I’ve just been reviewing with my peers a rationale for the latest logo for a large, multi-national corporation. This presentation seems to epitomise the approach for many large design agencies. “We’ll design a new logo (sorry, I’m sure it’s a ‘brand’) and then back-track our rationale via a 27 page document whipped up by our art department.” Now, I’m not telling a multi-national how best to spend their million dollars (literally), but the thing that scares the pants off me is how this type of application to branding spills over to the real world of mortals – like you and me – in business.

Much like how the high fashion catwalks of New York Fashion Week flow into our every day clothing, the way large corporation conducts itself influences the workings of day to day business. Therefore, when we see and hear stories of large companies getting taken for a ride by large design and advertising firms – you only have to see the London 2012 logo as an example – it affects my clients and my industry. This type of conduct highlights the attitude of ‘the bigger the client, the bigger the cheque they will write’.

I hear horror stories in my own backyard of companies wanting to redefine their position in their market, and finding themselves on the end of a ‘not quite right’ logo and a bill so large they have no money left to set it right, and so they make do with what they’ve paid for. I’m sure the logic behind the logo sounded great around the boardroom table, but now they think about it, they have no idea what it means to them, yet alone what it says to their customers. Surely if this behaviour is acceptable to the large corporates, what hope do you have?

I’m taking this blog to say, it is NOT acceptable. I’m seeing large agencies taking their corporate clients for a ride, and selling them what is the best outcome for the design agency (whether it’s profit, or recognition), and not the client that is paying them. As the client you have a right to expect the outcome you want, and if it’s not achievable then you need to be told at the beginning, and not when you’re too financially tied to the project to back out.

The only way you’re to know for sure whether you’ve got what you needed, is to know what you want out of the project in the first place. Take your agency your wish list, they can tell you at the beginning if it’s feasible. Or get them to help you write it. If they say it is possible, then expect that as the outcome, otherwise we’re no better off than those corporates.

I think the big companies, in these financial times, have an obligation to their shareholders, and staff to make more informed decisions about how they spend their profit, with real results. Throwing money at a meaningless logo is not responsible conduct.

Now if the agency had thrown in a brand new Porsche (or two) with the logo, you can really see the value in that. Or maybe they did…

In fact, your marketing plan should work hand in hand with your business plan as it’s objective is to help you achieve your business goals. As a result, the following should be applied to both your marketing and your business.

Firstly, put away the shotgun!
That is, a shotgun approach to business, marketing and advertising. ‘Shotgun marketing’ is typically a business owners reaction to a quiet market. But by only acknowledging the need for marketing when you need it or have time to do it (that is, in the quiet patches), you are forcing yourself to spend money when it is at it’s most scarce. In effect you’ve finally decided to be proactive about getting business at the time when it hurts the most to do it. By it’s reactive nature, a shotgun marketing approach only provides a short-term solution without regard to the future goals of your business and is mostly ineffective and a waste of precious dollars.
The other shotgun promotion, ‘shotgun advertising’, is a splatter gun approach to advertising. The human brain can only absorb a few things at a time (when switched on, even less when it’s not consciously looking to find your message) and if you try and cover every aspect of your business, for fear of one being left out, in your advertising your advertising will be watered down, resulting in having little or no impact at all. Alternatively, if your business has focus then your advertising message is clearer and has a better result.

Think of the ‘F’ word
This is a word that Gordon Ramsay is synonymous with. But there is another more important ‘F’ word that he applies in his television show Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares – Focus.

In the show, the seasoned, successful chef is called in to help flailing restaurants. The restaurants in question are trying to appeal to every man woman and child. His formula for their success is simplicity and focus. In fact the first thing he does is help them identify what they should stop doing.
By identifying what products and services are making the best profit in your business, and by trying to sell more of the same, you’re actually not risking less sales, but you’re giving yourself more time to focus on the more profitable sales and have the time for these better sales to increase before you need to resort to the reactive approach.

When you can produce a focused, consistent message about your business and when the fear of not being everything to everyone is less than the fear that hard times that will come again, you can finally start to iron out those sales slumps.

Published Canterbury Today Issue 92, November/December 2008

If you were to think in terms of opposites, you’d think that branding was at the opposite end of the spectrum of business to sales. I recently went to a workshop on ‘Closing the Sale’* to learn more about the world of sales. Expecting to learn how to become the sharp salesman and having an answer for every ‘no’ that I would encounter in business I was surprised to find that it was actually a session on branding. We discussed our 60 second elevator pitch (what can you say about your business to capture a persons attention in 15 seconds, much like a headline should grab attention) and what we could say about our business to leave them wanting to know more. It was also about you helping your customer to buy off you and not how to create a pushy sales pitch at all! Fantastic! Their approach was that your business is solving a problem? And isn’t this why we got into business in the first place — we discovered a problem that we had the answer to and built a business around it. The further we get away from why we went into business in the first place the harder it is to get great clients.
I’ve already discussed the importance of focus in your business (see Blog Successful business, or branded business?) but I believe there is something other than the perceived risk of saying no to work that may be holding you back from focusing your brand (and your business): If you make a promise to your customers you then have to deliver.

