by Miriam Hara | Apr 28, 2015 | Branding, Business Success, Creative, Latest, Marketing
There was a time when brand logos were only associated with a business or product. Enter the age of social media and marketing opportunities have opened up. The popularity and ease of use of social media have not only created the option of having a personal brand, but it’s almost a necessity in order to stand apart from the crowd. In the age of personal branding, why not have a personal brand logo? Now, it’s totally cool to even have your own business card – even if you’re not part of a business. Developing an iconic brand logo, may make perfect sense for you.
So why shouldn’t a personal brand reach the next level? Following in the footsteps of President Obama (with the creation of his iconic “O” logo), Hillary Clinton has created her very own Personal (and Presidential) brand logo. The backlash to her logo has been immediate and the criticism has been intense. As with everything visual and open to social media, everyone has an opinion – and wants to share it! Especially if it’s negative. That’s how social media operates.
Sadly, it seems that the business of marketing has gone the way of photography, writing and graphic design. Being armed with a computer, the right software and ‘belonging’ to the right social media platforms have taken precedence over these professions. Although, just because you own a digital camera, doesn’t make you a photographer and just because you can navigate InDesign or Illustrator, doesn’t make you a designer. Common sense is a necessary skill for marketing, although it takes more than common sense to become a marketer.
Still, if you are really serious about developing your own personal brand logo, (and with all the tools at your fingertips why not?). Here’s a how-to process you should consider in creating a personal brand logo:
What are 3 keywords that represent you?
In order to develop a personal brand logo, you must determine how you want to be represented. These words will help build the framework in establishing the type of impact the logo needs to achieve. Is it ‘hard-working’? Is it ‘relaxed’, or maybe ‘approachable’?
What 3 colours do you feel best reflect you and your personality?
A personal brand logo is about you. Your personal brand logo must be a natural extension of you. It should reflect your aspiration of how you want others to see you. Just like for a business, your logo will likely be the first impression people will have of you. Be sure it is accurate.
How do you want your logo to impact those who see it?
What’s the reaction you hope to get when you offer your business card with your personal brand logo on it? How does it need to communicate? This is in close association with the three words that you chose to represent you, but takes one step further. Do you want your brand logo to ‘excite’, to ‘intimidate’, to be assertive, ‘friendly’ or even be ‘controversial’? When designing a brand logo, the desired “initial emotive impact” is essential to establish before you even start. An iconic logo rests heavily on keywords to determine the symbol, colour and font selection.
What do you want your logo to say about you?
The tone of a logo is equally important. Is it bold, ‘professional’, ‘grassroots’ or perhaps ‘fashionable’? The tone of a logo is often delivered by font selection and the weight or strength of the letters. Working with colour and your keywords, a good designer will take all this information and create a few brand logo options that visually interpret what you are all about.
Develop a few options and test them.
Don’t ask friends for their opinions. You need to do research. Depending on your budget, SurveyMonkey is an online option available to use. However, just because you can use SurveyMonkey, doesn’t mean you can write an unbiased questionnaire like a seasoned researcher. But at least you will have attempted to quantify the likability of your logo.
I wonder if Hillary Clinton and her team of experts thought to research her new “personal brand logo”? If they did, did they do it professionally? I believe that Hillary missed a huge opportunity to affirm herself politically in a very different way than her competition. Her personal logo could have broken down some of the inherent barriers the Clinton legacy has developed – most notably with Gen Y voters. It could have established a new dimension of her personality, a new attitude and perhaps also a more approachable persona.
Instead, she’s left with a brand logo identity that really misses the mark.
by Miriam Hara | Apr 24, 2015 | Advertising, Agency, Business Success, Latest, Management, Marketing
For those of us in the service industry, we know too well the ins and outs of a request for proposal (RFP) – and what it really means for an agency. I have come to view an RFP as comparable to entering a beauty contest. The potential client asks multiple agencies to show them what they can produce – then they’ll think about it.
From experience, when first invited to be part of an RFP, the immediate feeling is exhilaration – this is quickly followed by dread. The amount of work required to develop a quality RFP is phenomenal. The time and energy that is devoted to this non-profitable account adds an unnatural amount of stress to the agency business. Gone are the days when companies would compensate businesses to be included in an RFP – long gone!
What is the real purpose of an RFP?
Having worked in agencies for over a quarter of a century, I have often seen RFPs go out in an effort to simply validate the client’s current agency. In my opinion, this is quite disrespectful. It takes away valuable hours from the agencies invited to participate. Hours are what service agencies base their profitably on. Asking outside agencies to be part of an RFP, when there is actually no intent to change the current agency, is unethical.
If the RFP is genuinely for the purpose of garnering a new agency, why is this approach taken? Is it to determine “the fit” of the team within the group? If that’s the case, why not simply meet up over a series of dinners or lunches? Law firms hire interns this way. The potential intern is taken to dinner and interviewed in a group setting. It works and it’s fun. More importantly it allows the team players on both sides to get to know one another. The client/agency partnership needs to be based on positive relationships in order to achieve a successful collaboration.
