Whether it’s a golden arch, a half eaten apple or pink jagged numbers, a logo is the visual embodiment of a brand’s identity. It has the power to inspire trust, admiration or even disdain, so you need to think carefully about how it’s designed.

Creating a logo isn’t simply a case of doodling for a few hours and picking out your favourite sketch. You have to find the magic combination of shapes, images and colours that will reflect your brand’s ethos and appeal to your target market.

Designing a logo which also remains relevant for years to come is far from simple, but here are a few tips to get you started:

Logo design rules

At a basic level, your logo should achieve the following:

• Describable so people can easily interpret what it represents
• Memorable so people will recognise it and associate it with your business
• Effective without colour in case it’s printed in black and white
• Scalable so it’s legible even when small enough to fit on a business card
• It shouldn’t be too complex otherwise it will ‘gum up’ and appear messy when shrunk
• Have fairly equal dimensions. People prefer logos which are square or circular, rather than tall and thin or short and fat

Logo design types

Logos generally fall into three main types:

• An illustrative representation of what a company does e.g. the WWF’s panda
• An abstract iconic image e.g. Apple, any sportswear brand or car manufacturer
• Font based with a unique typeface e.g. Harley Davidson, Google or Coca Cola

The logo type used should reflect the nature of a business’ industry and appeal to its target audience. An obvious example is the WWF’s panda, which is far more effective at conveying animal conservation than if they’d chosen the sort of dynamic, abstract logos favoured by sportswear brands.

Whichever type of logo you choose, it’s sensible to keep graphic and text elements (e.g. your company name or slogan) separate. Designing these elements independently gives you more scope and flexibility in how they’re used in the future.

For example, when your company becomes rich and famous you might want to drop the company slogan altogether, and let your logo spell out your brand message on its own.

2012 Olympics logo - disaster or genius?

Despite a national outbreak of disappointment, a petition to get it replaced and claims it causes epileptic fits, a series of brightly coloured, jagged numbers are what will be used to promote the London 2012 Olympics. The fact that the logo cost taxpayers £400,000 to design probably didn’t soften the blow.

When launched, the Olympics council hailed it as ‘the vision at the very heart of our brand’ and an effort to reach out to the nation’s youth. The nation’s marketers, however, are less enamoured. In a recent survey, three out of five said they thought it was ineffective and didn’t quite give the impression of the UK being a world leader in entertainment, culture and sport as everyone had hoped.

However, 2012 is still four years away, and the logo is designed to be used in a variety of animated guises yet to be unveiled (and possibly still to be invented for that matter). And as people get on with supporting their country, they yet might find themselves warming to it, particularly if it starts being associated with yet another Team GB triumph.

The Nike Swoosh - pure genius

Ordinarily, designing a logo is a complicated process, requiring weeks or even months of research, sketching, conceptualisation and reflection. However, occasionally stokes (or one stroke to be precise) of genius can occur.

Perhaps the greatest example of how a brand’s logo can grow into a globally admired symbol is the Nike ‘Swoosh’, a simple yet effective representation of the wing of Nike, the Greek Goddess of Victory.

Created by a graphic design student in 1971 for a mere $35, the Swoosh was partnered with the ‘Just Do It’ slogan to brilliantly symbolise a lifestyle choice for millions of athletes and casual sports fans worldwide.

People are seduced into buying sportswear and equipment decorated with the Nike Swoosh because of how it makes them feel, the holy grail of brand marketing.

A logo should be for life

It takes time to build awareness of your logo and what it represents. So deciding that it doesn’t promote your brand message adequately and changing it a few years down the line can be expensive and counterproductive, which is why you need to get your logo design right first time.

So, whether you spend £400,000 or $35, designing your logo will require obeying the rules (whilst also daring to be different), hours of perspiration and a few strokes of genius.

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BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog - real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.

[This is the second half of a two part post. You can read part one here.]

Consumers are never happy unless you give them what they really want

In another recent post, Seth Godin commented on how consumers are never happy, but are constantly demanding freebies, updates and product improvements from businesses.

