Brand blog

A brand cannot be a one stop shop

Three words that, as a branding company makes us shudder, 'one-stopshop'. Think of the brands you know, do they try to be everything to everyone? Even Coke has it's spin off products, which stand on their. They've made their brands successful through focus and not through becoming everything to everyone. As a small business it's tempting to provide everything for everyone, but in reality any strong brand has to stand for something. But by standing for something, it also means you ...

Branding is the way marketing used to be

In the 1960's, the four P's of Marketing (product, price, place, and promotion) were a coined. This was a time when the marketing professional sat at the level of the company hierarchy with the people that made the business decisions and the direction of the business was directly interweaved with the marketing direction. Since then business structure has changed exponentially, as has the world within which we conduct our business. Marketing has been levered out of it's seat at the ...

Why brand manuals should be mandatory for small businesss

The 'big guys' have them - 2 inches high sometimes, bound and sent whenever their logo is sent for a new advertising medium. I'm talking about brand manuals. For anyone who has worked for a large company, you'll no doubt be familiar with these bibles of dos and do nots. They demonstrate what you are not allowed to do – stretch your logo, change the background colour, how much space it needs around it – to ensure the brand remains consistent. ...

Branding vs advertising vs marketing

Often we're asked what the difference is between branding, marketing, advertising and PR. Firstly, the key point about branding is focus. A focused business is a focused brand. Essentially if you say what you do, then do what you say, you'll have the best chance of building a valuable brand. That's it, all there is too it! OK, maybe there is a little more involved, in particular how do you know what it is you need to say? This is often really hard ...