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Don‘t Mess with the Logo is a book about branding I recently started reading. The authors proclaim it is „the straight talker‘s bible of Branding“. I must say I am enjoying it a lot. Not only did they want to use a profanity in the title, but they make branding seem easy and the books vibe is kind of easy going (can books have vibes?).

Early on in the book there is a list of rules about how to build a brand that caught my eye:

1. Develop a strategy that is clear and easy to understand.
2. Create a simple brand architecture that links the different things you do in a way that makes sense to your consumers.
3. Develop a distinctive brand identity that you can protect by law
4. Make sure you have a consistent and iconic customer experience across your products, the places in which you sell them and the people that work for you.
5. Set up dedicated brand management and measurement structures and processes
6. Don’t f*** (sorry, mess) with the logo.

I took a good look at this list and realized that it sums up the branding work we have been doing for our product Brand Regard.

Notice how I made nr. 5 bold? Brand Regard actually helps you follow this rule. Brand Regard is a user-friendly, cost effective brand asset management solution that helps organizations make sure their employees use the most up-to-date logo and other marketing related assets so their brand stays consistent and on message.

Check out the video that shows Brand Regard in action, and solves a common branding problem:

As we might have mentioned we are currently developing 2 web applications and for the last few weeks we have been mastering the business plan. It was always there but now it is as close to perfect as it is going to get. It can be really frustrating writing a business plan; basically you sit in front of your computer for days brainstorming clever ways to make your idea look brilliant. But an idea is only a fraction of the process of making a company a successful one, the execution is 99% of the whole process.

Last night I started reading a book that a fellow entrepreneur lent to me called “Founders at work” it is about founders of startups such as 37 signals, Hotmail and many more. The first chapter is about how PayPal became successful and eventually was acquired by eBay for 1.5 billion dollars. The initial idea was making a Palm Pilot payments and cryptography company (whatever that is). But soon after they got investment from Nokia Ventures, they changed their business model completely. Max Levchin PayPal’s co-founder claims that the main reason the investor didn’t freak out was because they belived in the team and saw that it was obvious that they were able to adapt to different circumstances.

What I take from the PayPal story is that innovation isn’t only one idea that you develop and hope that will become a success. It is series of innovative ideas that might sculpt your idea into a successful business. So even if our business looks solid according to the plan, I am keeping the option open that in the near future we might change it completely.

Public relations are an art. An art I have been a fan of for a while. But good PR takes a lot of creative work and thinking outside the box. A year ago one of the most brilliant campaigns ever was launched titled “the best job in the world”. This is what the advertising agency Sapient Nitro had to say about the campaign:

“Tourism Queensland asked us to launch a new brand, the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef to Global Experience Seekers across eight key international markets. We drove people to an engaging website, initially through online recruitment listings and display ads. We gathered user-generated content and supported the interactive campaign with a presence on social networking sites.”

Let’s be honest, who wouldn’t want the best job in the world? The job description basically stated that you would be having lots of fun and doing all sorts of activity for 6 months, living in a dream house and all you had to do was clean your pool, feed fishes and have a weekly blog. Understandably this started spreading all over the social media and in the end most of the major media in almost every country in the world covered it! I even thought about applying, but I didn’t have a video camera. But I must say, I looked at few of the videos and the guy who won isn’t as charismatic I would have thought. Somebody might lose their job! check out his website here.

Now the Canary Islands are launching a campaign. Basically 100 Canarian residents between 18 and 35 were chosen to represent the islands as ambassadors. The reason I am writing about this is because these ambassadors are in Iceland at the moment and are basically going up and down our main street and handing out flyers to annoyed pedestrians, inviting them to an interview, and a party that was yesterday, that might get them a free trip to the islands. Online ads have been running for almost a week and everybody is aware of the visit. I hope these “ambassadors” will get to enjoy our country this weekend, because the last few days they haven’t been up to much. I like the gesture that they are giving away a free trip to the Canary Islands, but I think there might be a more refined way to use the ambassadors.