Seth suggests you can continue feeding the demands of unhappy customers, as though trying to buy a spoilt child’s affection, or you can give them what they really want: a sense of connection, to feel appreciated and loved.

Generic mass marketing cannot make people feel special or loved. Email blasting the same message to every customer is like sending a bulk message to your entire address book at Christmas, when what they really want is a personal message in an individually addressed card.

Luckily, the technology is now available for marketers to satisfy the desire for greater relevancy and connection. The ability to track and record an endless supply of data on customers means you can deliver one-to-one marketing personalised to match the interests and preferences of each individual.

Here are a few more marketing tips for making customers feel special and loved:

• Offer valuable insight or information (e.g. in a blog, newsletter or eBook) on solving a problem which can’t be easily found elsewhere
• Listen to your customers’ interests and preferences using personalised URLs
• Deliver timely messages and offers e.g. a congratulatory message and discount on their birthday
• Follow up sales with an email, even if it’s just to say thanks
• Tell your audience a captivating story about the history of your business which they can invest in emotionally and feel a part of

If you make them feel unhappy, remember to tell them they’re special afterwards

People aren’t interested in businesses or their products. They’re interested in how a product makes them feel and the promise of what it can do to improve their lives. Marketing’s aim isn’t to sell features, but the emotional benefits people will gain from them, or as lipstick maker Charles Revson once put it, “In the factory we make cosmetics. In the store we sell hope.”

So when looking to acquire customers, marketing’s aim isn’t to deliberately make them feel unhappy or inadequate, but to appeal to their inherent aspiration to better themselves, improve their lifestyle and enhance their standing with others.

Just make sure that once you’ve persuaded people to become customers you then switch your focus to making them feel special and appreciated. Because otherwise your customers might look elsewhere for connection and attention, which your competitors will be only too happy to provide.

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BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog - real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.

In a culture jaded from decades of interruption style advertising, people praise their digibox, for enabling them to skip the ‘annoying’ ad break, and ruthlessly bin emails which have the merest whiff of spam. Some think that advertisers and marketers are out to trick them, to make them feel unhappy or inadequate so they can then sell them products to heal their pain.

When you add the credit crisis to the equation, it’s unsurprising why some believe/hope we’re on the verge of a cultural shift away from consumerism and towards (supposedly) a bright new utopia in which people find meaning in other ways than the pursuit of ‘things’.

Well, there are plenty who’d disagree, such as the developers of the new monolithic cathedral to retail therapy that is the Westgate complex. At a cost of £1.9 billion and home to 265 shops, Westgate and its retailers are defiantly placing their faith in the power of materialism to weather the economic storm.

But when bank accounts are dwindling, should marketers be changing the stories they tell? Should they be making consumers feel unhappy, thinking they’re missing something critical in their lives, or coax out their credit cards by making them feel special?

A human behaviour as old as Adam and the apple

We might like to think that in the 21^st century we’re more socially developed and astute than our forefathers. However, the human race is driven by the same motivations that formed tribes, conquered nations and spread empires. Because once our human needs for survival are satisfied, we’re biologically programmed to pursue other aspirations in life.

Whilst some might be happy to share possessions in a hippy commune, most people are motivated by the desire to gain the things that will improve their lifestyle, enhance their image and make them feel superior to others.

It’s this biological drive which marketers harness to sell products: the human desire for the things which we think will make our lives more comfortable, even if it makes some people feel inadequate in the process. Or as the wise marketing sage Seth Godin put it, “What people have doesn’t make you unhappy. What you want does.”

Luxury means exclusivity

Along with the aspiration to improve our lifestyle and feel better about ourselves, people are culturally motivated by the desire to feel superior to others and to align ourselves with the ’tribe’ which matches our social standing.

Luxury brands appeal to this desire by promoting themselves as the exclusive, superior alternative to the labels worn by the riff raff on the high street. Owning a luxury brand is portrayed as like buying your way into an exclusive club, reserved for those who deserve membership and can afford to join.

