Mixed messages hurt your brand

Posted under Personal Branding Strategies by Linda Griffin

The Celebrity Branding Agency has a fantastic post about the dangers of being inconsistent with your brand image. Not only do you send mixed messages but you miss opportunities to engage your customers and strengthen your brand.

In their example, they talk about a Mercedes dealer who provides loaner cars to their best clients but the loaner cars are Hondas. The customer is left wondering why they didn’t receive a Mercedes loaner. If they have a good experience with the loaner, they may start thinking that it might be OK to consider another brand. None of us wants to be in a position where we are highlighting the value of our competitor’s product, but that’s exactly what this dealer is doing.

Just think about this. Their best customers are also repeat customers. They have bought from this dealer in the past. Due to the economic environment today, they may be thinking of postponing that next purchase decision. What a perfect opportunity to provide them with a later model Mercedes loaner and some information that would entice them to say: ” I gotta get one of these!”.

We each have the risk in our own businesses of falling into the trap that this car dealer did. We ignore opportunities to put ourselves in our customer’s shoes and come up with new ways to entice and amaze them. This week, look at all of the ways that you touch your customers and identify at least one area where you are missing an opportunity to extend your brand or where you are sending a mixed message and correct it. You’ll be rewarded with more loyal customers.

Technorati Tags: brand definition, branding strategies

Brand Identity: Will the real Apple please stand up?

Posted under Personal Brand Definition by Linda Griffin

There is a hot debate going on at the Mashable blog. Seems that Australian based Woolworths Limited has unveiled a logo which looks suspiciously like the Apple computer logo. The company sells a variety of products and  brands such as food & grocery, liquor, gasoline, general merchandise and consumer electronics. According to Woolworths, the new logo is a stylized “W” paired with an “abstract leaf symbol”. When building a brand identity, the question I always ask is whether the logo supports the company’s brand and does it adhere to the rules of good logo design.

Visiting Woolworth’s web site I see that their tag line is ‘The fresh food people’ and the copy focuses on their supermarket brand. When viewed in this context, the logo does look a bit like an apple but that doesn’t automatically mean it infringes on the Apple logo. If I take off my glasses and squint, it looks like a green tomato. Or as one person said in the comments to the Mashable post, it looks like a pumpkin. All of those images give the impression of fresh produce which ties nicely to the tag line.

Now let’s see if the logo holds up under analysis of good logo design:

• Can you describe it? Yes. It’s an abstract letter ‘W’ with a leaf on top.
• Is it memorable? Yes. It’s very distinctive and you will be able to recognize it.
• Is it effective in plain black and white? Yes. The shape is very clean without a lot of detail.
• Is it scalable? Yes. It looks just as good when used in a small print ad as when it is on the side of a produce truck.

If Woolworths’ goal is to convey the idea of fresh produce, the logo they’ve come up with does achieve that goal, especially when paired with the tag line. Whether or not it infringes on the Apple logo, I’m happy to defer to the lawyers.

Technorati Tags: brand definition