Laurel Black Communications + Design

Strategy

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Brands & Logos: Two Different Animals

Brands & Logos:
Two Different Animals

Over the years, I have created many logos for my clients. This is always a favorite assignment, and an area in which I’ve spent many years developing expertise. In designing these essential marketing tools, I have often noticed client confusion about the difference between a brand and a logo. Here’s an explanation.

A brand is the sum of all the assumptions about and impressions made by a business or organization.

It is always from your market’s viewpoint and is how you are positioned in your audience’s mind, based on all and any encounters it has had with your organization. These touch points can include:

    • Mission/vision
    • Building/premises/facilities
    • Customer relations and service
    • Public relations and news about the organization
    • Community involvement
    • Communications of any kind
    • Actual and virtual word-of-mouth
    • Name and visual identity (logo)
    • Digital and print advertising
    • Social media
    • Any point at which a member of your audience comes in contact with your organization.

    This list was adapted from an article by James M. McNamara of Arts Branding, who defines it this way: Branding is the practice of aligning all those impressions to ensure that they form a consistent, unified image and message that will differentiate an organization or business from its competition. Brand perceptions should be managed to inspire purchasing decisions in a business’s favor, and monitored to ensure accuracy.

Brands and logos: Two different animals

A logo is the tip of the iceberg of branding, says McNamara. It’s the small percent that shows above the waterline. Logos are part of an overall branding program and often the most visible component, but a brand and branding encompass all the components listed above.

As part of that list, the function of a logo is to represent your brand in a visual way – it’s a symbol. As such it has to be an accurate reflection of the values and value of your brand, but it is not the brand itself, just as a map is not the actual terrain it depicts.

In order to create a successful logo, it is important to have a workable brand definition in hand at the onset of the project. In the last several years, branding has become a signature service offered by many design firms. Since the function of design is to inspire desired decisions and behavior in the designated audience, designers are well positioned to assist clients in brand development. It is a strategic process with specific outcomes. It must always express the value of the brand it represents.

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Four Essential Elements in a Successful Design Process

The 4 Essential Elements of a Successful Design Process

Managing a creative project can be tricky because evaluating ideas is often influenced by unconscious assumptions. To avoid derailment and arrive at a successful outcome, it is essential that everyone’s expectations be fully defined.

This is NOT how design choices are made.

1. Job One: Creative Brief & Project Scope

To ensure clear expectations, the designer should specify the work’ scope in the project proposal, and for all but the smallest projects, supply a defined creative brief. These documents become the project’s benchmarks for staying on message and avoiding irrelevant tangents, and must be approved before any work begins on concepts. This will go a long way to make sure the process is predictable, even though the end design isn’t. Once hired and with the above documents in hand, the designer’s job as a professional is to make sure that the project proceeds properly.

2. Design is a Service

Some clients may assume that looking at drafts is like buying shoes: they get to try new ones on ad infinitum until “they are happy.” It is important to be clear about the difference between buying a product and buying a service. It is also part of a designer’s job is to avoid wasting time by trying ideas that are not going to work, without putting off clients. When these issues are addressed openly in a professional way, a competent designer will be better able to guide the client to productive decisions.

A project’s scope of work should include a defined number of design drafts and approval rounds. If the client asks for a round of drafts beyond that number, it is up to the designer to say, “I would be happy to work up these concepts. However, they will constitute a scope change. Would you like me to give you a quote for the additional work?”

3. Reviewing the Drafts Together

When a designer shows drafts to a client, it is imperative that they look at the work together, whether in person or during a phone meeting. The designer needs to explain the thinking behind the drafts and handle any assumptions or questions that arise as the client reviews the work. If the meeting is by phone, the designer can email the drafts a few minutes before the meeting time. Then the designer can explain specifically how the work supports the goals stated in the creative brief. The client and the designer will both have the chance to ask questions, make suggestions and share feedback in real time.

4. Clarity is the Top Priority

Wrong turns or misunderstandings in a design process are caused by assumptions that can fill the voids left by a lack of clarity. For designers, clarity should be their number one priority, and it begins with them. Nature abhors a vacuum, and never more so that when it is caused by poor communication. But when communication between designers and clients is clear, project outcomes are successful and everyone wins.

There are many kinds of design projects and they will all benefit from a well-thought-out development process. If you’d like to know more about the process for your particular project, contact me and let’s talk about it!

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Direct Mail: Guess Who’s Still Using It?

Direct Mail: Guess Who’s Still Using it?”

We’ve all heard many times about the death of direct (snail) mail.

It’s passé, we’re told; it’s dinosaur media. Use has plummeted, marketing has migrated to the web, and we all have to get with the new online reality. So imagine my surprise when I recently received not one, but TWO direct mail solicitations from Google!

They asked me on paper to use AdWords and Google Apps. On the last one, they thoughtfully enclosed a paper calculator so I could figure out how much I could save by switching. Of course they gave me a url to get more details, but the initial pitch was with direct mail.

On reflection, it’s no big mystery.

Even though Google is among the most successful web marketing companies ever, it uses more than the web to reach its audience. No business should put all its eggs in one marketing basket, because people don’t get information from only one source. So it’s a business’s responsibility to find out what their audience pays attention to. What magazines do they read? What sites do they frequent? Do they get news from the radio, online or a traditional newspaper? When you’re making media choices, it’s critical to know.

Direct Mail

So Google thinks direct mail is a good way to reach its market.

Can’t argue – it reached me and I read it. I also read catalogs, and apparently so do many others. These things aren’t cheap, so you can bet that firms like LL Bean wouldn’t send them out if few sales resulted. Bonus: the catalog drives readers to their web site. The point is, using multiple methods really increases your marketing’s effectiveness.

When traditional and online media are strategically combined, it’s powerful.

You don’t have to be a big national firm to take advantage of this synergy: direct mail and online media reinforce each other. The take-away: look at your marketing mix and make sure what you’re using reaches your target, and that all parts support each other. When all your marketing works together, paper and web-based, you’ll get a much better result from your investment.

Check out this link for more about the effectiveness of direct mail:

http://www.bytestart.co.uk/content/marketing/marketing-guides/direct-mail-tips.shtml

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The Top Marketing Must-Have: A Clear Message

The Top Marketing Must-Have:
A Clear Message

Do your prospects understand what you do?Why? Because confused people don’t buy, and in during times of uncertain economies, scared people don’t take chances. You can’t assume that if your message is clear to you, that it will in turn be clear to your customers.

People don’t read minds or between the lines, especially when they’re more nervous than usual about parting with their money. Their tendency is to play it safe and be really literal, so your customers need to be told clearly what’s in it for them from their point of view.

And your message has to be delivered in a user-friendly way. An illegible store sign, a web site with confusing navigation, a display ad with tons of tiny type too small to read – these things are all too common and destroy the ability of the sign, ad or web site to communicate. If your message is not clear, your market will be confused, and (again) confused people don’t buy.

As the economy and your competition continue to evolve, being clear will become even more crucial as everyone jockeys for market share and adjusts to new playing fields.

Your marketing materials deliver your messages when you aren’t on hand to explain what your business has to offer and why it’s valuable to your market. If the messages are confusing, unprofessional or inconsistent, people will assume that your business is too, since they will have nothing else on which to base a judgment.

So here’s my message (and I hope it’s crystal clear):

Explain the advantage to your customers from their point of view. Make this message consistent throughout out all your marketing.

Do all you can to ensure that the message sent is the message received. Your market will thank you!