to offer a critique on or advice about a company or consultant’s copy – whether it’s on a web site, in a brochure, an ad, a blog, or whatever – the first thing I do is read through the copy to see whether the focus is on “we/me” or “you/your.” Most of the copy I look at is the former. A quick, easy and relatively painless way to improve it (more…)
I’m often surprised that the most overlooked audience when it comes to communicating with key constituents is the internal or employee audience. Companies are generally pretty good about recognizing that they need to communicate with customers and prospects, but employees tend to be an afterthought. This may be because of the assumption that (more…)
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