What if the request for proposal is to determine how creative an agency can be? For those of us in the world of branding and advertising, clients can determine this from viewing our previous work and hearing about what was given as the brief. If that isn’t sufficient, perhaps it would be more advantageous to provide the agency with an actual project, complete with delivery requirements and timelines? This would allow the business team to assess how the agency actually works – if the agency is able to deliver on time and provide the necessary added value required by the team and the brand. This approach can be implemented by asking two or three chosen agencies to each complete a different project.
In recent years, procurement has often spearheaded the RFP process – assessing services similar to securing a print provider. The amount of input they have in the final selection is not always clear or consistent. However, the services provided by an agency cannot be compared to printing. Therefore, nothing is equal. It’s not about the hourly rate, it’s about the idea, the strategy, the commitment, and the partnership the agency can provide. No two agencies are alike. Service businesses often build their model on value. The value agencies deliver is quite different, making it difficult to assess them in equal terms.
What are you thoughts on the RFP process? Any idea how businesses can move away from this model of assessing agencies? I’d like to hear about them.
by Miriam Hara | Apr 22, 2015 | Business Success, Latest, Marketing
We live in a society that is age-obsessed. No one wants to look old. No one wants to be old. Yet, there’s no escaping it. Each one of is going to turn around one day and be ‘old’. Then we’ll ask ourselves, “When did this happen? How did this happen?” Of course those are just rhetorical questions. We all know time stops for no one. So rather than talk about something that no one can change (getting old), let’s talk about experience.
Experience is relative and it’s not necessarily age-related – although quite truthfully, it often is. In my younger years I used to say, “It’s not the years, it’s the mileage”. I still believe this. But back then, I was the youngest one on the team. Today, well let’s just say that I’m no longer the youngest!
A perspective on becoming the agency go-to guru:
At some point during my career I found myself on the other side of the fence of experience. No longer was I in search of the person who would know the answer. Seemingly overnight, I became the person who knew the answer. Well it may not have been overnight, it may have been over 20 years of late nights at the agency to become that go-to guru.
And I must say that I enjoy it – having the knowledge, the know-how and the confidence that comes along with experience. Although, I’m not saying that I’ve stopped learning. NO! In this field, it’s impossible not to learn new things. But the learning process is much easier for me now. It has become quite fluid and intuitive.
In business, regardless of whom you talk to, being of a certain age is seen as a disadvantage. So let’s talk about the advantages of experience. There are so many advantages for businesses to employ experienced people. Here are the reasons:
1) Wisdom is knowledge: There’s very little that can compete with knowledge. A wealth of experience provides depth of knowledge that is astounding. And you can only get it one way – by experience. (Funny that!)
2) It takes less time to get things done: Anyone with experience has gained many skills. They don’t know everything, but they know a lot. At the agency, our designers can really churn out outstanding concepts and designs quickly. They have a wealth of experience to draw from, cutting out the insecurities and cutting down on the time it takes to get things done. At the speed of business today, half the time to do anything is big a plus.
3) Getting it done right – the first time: No need to expand on that. You all know what I mean.
4) Confidence and professionalism: From an employer’s perspective, when someone is able to hit the ground running and have confidence, it’s nothing short of bliss. Having the professionalism to handle stressful situations gracefully is invaluable.
Experience matters. The experienced stage is a great place to be at in one’s career, at least that’s my perspective.
What are your thoughts?
by Miriam Hara | Apr 13, 2015 | Branding, Business Success, Latest, Marketing
Brand development is necessary for any brand competing in the market today. Regardless of the media channel or consumer behaviour, the need for brand development is still relevant. Brand means so many things to so many people. Yet, a brand should by definition be the same for all. But it’s not. Many people confuse Brand with a logo and a sexy tagline. It’s not. Brand is everything combined and it is the most important asset any business owns. It’s how the world sees you and if successful, it empowers them to trust you. It speaks to what you stand for and what you promise to deliver.
If you are in the midst of brand development for your business, product or even yourself, make sure you aren’t just ‘winging it’. Here are a few steps to enable brand definition:
Defining Brand promise is paramount. Consumers’ perception of brand is determined by their experience with it. In this social media era, the experience and opinions of others can also colour their thinking. Brand must take part in the development of their thinking. Brand can influence its own public image by defining, creating and communicating a strong brand identity.
Defining Brand visually is necessary. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: A logo does not make a brand. But it’s the first visual face to face meeting that consumers have with it. It’s imperative that you approach this significant visual aspect of your brand professionally.
Defining Brand identity in the brand development process is a sum of both of the above. How does it look? How does it sound? Developing a Brand identity is about how a brand communicates with the public – every time, all the time. Determine the tone, visual presence and verbal voice. Keep it consistent.
