I heard someone talking about the film on the radio this week. They really liked it. They were saying how compelling and engaging the story is, despite the fact that it’s a (virtually) silent film. They described how well the images convey the emotion. And I thought “Telling a story with no words? That’s what a brand does”. Now I haven’t seen the film, only this trailer. But the critics love it (take a look), and it’s tipped for success at the Oscars. So what can it teach us about brand communication?

Technology gives us the ability to put thousands of words in front of millions of people every day. The internet is a fantastic tool for communication. But when it comes to brand communication it can make us lazy. It’s ‘easy’ to put words on a screen and compose a message. It’s much harder to choose, or create, an image to convey a message. But that’s the role of your brand, or more specifically your visual identity (the bit of your brand that people see).

So why is this important? Well, you don’t always have the opportunity to ‘tell’ people about your business. People are busy. They don’t always have time to read stuff. But they can’t help seeing stuff. That’s why your visual identity is such a powerful tool. It gives people something to look at. It can’t tell the whole story, but it can give people something to recognise (something distinctive) and something to remember (something memorable). And that’s the first step in building a relationship with potential customers.

Your Visual Identity is made up of six elements: logo, typeface, colour, imagery, tone of voice and design style. The bits we’re interested in here are logo, typeface, colour and imagery. Each of these has a role to play in communicating your brand.

Logo: This is the cornerstone of your identity. Its job is to make your business memorable and distinctive. People often get a ‘logo’ confused with a ‘brand’, because it’s the bit that people see a lot. But your logo is a badge to identify your business. Your brand is the personality of that business; the story behind the logo.

Typeface: The typeface you choose gives your words the opportunity to say even more. It’s a bit like choosing the tone of voice you use when you speak to someone: warm and friendly, or very formal? It’s the same message, just delivered in a different way. And that can have a big impact on whether you get the response you want.

Colour: This is a great tool for getting your business recognised and remembered (look at Coca Cola). But it can say much more about the kind of business you are. Soothing complimentary colours say something very different from clashing primaries. There’s no right or wrong combination, but understanding colour has a role to play is another step towards clarity.

Imagery: It’s not just about using photographs to help tell the story. You could use illustrations or icons, or nothing at all. Imagery gives you another dimension to your story telling. But think about how you use them. You can either be literal: if you work with computers you use a picture of a computer. Or use a metaphor: if your computers help people to connect with each other, maybe a picture of spiders web.

When you begin to combine all of these elements your brand becomes a really powerful communication tool. You can deliver your message much more clearly… without speaking a word. You might not win an Oscar. But you will probably win a few more customers.

If you’re interested in finding better ways to communicate you might be interested in our seminars.

If you’d like to see some examples of visual identities, take a look at our portfolio.

This question came up at one of our seminars. We were talk about identifying your target audience and understanding what their needs are. One of our guests was discussing the challenge of selling techincally complex services – in their case web-based services – and the need to explain what was involved in providing them. It can be a long and confusing process.

Then someone offered this example. He’s a director and his company was discussing the installation of an air-conditioning system to a theatre in Stratford. The sales team were explaining the system and the specification to the client. The process was beginning to drag on as the client struggled to understand the technical details. Eventually the Theatre Director spoke up, cutting across the sales team. “What I need to know is, when we turn it on in the middle of Hamlet, will it make a noise?”. Simple.

Now, everybody does it. We lose sight of the customer. When we’re trying to sell our product or service we get caught up in the detail. Whether you’re selling an air-conditioning system, accounting services or an apple pie, it’s easy to lose yourself – and possible your customer – in sharing your knowledge. What you need to remember is that making a sale is about them, not you.

The project has been undertaken by a design company in The Netherlands. As a designer it’s really interesting to see all the opportunities that exist to make text more readable to someone with Dyslexia. To see the opportunities that exist in the detail – if you take the time to find them, and invest the energy to exploit them. To develop the typeface and make it as effective as possible the designer has looked at every aspect of its form; the weight of the letter, the height and length the ‘ascenders’ and ‘descenders’, the width of the ‘openings’. Each element has been considered, in their effort to achieve their goal.

Now, this is a unique instance – helping Dyslexics to read more easily – but for businesses owners there’s an interesting parallel with the role of brand within their business. The strongest brands are those that have clarity: a clear positioning, a clear message and a clear target audience. And they achieve that clarity by looking at details.

When it comes to communicating, whether that’s through print, packaging, online… any communication media, your visual identity is your key asset. When we’re working with a business we break their visual identity down into six elements: logo, typeface, colour, imagery, tone of voice and design style.

Each of these elements presents an opportunity to engage with your audience. Each presents an opportunity to say something about your business. Each is an opportunity to persuade your audience to choose you, rather than a competitor.