Put your money where your brand is.

“Companies that put their money behind their brand and not their business fail to realise that the business is the brand.”

John Moore, author of Tribal Knowledge, Lessons learned from working inside Starbucks.

It’s all very well being told how you present your business, how to advertise, and what to say, but now you’ve made a promise, you’ve got to keep it and that falls on you, the business owner. The thought conjures up visions of complaining customers, 12 hour working days to keep up the demand and the fear that your staff may not deliver the same level of service as the owner.
This won’t happen – if you do it right. Ideally you should be working on your brand at the same time as your business. As you find focus in your company and discover the clients you really like to work with your brand will grow alongside. If you provide focused products or services along with your focused branding, and “say what you do, then do what you say”, you cannot fail to meet your customers expectations, and your staff will have a clear understanding about what it is that makes your business unique.
As John Moore states in the quote above, your brand is your business. Simply throwing money at your design and advertising is not enough to build a strong brand, but in keeping your brand promises you will create a better brand and a better business.

Published Canterbury Today Issue 91, September/October 2008

Brand success rule number one: Focus
Three words that make me shudder – One Stop Shop. The concept of a one stop shop is great. You are thinking of the benefit to your consumer, and saying if I was a customer I wouldn’t want to trudge around town looking for new tyres, an oil change and a cut and polish, what if I could get everything I need for my car in one place. Unfortunately you cannot please everyone. If this really was true then the tyre specialist, car wash cafes, oil change stops would never have opened their doors (and kept them open). You have only to go to an Australian mall to prove this. The malls are full of stores that specialise. They only sell vacuum cleaners; or electric shavers; or popcorn; or magazines; or storage containers. It would be a step backwards for the shaver store to have a customer come in and buy a vacuum cleaner while her husband shops for a razor? Or the popcorn store to start selling confectionery because a few people asked for it? In the short term the store would increase their turnover (not to be confused with profit), as more product is being moved, but in 5 years what will that brand stand for? What about department stores? Their focus is still not about catering to everyone, but specialising in a certain level of goods. David Jones’ philosophy is to have every top brand under one roof. The Warehouse is “where everyone gets a bargain” and right of return. These store types sell consumer expectation, each at a different level.

Brand success rule number two: Consistency
The best way to avoid brand confusion is to say what you do, then and doing what you say! Simple. Then do this over and over. The power of repetition is incredible. If you do something once a day for 30 days, you’ve created a habit! If you hear the same thing every day it penetrates the filters of the mind and embeds itself into the subconscious. Can you finish these sentences: “It’s moments like these…”; “Kiwi kids, are… kids”; “go for g-…”? No doubt you’ve got the jingle stuck in your head by now? So imagine how powerful it could be if your business was not just an audible repetition, but that every time someone dealt with your company they got the same experience, whether they are reading your website, or talking to a staff member. The difference? With repetition of television ads you know you are being advertised to and the consumer puts up barriers, with consumer and brand consistency it’s a whole lot more influential – and believable.

If this sounds too easy, you need to know it only works if you actually follow through and do what you say you will, exhibit a focused business, and have a great product or service. Then you are planning to succeed.

Published Canterbury Today, Issue 90, July/August 2008

The difference between a brand and a logo

Though the words are often interchanged, a logo is part of the brand family, but a brand is not just a logo. A logo is the symbol that represents a company, the brand is the company. Everything that a company is and stands for is a brand. How your receptionist answers the phone, how quickly you respond to queries and the core product or service you stand for are all parts of building your brand. But, ultimately a brand can only stand for one thing in your consumers eyes.

There are more and more online logo stores in the market. The type where you pay $295US for 3 logo options and settle on one. Or for $595 they are already designed, you just pick one and insert your company name and you’ve got your logo. Then you have the design company, where you discuss your needs with a graphic designer, they go away and design some ideas for you, and as they’re not really what you’re looking for you ask them to design some more, so they do, but still these are not right. Finally you get a logo that will have to do and you receive an invoice for $1500 for time taken.

Why there are so many price options for logos

As a service industry, designers make their money on hours charged. As a lawyer or accountants prices a job on how long it will take them to complete a job, so it is with the design industry. The only trouble with that is you don’t know how long a job will take. The designer has to guess how many changes the client will require based on their past experience. “But I just want a logo, how long can it take to draw one?” The logo may only take 2 hours to draw, but the real time is in the research, sample logo sketches, refining the logo and finalising colours to ensure it works in as many aplications as possible.