In their defense their target group is young people, but bear in mind that the current visitors of the Canary Islands are the older than 50 (at least in Iceland). And if they plan to change the islands in to an oasis for drunken Europeans their key demographic might evacuate the islands. But on the positive side, every media, web, television, radio etc. have covered the visit. So if the campaign fails, they can always think of the fact that at least they are raising brand awareness.

2 years, 1 month, 2 weeks, 3 days and around 3 hours ago I bought my first Nokia mobile phone. Since I considered myself to be an up and coming business man, I decided to go with the E65. It was love at first sight. I spent a lot of time with my phone and I took it everywhere. Sadly only a month into our relationship my phone got ill. I was devastated and immediately took it to the workshop where it was repaired. I was so happy to get my phone back that I decided to take it on a trip, but in the middle of the trip sadly, it got ill again. I didn’t know what to do; I couldn’t call anybody so when I got back from my weekend getaway I had to go straight to the repair shop. This went on for a few months until I was compelled to dump the E65 because it was too time consuming! (I know, how harsh of me!) I had invested around $600 in the relationship and all I had was bad memories.

After a while I started to miss E65, I mean it did take decent videos so I started to use it again. Now a few months later and after only about a year of usage E65 died, the workshop said I had to bury it. It only had a 2 year warranty.

I got a crappy phone, I brought it to the workshop 3 times, and the retailer didn’t want to let me exchange the phone for one that actually worked properly. Instead I was forced to bring it back to the workshop every other month. As a customer, I would say this is unacceptable. As a branding enthusiast, I think the retailer isn’t representing one of the world’s largest brand well enough. Nokia doesn’t want to be known for manufacturing phones that have an expiration date. But that might be okay because according to this article when CEO of Nokia Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo is asked to describe Nokia, the first thing he says is, “We are not a cell-phone company.”

Right now I am dating a 6 year old, phone that is. It is an old but solid Sony Ericsson and the relationship is going great, but let’s face it, it’s just a relapse phone and it will never last.

In 1977, during the deepest recession New York had seen in decades, the state launched what would turn out be one of the most successful “Place Branding” campaigns in history.

The campaign comissioned Milton Glaser, a graphic designer, to design a logo and he came up with the now iconic I❤NY image above. More than thirty years later the logo is still being used and is recognized around the world.

In 2008 a new I❤NY campaign was launched, run by legendary ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi. The relaunch includes different themes for the logo (see below, click for a larger version), one version for every season and so on.

The brand guidelines for the relaunch are available online and make for a very interesting read. Have a look and see examples on how not to use the brand, read about the brand’s history and learn the lyrics to the theme tune. It’s all there.

When it comes to the roll-out of such a campaign, a product like Brand Capital would help give access to all of the brand’s digital assets to whoever needs them. The brand guidelines can also be built into a user’s account in Brand Capital so that downloading a shopping-themed logo or a jingle for an answering machine becomes an easy, understandable, three-click process.

Last year, while doing research and competitive analysis for online versions of brand guidelines, I came across the NHS Brand Guidelines site and I must say it is still one of my favorites.

It’s intuitive, easy to use and tackles the issue of representing guidelines for all the different sub-brands by reusing a lot of the content. For instance to logo guidelines are the same across all the different types of organisations while signage differs between National Organisations and treatment centres.

Reading through the copy, you get this strong message that it’s written by people who have been around the branding block a couple of times. There are clear, to the point guidelines. Dos and don’ts like the following:

Do:

• make sure you use the NHS logo consistently and correctly;
• only use original digital graphic files.

Don’t:

• alter the NHS logo in any way;
• embed the NHS logo in a line of text;
• use the NHS logo more than once on single sheet, unless on a graphic display.

… and the second link under tools and resources is this baby. The most popular destination of any brand site.

The only thing I would add to that site is a good file repository and download basket.

Our aim with Brand Capital is to supply you with the application, tools and guidelines to build something as intuitive as the NHS guidelines for your company.

Sign up now and get notified when we launch.

Even before I did work for Nokia I was amazed by the free marketing done by all those Nokia owners turning on their phones the moment a plane landed. You know the tune, it’s ringing in your head now.

