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6 Big Branding Mistakes To Avoid When Trying To Create An Effective Brand Identity

By JOEL ALPERT

 

If you’re in a hurry to brand or rebrand your company, that’s good news and bad news. Yes, be psyched…you’re about to do something remarkable that will help you communicate and add value to your company. But beware of moving too quickly, and not thinking strategically – rushing through this process as a “fill-in-the-blanks” exercise will almost certainly bite you on the butt.

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Branding Strategy is on a continuum with overall Business Strategy — they overlap, and should. Your brand identity and marketing communications will powerfully influence your prospects, customers, influencers, and investors. It should also be a clarion call to  influence all aspects of the company’s products and services, customer service, operations, and more.

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So first things first. Clarify and articulate your message. Don’t let these mistakes get in the way.

 

1) “That’s cool.”

 

Branding can be cool, awesome right-on, yes-please…but cool don’t cut it, when it comes to a buying decision. Your prospects need to know that your product or service is the bomb…for them. And you’re communications should be distinctive.

 

If your tagline or branding copy might easily apply to your competition, or a whole slew of other products, you haven’t differentiated yourself. Back to work!

 

 

2) “Let’s get our new branding done by the end of next week.”

 

Rushing gets it done faster. Not better.

 (Um, ‘scuse me, but did you just LOL to a text you just got?

 

Isn’t your company’s next two years worth 2-3 weeks to work this through?

 

 

 

3) “Our graphic artists will help you look great …lets get a fresh web design up fast.”

 

Uh-Uh. Branding is a vital first impression, that tells a prospects “Yes, I want to find out more”…or they’ll [Command-T, new browser tab, next site].

 

Taking a graphics-only approach to branding can be marketing suicide. A new look may confuse your prospects and customers. You need to go beyond “looks.” Most graphic artists don’t have the ad agency “concepting” skills to produce powerful first impressions that differentiate your brand, at best they only get you into the ballpark. Chances are they have little experience with a thinking process that’s both strategic/analytical, identifying key motivators....along with a creative communications approach that presents your brand quickly and with graphic impact.

 

Yes, you can cover up a rusty fence with a fresh coat of paint — but unless you really scrape off the rust first, the paint isn’t going to last. And changes like new logo or websites or collateral just water down whatever equity you established – you’re better off not jumping from the frying pan into the fire.

 

If you need to brand or rebrand, dig in. Scape off the rust. Really explore…without “just filling in the answers” to a branding questionnaire.  Step back and think!  You will certainly develop a series of insights – a series of small insights, or some huge ones, too – that will add up to significant value to your company’s direction. From product development to articulation of the brand’s value, and beyond.

 

 

4) Let’s get a group together and brainstorm our new branding.

 

Lots of people have good ideas, and input can be great. But brainstorming sessions can also be a huge waste of time.

 

The key is developing an overall brand strategy that makes your product or service stand out in that marketplace. Once this is done, if the brand concept is strategically in the middle of the crosshairs, you can brainstorm to refine, expand, or re-energize the product or brand messaging.

 

I’ve participated in branding sessions by various Gurus du Jour, and they range from “okay” to ridiculous. One session I was asked to participate in, had everyone post their apparently egalitarian ideas on large Post-It notes. The only problem was, that like the book “1984,” some ideators are more equal than others…and the CEO’s ideas were sycophantically followed by the group (even though the CEO’s ideas was so-so at best, and there were much better ideas posted).

 

 

5) “Our product is great, and the name is ‘just okay.’”

 

If your business name is a blunder, it’s gong to be tough getting through the entry gates to our brains. Our brains are closed, by default -- they need to be, they’re overwhelmed with requests for your attention. With tens of oodles of daily brand messages flying at us in a cornucopia of media, the Entry Gate Guardians To Brain Bandwidth stand strong at the ready…and have to be reprogrammed to allowing guest messages to enter. Program their interaction with you from the get-go, to get going in the right branding connection which lets them know your stuff is for them.

 

So if you are a pet store that sells exotic parakeets, but the name of your store is For Fish Only, you might want to regroup and rebrand. If you plant and maintain plants and flowers at commercial properties and shopping malls, and your name is Rentokil, you might want to regroup and rebrand. I rebranded a sign making company that produced high-quality signs quickly, from Signs In A Day…to SuperSignsSuperFast.  

 

A rose by any other name -- such as monkey grass -- just don’t smell good.

 

 

6) We’ll dress up the branding once the new website is done.”

 

Uh-Uh.  If you do your homework, your branding will focus on your company’s best target audiences, and their motivations. Don’t you think it’d be a good idea to design your content, videos and anything interactive, around these key insights?

 

This is a chicken and egg issue…and branding comes first! Marketing strategy, similarly, will gain huge value from walking through a branding program first. In fact, I use many of the branding protocols in marketing programs, which provide pivotal insights into how products and services should be presented to any target audience.

 

 

 

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Joel Alpert is a branding and marketing specialist who uses a proprietary

 strategic consulting and branding process which gets at the essence of your brand strategy quickly and definitively (developed by Robert Fritz, Inc.). He’s developed effective, award-winning marketing communication programs for large and small companies and agencies across the country. Connect with him on LinkedIn. He also has developed practical workshops and consulting on branding, and making your LinkedIn profile effective. 

 

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