Linda's Marketing Leverage Blog

Just a Moment for Marketing: Build Your Core

Linda advises: Build your brand from the inside out.

A New B2B Approach to Brand: Learnings from Lithium

Katy Keim, CMO of Lithium Technologies, spoke to the NorCal BMA's Marketing Strategy Roundtable yesterday. Here are a few of the key thoughts:

• The lines are blurring between personal and work social posts--most of us do both.
• If you're not listening to what's being said about you, you're behind.
• It's nice to have fans, but more important to have people engaged with you, then to convert them to advocates and superfans.
• People buy from people, not from companies.
• Choose media that leverage your reputation in the B2B space.
• B2B marketing is often boring. Lose the snooze! Find your voice.
• Humanize yourself and your company.
• Listen to your buyers.
• Be courageous. Do something a little outrageous that will help you be remembered.
• And, finally, B2B marketing is still all about consumers and connections. The consumers may be different than in B2C but they're driven by many of the same motivations.

Market Leverage Factors: Tips for Brand Review and Refresh

How well does your current brand reflect the image and personality you want to convey for your company?

People often ask my advice when they're considering refreshing or updating their brand. The problem is many people think branding stops and starts with a name. Yes, a name is an important part of a brand, but a name alone won't make you successful.

Here are 10 key factors to evaluate when reviewing and refreshing your brand. Each will help give you input as to how well your current brand represents you, as well as what you need to change or improve to have a more successful brand in the future:

• Visual identity, including logo and graphic elements
• Messaging, including value proposition
• Integration with overall business strategy
• Competition
• Customer input
• Partners/alliances
• Employee input
• Supplier/vendor input
• Online presence
• Brand usage and guidelines

Look for more branding and marketing tips on an ongoing basis in 2011!

 

A New Look to Graphic Design for Business

I have to admit: I was a skeptic. Was it really possible to use the web to engage design professionals I'd never met on a design project and come out with an acceptable result?

With much trepidation, last week I set up a contest on 99designs.com to create a new logo for my newly renamed and rebranded consulting business. The process is that you provide the parameters for what you're looking for and offer a prize for the winning design. As designers submit entries, you provide them feedback and they tweak their designs to give you exactly what you want. While it's possible to guarantee the prize, I decided not to do that since I wasn't sure of the quality of what I'd get.

The expectations from 99designs were that I'd receive between 30 and 60 designs. In reality, I got more than 370 submissions from designers all over the world. Some of those entries were iterations on designs I'd found appealing but wanted to finetune, but still there were probably over 250 different design concepts.

Some of the entries were, to be blunt, pretty horrible. Several designers had either ignored the specifications I'd set up or decided to try something different, and a few were just way off base. Many other submissions were mediocre, and some I eliminated because they were clearly derivative of other existing logos.

However, that left a surprising number of very good, very creative, eye-catching designs. I found one I liked a lot and was ready to choose it when I saw I had the ability to hold a poll and get others' opinions.

I chose 8 designs and asked friends, colleagues and potential clients to tell me what they liked and didn't like. My impromptu focus group provided very interesting results: The logo I initially liked the best didn't test very well and some of the comments provided made a lot of sense. Not everyone agreed on their favorite logo,  but this gave me enough input to go back to the designers for additional modifications.

[This process made me think of the recent Gap logo fiasco, where Gap introduced a new logo on a Friday and by the following Monday enough people had trashed it on Facebook and Twitter that they rescinded it and went back to the old one. Didn't Gap consider doing a customer focus group to get input the way I did?]

The result is the new logo you see at the top of this blog. It's clean and fresh and catchy and nicely highlights our new company name, Leverage2Market Associates. The entire process with 99designs was simple and straightforward. Once I chose the design, the designer transferred copyright and design files to me and I authorized payment to him.

The next step in this process will be the launch of our new website, www.Leverage2Market.com. Stay tuned--that's coming up momentarily!

 

 

The State of Branding in Silicon Valley: Beyond the Dark Ages

Kevin Heney
Founder and Executive Director
Silicon Valley Brand Forum
www.svbrandforum.com

Kevin Heney founded the Silicon Valley Brand Forum in 2000 to provide brand professionals with an opportunity to share best practices and challenges in brand management. He has over 20 years experience managing identity, creative services and brand for high tech companies in Silicon Valley, including Tandem Computers, Informix, Quantum and Informatica.

In this podcast, Kevin tells Linda Popky how branding and brand management have changed in technology companies over the last ten years and where he sees branding going in Silicon Valley in the next decade.

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Listen to this podcast.

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The State of Branding in Silicon Valley Today

In the latest episode of Marketing Thought Leadership, Kevin Heney of the Silicon Valley Brand Forum discusses how branding in technology companies has evolved--and where he sees branding for Silicon Valley will be in the future.

Listen here.

Getting Publicity in a Web 2.0 Social Media World

Wondering how to publicize your business or organization in this new social media world?

Join us for the next episode of Marketing Thought Leadership, where Dan Janal, founder and president of PR Leads Plus, tells us how to effectively get publicity through both traditional media and social media. Dan shares tips for cutting through the clutter to get to the people who matter.

Listen now.

What Steve Jobs Could Teach Mel Gibson

It's very simple...YOU are the brand. What you say, what you do, how you say it, the environment you set--all impacts what people think about you and your products. Steve Jobs gets this. Mel Gibson unfortunately doesn't.

Take a look at these two recent videos. The first is a compilation of key words and phrases used by Steve Jobs in the recent iPad product launch.

In the second, Mel Gibson is interviewed about his new movie opening, but becomes defensive when asked about anti-Semitic remarks he made several years ago and eventually curses at the reporter...