I believe that everyone can benefit from applying the great branding techniques of big business – including you and me! The next time you update your resume or prepare for an interview for a dream job, remember what the big guys know:

• Be Compelling: Plan and practice your 30-second elevator pitch ahead of time and strive to capture their imagination with your message and your delivery.
• Be Clear: Be sure your message is easy to understand. You want them to see how you can solve an important problem or fill an important gap for them. The last thing you want to do is confuse them.
• Be Concise: Get all your points across quickly and efficently. If you go around in circles or wander off track in your interview, they may think you’ll do the same on the job.
• Be Clever: Try to leave them with a thought or idea that is truly memorable and interesting so that you really stand out about the other candidates.
• Be Consistent: There’s an old saying in marketing. Tell them. Then tell them again. And tell them again. Without sounding repetitive, be sure you are consistent in your messaging so they know they can depend on you.

Creative Naming Workshops:  To help you name products and services in a timely way, we begin by working with intact executive, sales and marketing teams to define a sensible strategic naming strategy to meet your market needs. Next, we focus on generating creative name ideas in an exciting, hands-on brainstorming session. Just grab a thesaurus and we’re off and running.

Positioning/Repositioning Workshops:  In these sessions, Satow Strategies leads you and your intact team through the positioning process, leveraging strategic mapping tools to “reveal” the best competitive messaging for your products and services.  The results can be quite eye-opening.

Brand Assessment Workshops:  See your brand from the outside in, applying proven brand management tools to assess and adjust your current brand strategy and plan ways to boost its power and performance more effectively, across audiences and channels, over time.

Personal Positioning and Branding Workshops:  Organizations, groups and/or individuals can sign up for these dynamic, hands-on sessions that apply time-tested business branding methods to help individuals discover their unique value proposition and find ways to promote that value to enhance their role at work and their future career endeavors.

When you’re ready to focus on brand strategies in a flash, email us at info@satowstrategies.com or call us at 602-481-1942.

But the truth is that even good companies with solid brands falter and die away and I think there is an element of sadness and loss in that fact. Because brands do not just create themselves. They are conceived, built and fostered by a whole lot of very smart and successful people. These savvy staffers defined them, protected them vigilently and invented great sales and marketing programs to grow their value. Circuit City and Linens & Things, to name a few, were once among the leaders in their markets and are now no more. Others, like Sharper Image, are repositioning their brand away from brick and mortar to direct-to-retail.

Thinking about what separates the GEs of the world from rest is important. Understanding how to reinvent an organization and its offerings to shift with the changing times is one of the most significant things a company can focus on. Options include growing from a large U.S. company to an even larger multinational conglomerate like GE did, selling to the highest bidder, shifting the business model or remaining small and nimble. 

No matter what strategy is pursued, for better or worse, a brand goes along wherever the business strategy takes it. And if a firm ends up in a corporate graveyard and the only way to buy their logo is to bid on a gently used golf shirt on eBay then, so be it. You’ll find some great brands there, created by some very interesting people trying to make a buck marketing a company and a product line they truly believed in. I know because it happened to me. I worked for RCA when they were gobbled up (yes, by GE) and, to this day, I relish anything with a Nipper logo on it. Fond farewell to all of these great American brands. You’re in very good company.

Years ago, when I was managing brands for a technology company, I went online the night before a big product launch to see how many references there were to this soon-to-be brand name. I found only about 20 citations related to other, rather obscure, uses of the term. Today there are nearly 2,000,000 internet references to this name. Pretty exciting but also pretty scary when you think about the powerful genie that can be unleashed when a new name is launched. Now you don’t see it… now you do. How do you turn the Name Game into the Fame Game and deliver the most bang for your branding buck?

Here are several tips on how to minimize the fear factor and maximize your results:

1. Begin with a great name. No matter how much money you plan to spend on marketing a new brand, if it doesn’t have the makings of a good name, it’s DOA. Ask yourself the following: Did you test the name in the marketplace? Does it effectively communicate your unique value (or give you plenty of room to create that value)? Is the name easy to pronounce and spell. Does it conjure up positive references or negative?