The Nokia tune is played more often than the Coca Cola tune and the Birthday song combined (or there abouts). Just take every Nokia phone out there, assume that at least 20% don’t change the default ring tone and multiply that with the number of calls. Whola, the most played sonic branding in the world…

This got me thinking that Apple might have missed a trick by not incorporating the famous boot up sound that they have on the computers into the iPhone as well. Would that classify as a big branding blunder?

Sonic branding takes many shapes and forms and a good friend of mine studying this topic informed my that for instance Audi takes great care to design every sound in the car. Including the closing of doors, clicks of buttons and swipes of wind screens. It all helps building that feeling of quality and enhances the brand experience.

Have you ever wondered how many takes are required and how much it costs to get that Tssschhh sound just right for a Coke advert? I also wonder if the old classic Christmas song is still played outside Iceland :p

Managing a sonic brand for your average company might just include audio files created as background music for video presentations, background music for telephone service or jingles for radio advertising.

Brand Capital will support all major audio formats and help you organize and redistribute those files where needed.

In John De Bello’s classic movie “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes” from 1978 a voice on the radio is advertising beer: “Schmidt – Because you’re never too drunk to ask for more!”

In a sense this joke captures the essence of why companies care about brands.

When you have a strong brand, your customers can

• Discover you
• Recommend you to others
• Ask for more

In fact, as we mentioned in an earlier post, the first ever registered trademark in Britain was for a beer brand: The Bass Ale Red Triangle. Registering the Red Triangle provided the brand with legal protection. Bass knew that if customers would see the Bass Red Triangle on any pub sign or bottle of beer, that triangle was in effect the company’s promise of a certain experience for the customer.

These days it’s not just signs on pubs and labels on beer bottles. And it’s not just the logo. To apply a brand today a company needs a way to consistently apply any part of their identity wherever their audience is. This could be a logo on a coffee mug, a template for a PowerPoint presentation or animations for digital banners. Or even a radio commercial in a remake of a classic B-movie.

After the collapse of the Icelandic financial system it was vital to restructure the country’s banks quickly to maintain basic banking services. New banks emerged from the old ones, and over the next couple of months they should be able to function like business as usual. But will they be able to grow? If the publicly owned banks ever plan on getting new investors and rebuild their reputation, it is essential that they build a brand from scratch. Let’s take Kaupthing as an example; the bank was alleged to have lent millions to its owners. It was one of the fastest growing banks in the world and over night the bank – and the brand – was ruined.

Kaupthing Bank is now known as The New Kaupthing bank. I’m not sure that the connection with the old brand is a good idea, because you immediately associate it with something bad. But there is an opportunity in every problem. This might be the time for ad or branding agencies to show what they are made of. If they are able to help make a brand that regains the trust of customers and lenders, they might even save the Icelandic banking system.

They say your brand is your company’s most valuable asset. If that is true, Kaupthing, or the other Icelandic banks for that matter, aren’t worth a lot. But with a solid branding strategy there might be hope for them yet.

I believe our app, Brand Capital, will be beneficial to banks, local and global. It might not save the Kaupthing brand, but that is not our intention. With Brand Capital our ultimate goal is to increase brand consistency and reliability by making your brand available to those who have anything to do with brand implementation and thereby make sure that when a new, redesigned brand rises from the ashes, it is used to its full potential in every aspect of a business.

When the Australian firm Goodman Fielder Watts (GFW) mounted a bid for a hostile takeover of one of Britain’s best known branded goods businesses, Rank Hovis McDougall (RHM), RHM came up with a brilliant, game-changing defense strategy. They had all their brands, including Hovis sliced bread, valued financially and included their value in their balance sheet. GFW could no longer afford the acquisition.

RHM had invested in their brands, just as companies invest in buying car fleets or building factories, and now this investment was reflected in their balance sheet. Others followed suit and the brand officially became a financial asset.

A brand is an asset not only because it takes an investment to build it up but also because the result generates revenue. A brand also acts as a barrier to entry to the competition. It’s easy to make a soft-drink, but competing with Coca-Cola isn’t.

Our goal with Brand Capital is to help maximize the return companies get from the brand building investment. By providing easy access to every and any digital asset that relates to the brand the rollout of a new brand or the application of a classic brand becomes easy, consistent, reliable and measurable.