Defining a personal brand. What’s the difference? Or rather, is there a difference? With the emergence of business platforms, like LinkedIn, Brand has now evolved in the arena of “people branding”, also known as personal branding. Of course, personal branding isn’t new and isn’t the result of technology – it has always been around. However, not many people have exercised the notion. Technology has enabled the necessity of a personal brand to separate yourself from the masses. Whether its the summary you’ve written on your LinkedIn profile, the eBooks you provide to promote yourself, your blog posts or the resume you send in for a job posting. How you present yourself to the world in the digital arena must have the essence of your personal brand. Take a page from the brand development process, and apply it personally.
Success in today’s noisy marketplace is all about defining Brand: Whether you’re a product or a person, a brand development process is a must.
For a quick and easy reference on how to market your brand, download our eBooks: Branding Understood and Marketing Understood.
by Miriam Hara | Apr 2, 2015 | Branding, Business Success, Latest, Marketing, Social Media
There was a time (in the recent past) when brand sell was all about showcasing features and benefits to an intended target audience. With the emergence of social media, the art of the brand sell has evolved to include a very real social component. Social media has made engagement and response rate some of the main objectives for brands. With that, in the framework of brand development, the art of storytelling has become much more important. What was once brand sell, is now story sell. Now brand marketers need to wrap their initiatives around the story sell of their brand. Like it or not, engagement is where it’s at today and the way to consumers’ hearts is through storytelling.
The connection established through story sell is much deeper than brand sell.
So why not merge the two? For most of us marketers, this is nothing new. Brand sell was and is about brand storytelling, but now it is more socially inclined. Brand stories need to take their intended audience on an emotional journey. They need to connect with them on a deeper level, establishing a promise not so much in words, but in context and feeling.
Here are some pivotal components to developing good story sell:
1. What is your brand’s personality? What are its characteristics? Is it serious and no-nonsense? Is it fun? Is it highbrow? List all of them.
2. How does your brand’s personality and characteristics tie in with its potential consumers’ values? Dig deep. We like people based on their personality and characteristics, but we maintain the relationship because they connect with our values.
3. What are your brand’s preferences? What does your brand like? What does your brand dislike? What your brand doesn’t like, want or have is equally as important as what is does.
4. Who are your brand’s potential friends? We all have various types of friends. Those friends have at least one thing in common – they’re friends with us. What are the other common denominators that make your brand a fit in amongst its friends?
The social sharing of a brand story is of paramount importance to forging a deeper connection with the consumer. Entering into the zone of the consumer’s intimate social media space is where sharing your brand story is crucial. Make your next brand sell approach all about brand story sell.
Heard a good brand story lately? Please share it here with us.
by Miriam Hara | Mar 12, 2015 | Advertising, Business Success, Creative, Latest, Marketing
In order to maintain creative integrity when discussing concept ideas with your client, it’s paramount to listen to what they are not saying. The art of listening has long been deemed as the key to success in any sales situation. And that is very true. The same is also true when selling creative and conceptual approaches to marketing professionals.
Developing creative concepts and advertising campaigns makes creative professionals part of the marketing profession. Although, there is a basic difference between marketing professionals and creative professionals. I’d like to be clear before going any further. Being creative or being a marketing professional, are not mutually exclusive. All professions need creative thinkers. However, in the context of this discussion, I am referring to creative professionals who are mandated on a daily basis to develop “creative” approaches to marketing challenges and initiatives. For all you creative types out there, you know that your creative mind works a little differently than most. It operates by thinking in visual and conceptual terms. This does not come naturally everyone. Creative thinkers are able to fit many subtle nuances and pieces of a puzzle together into a cohesive message that resonates to a core audience – all the while, making it easy on the eye!
Far too often when presenting creative concepts and programs to brand and marketing professionals, it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain the creative integrity of the program. Here are a few tips to help that process:
Don’t take feedback at face value: Often when receiving changes to the creative from a client, feedback is given in the form of direction. For example: Move this up, or move this down. Try to determine what is at the source of that direction. What does the client actually want to achieve?
Be prepared to educate: It’s important for those of us who sell and more importantly, develop creative, to have an educational mandate as well. I have found the best results occur after I illustrate or “show” the client direction requested. This is when I show a different creative solution that resolves the issue.
Speak frankly: Far too often, the selling through of a creative takes over the creative integrity. When the creative goes into a direction that it was never intended to, it’s success is in jeopardy. The program may also be in risk of not resonating with the intended audience. Clients expect your frankness. In fact, that is why you’re at the table.
I invite you to download our design and marketing ebooks found here. Are there any tips that you can add? Please do!
So why shouldn’t a personal brand reach the next level? Following in the footsteps of President Obama (with the creation of his iconic “O” logo), Hillary Clinton has created her very own Personal (and Presidential) brand logo. The backlash to her logo has been immediate and the criticism has been intense. As with everything visual and open to social media, everyone has an opinion – and wants to share it! Especially if it’s negative. That’s how social media operates.