2. Do your legal homework. OK, so you’re in love with your new name. When it rolls off your tongue, you’re sure you hear the sound of a cash register going “kachink.” But, does your trademark attorney have a mile-wide list of reasons why it’s a bad name? Things like…It is already a trademark in your category… It means “your hippo stinks” in several languages…It is too generic and unprotectable…Your competitor uses a similar name. If so, take heed now – such advice can save you mega-bucks in the long run.

3. Mum’s the word.A favorite expression in the semiconductor industry is “Loose Lips Sink Chips.” At one company I worked for, heads nearly rolled when the CEO overheard an employee conversation on a airplane about an unannounced product. So, get a privacy screen for your laptop and a muzzle for your staff. The best launches can be ruined if they’re pre-announced by the press instead of strategically announced by your staff.

4. Blast off! No matter what the scale of your dreams or the size of your budget, every good name deserves a good send-off. I’ve seen successful launches as subtle as a posting on a homepage and as grandiose as a Times Square celebration – complete with ticker messages! The key is to scale your activities to smartly fit your strategy and your budget.

5. Keep it rolling. In this game, there’s nothing more clever than a “rolling launch.” Rolling out your messaging over time – through tradeshows, merchandising, regular press announcements, website updates, e-newsletters, postcards, and the like, lets you build momentum while you build your brand. Remember launches help you create a brand, but on-going communications programs help you build it. And don’t forget to get online the night before your launch to count the number of references to your new name. If you play the game right over time, the “before and after” snapshots will be exciting indeed!

When it’s time to play the name game at your company, contact Satow Strategies at 602-481-1942 or info@satowstrategies.com. We’re ready to help you succeed.

Here’s a chicken and egg question for you.

Which came first — the big, successful company or its highly valuable and powerful brand?

Does the quality of Intel chips make the “Intel Inside” swirl valuable or does the swirl make the chips worth more? Is Starbucks coffee really that much better than its competitors or is it their unmistakable brand identity down to their drink names and store furnishings make people want to order a Frappuccino every chance they get?

The answer is really no chicken and egg scenario at all. Great companies build their brand portfolio in unison with their product portfolio. That means that to be a great company — to brand like the big guys — you should be building your brand at the same time that you’re building your company. Branding is expensive. If you don’t have the budget how can you best accomplish this? Good branding is both an art and a science, and a complex one at that. To simplify and focus on what’s most important, here are SIX KEYS TO brand your company in true BIG COMPANY BRANDING STYLE:

1. Begin by defining your Unique Value Proposition and positioning statement. Figure out what’s really important and unique about your firm – the one thing that makes you truly different from the rest of the competition. Now encapsulate that unique value proposition into one statement that positions you as ‘faster…better…cheaper’ than the rest.

2. Define your brand architecture.Determine whether or not you have the best name for your company and/or offerings. Then, establish a basic hierarchy of how you use those names to help your company get ‘credit’ and brand value for the products and services you offer.

3. Define key messages to communicate your brand.Now that you’ve established your positioning and branding structure, you need a set of powerful key messages that can help convey this information to your marketplace. These messages will serve as the heart of your communications deliverables.

4. Develop a powerful identity and suite of communications mediaWith your brand messaging in sharp focus and your key messages poised to go, it’s time to define and develop a communications program — including your website, brochure, e-newsletter and press releases with a singular “look and feel” that effectively reflect the new power of your brand.

5. Continue to invest in your brand on an on-going basis and be consistent in your messaging. At this stage, you should be proud that you have a solid communication methodology that reflects the way the biggest and most successful firms brand their company, products and services. However, it’s important to remember that you’ve only just begun. If you truly want to “brand like the big guys”, you’ve got to consistently invest in your brand and your messaging. A good rule of thumb is to invest an average of 10 – 15% of your gross sales on marketing.

6. “Mark” your brand property through effective trademark management. Remember that, when it all boils down, a brand is largely a legal mark of ownership so protect the brand value you create through effective, legal trademark management. While there’s a lot more to building a great brand, these six steps should help give any company or organization a head start toward building brand value that’s comparable to the biggest and the best, value designed to last over time.

When you’re ready to brand like the big guys, contact Satow Strategies at 602-481-1942 or info@satowstrategies.com. We’re ready to help you succeed.

Other trademarks and brands are the property of their respective owners.