Eventually, your logo becomes
a touch point by which your audience
either recognizes or mocks your brand.

The Struggle

Many businesses struggle through the development of their business or product logo because they believe the logo is their brand rather than understanding it is but one representation of their brand. No logo can carry your brand without additional context and meaning.

The Context

Context is built in the way your brand conducts itself out in public—obviously frequent and consistent exposure in target-rich environments, but service, quality, aesthetics, ethics, price points, messaging and human and online interaction—in essence, everything defines your brand. That’s your logo’s context for representation.

The Paralysis

Often a sort of paralysis sets in as those uninitiated to the development process wrestle with how to cram an entire brand into a logo mark that has no brand yet. A common inclination is to use a design-by-committee approach and crowd source it by inviting the opinion of anyone and everyone.

Of course, if you ask fifty people for their opinion you’ll get fifty opinions. This method can further confuse and often derail the process resulting in delivery delays and unsatisfactory results as typically, elements from a number of logos are mashed together into one design to appease everyone’s input.

The Summation

A logo is one symbol of your brand, so it’s critical to get it right. Weigh, assess and classify your input, then discuss it with your design professional. If you’ve hired the right firm, they’ll have the demonstrated experience and expertise to take into account all the pragmatics and issues involved with properly deploying not just a logo, but an entire brand.

Eventually, your logo becomes a touch point by which your audience either recognizes or mocks your brand. It is important to get your logo right, but don’t expect it to be your brand from the outset.

“Let’s get small.” -Steve Martin

Get Smart, Get Small

While worldwide mobile phone sales slowed in early 2009, media-rich smart phone sales are on the rise both globally and in the United States.

In ever-increasing numbers, across a wide spectrum of demographics, people are plying the web primarily on mobile devices. If your site and digital strategies are not mobile capable and/or optimized to load properly - your brand, for many, may not exist.

“Smartphone sales surpassed 40 million units [in Q2 2009], a 27 per cent increase from the same period last year.” - Gartner

Worldwide mobile phone sales totaled 269.1 million units in the Q1 of 2009 - an 8.6 per cent decrease from Q1 2008. However, according to Gartner, Inc., “Smartphone sales surpassed 40 million units [in Q2 2009], a 27 per cent increase from the same period last year.”

In three days Apple sold over a million iPhone 3G S smartphones and 6 million people downloaded the new iPhone OS 3.0 update after it released.

Add sales of the iTouch and other portable phone-less devices to these statistics and you have a significant emerging market for your brand messaging.

2008 Smart Phone Sales (US)†

† RCRWireless | .think Nov 2009

A Medium in Motion

Many early adopters are opting to invest in mobile applications first - desktop applications second. In fact iPhone Facebook application interfaces have been said to navigate better than Facebook’s own standard web version.

And mobile-based interactive media delivery is here to stay. Flash Lite, Adobe’s mobile-ready Flash player, is already deployed on over a billion mobile devices - with plug-in versions licensed to many popular mobile browsers and an Apple iPhone version rumored in the works.

Just this past week, at the Adobe MAX 2009 conference, Adobe demoed CS5–the next version of it’s widely popular creative suite of applications. Flash CS5 will soon offer customers the ability to export Flash-developed content as native iPhone applications to be distributed through the iTunes app store. Just one more reason why any excuse to avoid mobilizing your brand just won’t fly.

Small Interfaces, Big Variations

Whether developing a mobile app or formatting your current site for mobile delivery it’s important to account for a wide range of mobile screen dimensions to ensure proper readability.

Additionally browsers have greatly varying abilities. Modern smartphones like the iPhone and phones running Google Android have fully functional browsers - other smartphones, do not. As with any digital development testing is crucial. Online emulators can be helpful in assuring your media is suited for delivery vehicles - your audiences’ preferred mobile devices.

Mobile Watering Holes, Captive Audiences

If your customer, constituent, or product base is built heavily on affinity groups, or community, developing a smartphone application can prove particularly beneficial in terms of engagement and retention.

Developing a branded smartphone-ready application or tool, such as an Phone app, can help promote your brand messaging via promotion platforms such as AdMob (mobile ad medium), AdWhirl (mobile ad aggregator) and Mdotm (iPhone app promotion), help facilitate a mobile extension of your brand, messaging and campaigns - often to a new mobile-inclined user base.

Get a Move On

The confluence of exploding smartphone use, video, music and text sharing popularity, and the proliferation of every imaginable mobile game, tool and app means your audience can encounter your brand messaging or purchase your wares just about anywhere.

Assuming you are there to greet them.

Contact Brainstorm for more information on taking your brand mobile.

Image: Miss Karen

A Mark Left

I live in an urban environment with a bus stop near the front of my house. One morning, my neighbors and I were dismayed to awake to graffiti. Our bus stop had symbols painted on it, store front windows were etched, a residential fence defaced, and the light post marked.

“The value of identity of course is that so often with it comes purpose.”

-Richard R. Grant

While I don’t think anyone in the neighborhood was surprised that it happened, we were grossly disappointed. We all work hard to maintain our beautiful space, but someone with a different connection to our space worked hard to mark it as their own. How hard they worked is debatable but they made their mark.

Leaving a Mark

Our identity is hugely important to our success, whether we’re a small business, an individual or a gang. We all create an identity, intentional or not. Some of us leave a mark and some of us don’t. I learned something from the “un-identified” (in my world) gang. They have an identity that means something to their audience, probably their enemies. It means something to me too – there is never an appropriate time to push an identity on someone, or a community, if they don’t want it.

