You may be wondering why every brand needs to own a word in the mind of consumers. Let me illustrate with peanut butter – Jif peanut butter, to be specific. For decades, television ads for the Jif brand ended with the tagline, “Choosy Mothers Choose Jif.” Obviously, the branding strategists behind Jif hoped to associate this word “choosy” with their peanut butter. (Notice how superior product quality is implied, not stated, through use of the folksy term, “choosy.”) Today, Jif’s tagline remains virtually unchanged. Talk about a successful branding strategy: Jif has been the leading peanut butter brand in the United States for over 27 years.
One key way to build brand equity is to create a set of design “rules” that tie together the look and feel of all your marketing materials. These rules are often referred to as “brand standards.” Ideally, brand standards do the double-duty of creating awareness of your brand and differentiating your brand from your competition’s.
With the help of do-it-yourself logo design tools and affordable graphic design programs, businesses don’t necessarily have to hire expensive ad agencies to create their brand identities. However, there are some rules and tricks of logo design that trained graphic artists learn through education and experience. At the very least, you should know some basics about brand identity theory before you create your new brand icon.
Developing a brand and building brand equity takes investments in time, effort, and money. You don’t want to lose all your work and have to start over from the beginning because you skipped a critical first step in brand development–trademark your brand.
Your company logo is one of the most important elements of your brand. It instantly communicates a promise to consumers and evokes emotions. Most people don’t even realize how much a simple logo can do for a brand and business, but as a business owner, you need to understand everything that a great logo design can do, starting with the five things described below.
Your logo design is one of the most important elements of a business website. Your logo is the visual brand icon that helps visitors recognize and recall your brand image and promise. Simply sticking your logo design in the upper-left corner of your website and calling it a day isn’t giving your brand identity the importance it deserves.
Thanks to the widespread use of the Internet across the world, even the smallest businesses have the opportunity to operate globally. However, an online business doesn’t have the benefit of interacting with customers in person, so it can be more challenging to build relationships. Fortunately, the tools of the social web have broken down this barrier and put small, online businesses in direct competition with the largest companies in the world.
Customer stories can be effective for marketing your business across the social web. By creating new content marketing and conversations based on these success stories, your brand and business can get free word-of-mouth marketing that extends further than traditional marketing tactics such as advertising can deliver.