You’ll notice many of the internet instant logos are busy and illustrative. They have gradients in their make up (where it fades from one colour to another) which means they will not be faxable. As they are made of many colours they will be expensive to print (you’re stuck with printing on 4 colours – like on your colour printer – with cyan, magenta, yellow and black) and the very nature of their style means, although it may be ‘unique to you’, it will look in style very similar to every other logo they produce. This is not a problem if you’re willing to weigh up that with the pro’s of what you’ve paid for it, and should not be a problem if you’re a one person business. Where it is a problem however is the evident lack of uniqueness. That is, does it sum up not only what you do, but what makes you different to your competition?

It pays to be different

If you’ve read this website, or indeed any of my blogs, I press the point of being unique in more than price or great service. My company is unique in that it helps business first find their point of difference (it’s there, you’ve just got to know how to find it) before we put it into their logo. When you find yourself admiring a logo of a specific company, and think “that’s clever” keep in mind that the company has spent a lot of time and money making it that way. But in the long run it is worth it, because if you can pay for a logo that will tell a story about your business, then instead of spending money on a logo, you’ve begun to invest in the value of your business.

Whether you pay $300 for a logo or $30,000 for one, it has got to be an investment in your company and not just a necessary cost. If a lawyer charged you $200 to set up a trust, for example, and you know it usually costs $1,000, will you be getting protection of your assets or are you ticking the box? You must understand that if they have only committed $200 worth of their time to your trust they most probably have not made it specific to your circumstances.

And so, if you’ve spent $300 for a logo to represent your business to ‘tick the box’, know that this is the amount of time the design company can afford to spend on your business.

What you should expect to pay

Designers need to spend the time to get to know your business. They look at what the competition is doing and then design something that makes you stand out from them. This takes time, as does getting to know you and what logo would suit you. Much as a stylist could dictacte that in order to get more business you need to dress in a certain way, a graphic designer is dressing your business. But if the stylist was to dress you in something that you just know you won’t feel comfortable in, so it is with you logo.

A skilled designer will know which questions to ask you in order to make sure the process goes as smoothly as possible. This means you need to have the answers to these questions. Expect to pay upwards of $1,200 for this service.

If you really understand that a logo that will just be different to the competition, for the sake of being different, isn’t going to help your sales, or you are getting confused with the competition and creating quotes with not many turning into sales (that’s right, people are comparing you on price with other companys) then you may need a branding company. They should help you first find out what’s working now in your sales and marketing, what’s not and what the competition is saying. They can help you pin point what makes you different so when they do design your logo it says exactly what you do, and appeals to the right people.

Your brand should be something that you can sell with your company as with your other assets – how much do you spend on ensuring you have a new car, smart premises, clever website and the best sales people, then what percentage of that are you willing to invest in your branding?

A reasonable price to pay will start at $6,000, a fraction of what you spend on other things. Remember this is the total cost, and as branding is a process this is the cost over time and not a one off fee. It also means you’ll walk away with a clear understanding of what you should be telling you advertising agency, marketing company and web developer. A small price to pay for the time it will save you, and the surprise bill of hit-and-miss way of having a logo ‘drawn’ for you.

Speed (Need it last week)
Price (I’ve put it off because I don’t want to fork out the money)
Quality (I know it should be done properly, but I’ve left it so long I’ll take what I can get)

The fact is, you can really only prioritise two of these three needs. Let’s think about it. If you need something ASAP, and you don’t have much time, you can’t afford to shop around on price. If you don’t want to pay for a quality product then your job will be put at the back of the queue. If you want a job completed fast and as cheap as possible then you’ll have to sacrifice the quality.

Unfortunately the majority of advertising and marketing campaigns (as in, ‘we need more customers, let’s do an advertising blitz’) are done at the last minute and end up either costing you more, because you haven’t had the time or expertise to get the job right from the planning stage, and will also cost you more in the long run. That is because ‘ad-hock’ marketing blitzes are treated as a one off project and lack the consistency of message, design and follow through of a well thought out plan. We call this the shotgun advertising effect.

You can have all three!
In an ideal world, you will have time to figure out what your message will be, and to who it’s to be directed. You can have an ideal world by putting in the time now. If you have a plan now, then when you need to put out some marketing you will have a clear message (because you’ve already taken the time to figure it out), your design will already be ready to use, and you won’t have to spend money reinventing your campaign every time the market gets quiet.

The other advantage to getting a plan together is you’ll be using it every day, without even realising, as you will be telling customers the same story every time you talk to them, further reinforcing the benefits of using your product or service, thus you’ll have less need for marketing and less quiet patches.

Who’s got the time?
Every client we’ve worked with has approached us and not had the time to invest in seeing what’s working now, and what could use improvement before they do an advertising blitz. We’ve given them the time, as in an extra 5 working days (minimum) we take them through our Brand Inspection, which is a streamlined process to figure out once and for all what is working, and what is not, so they no longer need to waste precious time and money on ineffective campaigns.

In the long term they spend less, have a quick turnaround and a high quality design system to enable them to have price, speed and quality. After all, isn’t that what it’s all about?