So take a look at your visual identity and each of the elements. Do you make best use of all of them? Is each of them working hard for you? Does each of them help to bring clarity to your business?

If you’d like to know more, call us on 01392 248107 or email jonathan@alderandalder.co.uk

Taking a customer-focused approach to your brand is not a new idea, and something I’ve written about before on this blog. But there is a tendency to look at the big picture. To answer the big questions and address the big issues. Because the bigger something is, the more important it is – right?

Undoubtedly, the big things are important, and that’s why everyone – including all of your competitors – look at them, and address them. But what about the detail? Who takes the time to look at that? And what’s the point?

Well, I think this is where the opportunity lies. Few businesses look at the detail of the customer experience – it’s too time consuming. But it can be very valuable. In a competitive marketplace, where there is little to differentiate the product or service offered by one company from another, the detail is crucial. The detail can be the difference between Option A and Option B. The detail can be the difference between winning a sale and losing one.

So if you want to win more business, take the time to think small. It could have a big impact!

At one of our recent seminars I was talking to two business owners who were facing just that dilemma. Two different business, two different scenarios, same challenge.

Scenario A is a company where the Founder finds himself the bottleneck within his company, a barrier to growth because clients want to deal with (in this case) the man whose name is on the door, rather than one of his very capable team.

Scenario B is an engineering firm where the junior Director is facing the retirement of the two senior, and founding Directors, and is concerned that client loyalty lies with the individuals, rather than the firm.

Founders are often fundamental, not just to the initial growth of a business, but to it’s longer term success and longevity (Steve Jobs at Apple being a prime example). In this short video about the importance of branding there’s a couple of interesting contributions on this theme. Richard Branson and Ruby Hammer and Millie Kendall, of cosmetics brand Ruby & Millie, talk about the role they have played, as individuals, as ambassadors for their business. (Click on the image. It’s 6 minutes).

But the role of a founder presents a challenging dilemma: The root of your success is also the foundation for your (potential) failure. There are thousands of permutations, but the challenge is the same: transferring the perceived value of a business from an individual (usually, but not exclusively, the founder or leader), to the business itself. And it’s a challenge that’s relevant to any business, regardless of size.

So what’s the solution? Well, at least part of the answer is ‘brand’. (There are other aspects of the business, that have a role to play, but brand is certainly part of it). Your brand is a collection of tools to help you communicate the personality of your business to your audience. The strategies for how this is achieved are as varied as the business (and their owners) that occupy the marketplace. But, whatever your business, the role of your brand is the same: It takes the knowledge, expertise and enthusiasm you have poured into your business, and translates it into a suite of tools, messages and strategies, that enable you to communicate it to others.

The first people who should be exposed to your brand – and what it means – are the people within your business, so they know what’s expected of them. Then it’s the turn of your customers.

With a clear brand in place – and strategy for delivering it – you’re able, as a business owner, to step out of the spotlight. You can take a backseat. You can do as much, or as little, as you want. Because your customers were never really that interested in you, just in what you could do for them. And now they realise they don’t need you for that to happen.

So if you’re a business owner, and feel like you’re getting in the way of your companies success, maybe you should get out of the way, and let your brand do its job.

If you’d like to know more, give me a call on 01392 248107 or email jonathan@alderandalder.co.uk

I had the opportunity to listen to a former Red Arrows pilot speak at an event on Tuesday. He was talking to an audience of business leaders about teamwork and leadership. You don’t need me to tell you, that without teamwork, the Red Arrows wouldn’t have much of a show.

But there was another interesting aspect of the team dynamic that caught my attention: Their goal – to be the best they can be. They’re not too bothered about the competition (The French, Italians and Americans have full-time display teams). They measure themselves by their own (high) standards.

You can see these standards (and the relationship between them and their American counterparts) in this 5 minute video.

There’s a lot that businesses can learn from this approach, when it comes to building their brand. Don’t aim to be better than your competitors. Aim to be the best you can possibly be.

A few weeks ago I wrote a post about Nokia, and the problem they created when they focused on their competitors, rather than themselves, and fell victim to Apple’s focus on customer needs. If you simple try to beat your competitors, you can easily find yourself competing on their terms. But if you stay focused on your business – and how you meet the needs of your customers – you’re competing on your terms, and building loyalty to your values and your approach. And in a competitive environment loyal customers are priceless.

Take a look at this video (2 mins 31 secs), documenting an initiative by Tesco in South Korea to give commuters the opportunity to shop online while they’re waiting for a train.

Now you might not have the resources that Tesco do, but there are a few really valuable lessons you can take from this:
1/ Understand the need of your target audience (In this case, convenience. They’re short of time)
2/ Understand where to find your target audience (In this case, the station – but it could be an online environment)
3/ Make your product (or service) available in that location (In this case, through photos of products in the station, with QR codes)
4/ And if you want to use technology, make it appropriate (In this case, mobile technology – Smart Phones and QR codes – for a mobile audience).