Likewise, how your identity is imposed upon and received in today’s social media communities is a critical component of any brand design and marketing strategy.

Consider yours carefully, seek good counsel and identify yourself properly.

Image: Robyn Gallagher

“Do what you do so well that they will want to see it again and bring their friends.”

- Walt Disney

Uh Oh

Recently, the iSight Camera on my MacBook Air quit working. I’d purchased the three-year Apple Care program, but was hesitant to engage in the repair process. My past experience with technical support from other computer companies has been less than pleasant.

11:30 Sharp

From the Apple website, I learned the initial step is to call technical support to rule out any software issues. Argh.

Then I found “Ask an Apple Expert” on the website, with the option to have them call me at my convenience. I scheduled a call and at the appointed time on the dot, a very courteous technician called me from Northern California. She patiently walked me through the diagnostics, focusing only on my account—no interruptions, no multitasking. Within 30 minutes, she told me I’d need hardware diagnostics that could be done at my local Apple store. She even scheduled the appointment for me.

A Matter of Minutes

When I arrived, my name was listed on a plasma screen as the next customer at the Apple Store Genius Bar. After a 5 minute wait, I met my service Genius who apologized for the delay.

Within 10 minutes he’d performed the hardware diagnostics and confirmed the machine needed to be sent to a “repair depot” for service. He gave me an 800 number to call for a shipping box and told me the repairs would take approximately 4-5 business days.

This is where I started to get anxious. I needed time. Time to prepare myself to function without my laptop for 5 business days.

Next Day, 8:00 a.m.

I called the 800 number and by 8:00 a.m. the next day, a custom box with packing material, simple instructions—even packing tape—arrived at my office. I let it sit, procrastinating the separation from my laptop.

Finally, I ran Time Machine to back up my data, filled a thumb drive with recent docs, and prepared myself for 5 days without my computer. I packed up the MacBook Air, took it to my local Kinkos, and said my prayers for its safe trip to Houston.

Time Flies

The next morning, I logged into FedEx to track the package. It had arrived safely at 6:54 a.m. local time! Wow, a quick trip and an early start. Then I logged into the Apple site to check on the status of the repair. By 9:00 a.m. EDT, it was finished and pending return.

My laptop arrived via FedEx at 9:00 a.m. the next day. I pulled it out, tested my new camera, and crafted this post, amazed that my computer traveled 1,700 miles round trip, was repaired and returned to me—all within 40 hours.

Thank you Apple for great service and great tools to keep me informed all along the way.

Your brand’s reputation is established by your actions and interactions. The best example of customer retention management is the one you deliver today. Make it count and keep them coming back—and telling their friends.

Image: Marcin Wichary

“No great marketing decisions
have ever been made on quantitative data.”

John Scully
Former PepsiCo president, former Apple CEO

The Tree of Knowledge

Marketers commonly use decision trees to assess features and benefits to determine what is most important to consumers. Quantitative results can be obtained by asking respondents a sequence of very specific questions that branch out using if/then methodology.

Unreasoned Response

In a focus group years ago, an outspoken man was asserting himself by speaking out of turn, disparaging the process, and scoffing at the premise that brand had any bearing on his buying decision, ultimately proclaiming, “I’m just here for the money.”

“Control” Group

Experienced focus group moderators realize if unaddressed, dominant individuals can establish control, affect the group and ultimately hinder true and useful input. The deft moderator began to ask a series of if/then comparative questions that challenged the man to reconsider his inherent assumptions. In essence, the moderator drove him through a decision-making process to help him formulate reasoned positions.

Once back on topic the naysayer became the moderator’s most vigilant and attentive advocate - offering considered and definitive feedback. The rest of the group followed suit.

“The only relevant test of the
validity of a hypothesis is comparison
of prediction with experience.”

Milton Friedman
Nobel Prize-winning economist

Overrated Ratings

Similar principles apply to common online qualitative tools such as the five-star, numerical value, or Likert scales used to value or measure a respondent’s level of agreement with a given statement. Although quick and simple for respondents to complete, unlike decision trees, these methods ask subjects to value an attribute or preference without any measure of comparison, which lacks objectivity and is prone to positive or negative bias when respondents rank nearly everything of high (or low) importance.

Minimize Error

In What Do Customers Really Want on the Harvard Business Review site, Eric Almquist and Jason Lee explore Maximum Difference scaling. An extension of the Method of Paired Comparisons where subjects select a preference from two choices, MaxDiff asks respondents to identify their highest and lowest preference from a subset of attributes or statements. Multiple subsets are tested as part of a series. Almquist, a partner at Bain & Company, talks through one MaxDiff study on the relative importance of restaurant attributes in this presentation.

Asking respondents to rate selections is helpful and informative, but requiring them to decide between selections forces them to weigh answers. It inspires considered input, and generates more defined, useful and valuable feedback while eliminating undecided responses and mitigating positive and negative bias.

Maximize Outcome

Qualitative research adds relevance and validity to quantitative findings. In brand marketing research, consider your premise and process carefully from the outset to limit risk and maximize return. Remember, research often drives strategy, strategy drives spending, and spending drives outcomes – both good and bad.

Let well-considered decision trees help you branch out in the right direction.

image: pkeyn