brands Archives - Page 11 of 11

New York Series: Naming a Brand

Posted on February 10, 2009 by Steve Sammartino

This is the oldest marketing lesson in the book – What to call our brand. It seems it doesn’t matter how many times the story is told, but some businesses never seem to learn. Here’s a bad example of a clothing brand name which I saw in Bloomingdale’s today.

Yep, Acne. Which means pimples here in Australia. I’m surprised it even made it instore. So here’s the startup blog rules for brand names. Which I’ll keep short:

Try to invent a word that currently has no meaning. (our job is to invent meaning under it)
Ensure you can ‘own it’ globally. (No confusion, registerable)
Make sure it doesn’t mean something ridiculous, in your country or another.

That’s all that matters in real terms. Other rules are made up by people who are focused on stuff which doesn’t really have much to do with brand building.

New York Series: Dylan’s Candy Bar

Posted on February 8, 2009 by Steve Sammartino

I was so impressed by Dylan’s Candy Bar – they get it.

It’s just perfect in every way. The understand the following important factors in branding, retail, business, marketing:

Theatre at transaction – best I’ve ever seen
Premium product
Single Minded proposition
Being the experts
Feel good factor
Service by people who dig working there (when you get served they say ‘have a sweet day!’ – love it)
Escapism
The brands are the stars – the product ‘is’ the promotion. No advertising required here.
They know the category is more important than their ‘Dylan’s brands’.

In fact, instead of me raving on…. here’s a huge photo essay I took. That should give you the idea. Enjoy.

Brand Definition… kind of

Posted on December 4, 2008 by Steve Sammartino

An actual definition of brands here on startup blog would be both boring, and downright insulting to my readers… Instead something better; A bit of brand anthropology reverse engineering.

We use brands to tell our story, to make short cuts. To define ourselves.

That said we all have brands we use to define ourselves to others. Brands like the suburb we live in, where we were educated, the companies we have worked for, the job titles we have got, the past times we participate in, the beer we drink and the car we drive….

So then we must consider this; How would our people, our customers and our brand users feel if they had to define our brand as part of them?

Would they be happy to do so? To reference us as part of them?

If yes – we are in an awesome place.

If no – we have some work to do.