Take a look at your own business. What can you learn from this? Are you waiting for customers to come and find you? Are are you going to go out and find them?

Now there’s a valuable lesson there about the benefit of a consistent brand, which applies to any business. (Most businesses will be operating on a different scale – but the principle is the same). In simple terms, consistency of your identity builds recognition more quickly, so your audience become more familiar with you. And the more familiar they are with your business and what you sell, the more confident they become about buying it… and that, after all, is what your brand is there for: Selling your products or services.

(If you’d like to take a peek inside Coca Cola’s visual archive, you can visit it at www.theverybestofcocacola.com. It’s fascinating).

But a more interesting story (in my opinion) comes from the early days of the Coca Cola brand, at the end of the 19th Century. The Coca Cola business model is an interesting one. They were the first franchise. Coca Cola made the syrup, but all the bottling was (and still is) done by independent businesses that are part of the franchise. To ensure there was consistency between all the bottling plants, Coca Cola introduced their own bottle. It wasn’t the familiar ‘contour’ bottle we all recognise now (that came along in 1916), but it gave Coca Cola a distinct identity.

What I think is interesting is the fact that Coca Cola developed their brand to support their business strategy (a franchise model). They knew how they wanted to structure the business, and they created the brand assets they needed to support that – a unique bottle shape. At a time when the concept of a ‘brand’ was in its infancy, I think it’s fascinating to see the extension of the brand communication from something visual (the logo), to the physical (the bottle). Even today, 125 years later, with all of the resources and examples of brand communication available to businesses, many fail to appreciate (let alone exploit) these opportunities.

So, as they blow out the candles at Coca Cola HQ, what can we learn? We know that most business owners may not be sitting on a business model worth $73 Billion, but there is undoubtedly more money out there for the business that makes better use of it’s brand.

If you’d like to know more about what your brand can do for your business, email jonathan@alderandalder.co.uk or call 01392 248107.

The first came from Nokia, in an article from Marketing Week. At one point, not very long ago, they were the market leaders in mobile handsets. Then along came the iPhone. It wasn’t that Nokia didn’t know about the iPhone – everyone new that Apple planned to move into the handset market (not least because Apple told everyone). But Nokia didn’t see Apple, and their new product as a threat, because they weren’t a traditional competitor. They were competing with Sony Ericsson, Motorola and Samsung. Nokia was focused on beating their competitors. And as a result, they found themselves second in the market place and racing to catch up.

The second story came from the Business Nightmares series on the BBC. I’ve written about it in a previous post. One episode looked at the problems Persil and Coca Cola created for themselves when they introduced new products: Persil created a new powder that damaged the clothes it cleaned and Coca Cola created a new flavour that nobody wanted and nobody would buy. Both companies were market leaders, but both felt threatened by competitors products, so they responded. It would seem like the right thing to do; a pre-emptive strike to knock out the competition. But for both companies the move was mistimed, leaving them out of pocket and struggling to win back their customers.

So what lesson can we take from this? Two completely different approaches (one reactive, one proactive), and both failed. Is the lesson that failure is inevitable? At some point you’ll slip up and get punished?

I don’t think so.

The lesson I would take form these stories is really quite simple. Concentrate on your own business. Concentrate on what you can control. And don’t become complacent. Understand what your customers want, and give it to them. Nokia were watching the competition (or so they thought), and not thinking about what their customers might want (which turned out to be an iPhone). Persil and Coca Cola were so busy trying to beat the competition they weren’t focusing on their own products, and as a result, made mistakes that had a massive impact on their business.

So build the business you want. Build your business around the values and culture that are important to you. Identify who will want to buy what you have to offer, then start talking to them… but not before you’ve spent some time listening to them first.

Where do you start? Your brand is a good place. It will give your business structure. The structure you need to define your values and culture, identify your target market, develop the messages that will appeal to them and select the best communication channels to deliver those messages.

If you’d like to know more visit one of our brand seminars, or email jonathan@alderandalder.co.uk.

At the end of the post I said I would share our three word definition, and here it is…

Vision. Action. Value.

Vision
We take the time to understand the vision the business has for their future. (Businesses with no vision don’t tend to talk to us). We then create a brand to help achieve that vision, by defining what the business looks like, what they sound like and how they behave.

Action
A vision is vital for an ambitious business. But without action, the vision is worthless. We take action. It might be designing a logo, preparing an event or developing a website.

Value
Any activity we undertake should deliver value to our clients. That value is usually measured in revenue and sales, but it can be whatever criteria is valuable to that business.

If you take any one of these away, then the process fails.

So that’s us. In three words. Try it yourself… It’s a really useful exercise.