Luxury brands make people feel special and appreciated, which is why people buy them to reflect their social standing and as a badge to show which tribe they’re aligned to.

However, being able to make people feel special isn’t an emotional trigger reserved for the De Beers, Hennessy Cognac and Louis Vuittons of this world. Any brand can benefit from making their customers feel special and loved. You just need the right approach to your marketing.

Part two next week.

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BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog - real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.

Whether reading books, watching films or sitting in the pub, we love stories and have been telling them since cavemen times. Stories spark our imagination and connect with us on an emotional level, which is why they’re so powerful and why every brand needs one.

Stories sell

Stories shouldn’t just be kept in reserve for entertaining guests at product launches, but be an integral part of your marketing strategy, because your story can be the clincher in people’s minds between picking between your product or someone else’s.

People’s buying decisions are based on two triggers: their logical and emotional reasoning. Logical decisions are influenced by cold hard facts, such as the price, specifications and features, whereas emotional responses are driven by the intangible benefits of how a product makes them feel.

Unless you’re happy slashing prices, emotion is the trigger your marketing needs to focus its energy on, because stories are so powerful at influencing how people feel.

You need to weave a story which appeals to your audience’s attitudes and lures their sense of desire. A compelling story can humanise your brand, increase its value in the eyes of consumers and seduce them into wanting a relationship with your logo.

Creating your story

Your business’ story should tell people about where you came from, the purpose of what you do and your vision for the future. It should be entwined into your brand’s message and be reflected in everything you do, such as how your product’s created, the wording on your label and how you answer the phone.

Your story should also reflect the worldview and attitudes of your target audience. It should be a story they want to believe in, be proud to be associated with and happily share with others.

Perhaps most importantly, your story needs to be authentic and genuine. In a world of social media, online chatter and amateur investigators, if you’re found to be spreading myths to further your own gain then your real past will come back to haunt you.

So before you sit down to pen your history and dreams for the future, here are a few examples of businesses that have thrived from the art of storytelling:

Innocent fruit drinks

Adored by the marketing world and customers alike, Innocent is a business phenomenon because of how it has used its story and brand message to drive its rapid rise to domination.

Innocent’s story is the classic tale of three plucky upstarts abandoning being cogs in the city to pursue what they’re passionate about, and winning.

Their story unfolds a decade ago when they sold fruit juices at a music festival and placed bins marked ‘yes’ or ‘no’ for customers to vote on whether the trio should ditch their suits and pulp fruit fulltime. Within hours the ‘yes’ bin was full to the brim, whilst the other lay empty. The people had spoken, and Innocent was born.

Innocent’s success comes from the way its story is reflected in everything it does. Whether it’s the design of its packaging, the paintwork of its vans or throwing music festivals, everything Innocent does reflects its sense of fun, optimism and satisfaction at giving a bloody nose to the big boys.

Innocent now occupies 71% of the UK smoothie market and sells two million shakes a week. Not bad when you also consider its price tag.

Reggae Reggae Sauce

From the humble beginnings of a family recipe cooked at home and sold at Nottinghill Carnival to finding fame on BBC2 Dragons’ Den, the success of Levi Roots’ Reggae Reggae Sauce is a master class in the art of storytelling.

When people buy his spicy jerk chicken sauce they’re also buying Levi. His authentic tagline of ‘putting music into food’, passion for his product and charitable connections has pushed a niche product into the shopping baskets of people who’ve probably never tried Jamaican food before.

People buy Levi’s sauce because they like him, his story and consequently they’re preconditioned to like his sauce as well.

Sainsbury’s expected to sell 50,000 bottles in a year; they currently sell that many in a week.

[You can listen to Levi telling the story of his rise to fame and fortune on this inspirational SmallBiz podcast]

Howies clothing

Howies is the creation of a husband and wife team who abandoned the city life to design and manufacture eco-friendly clothes for the masses. From starting with a few boxes of organic T-shirts, they now run their empire from a converted canteen in Cardigan Bay, Wales, and distribute their eco-friendly outdoor clothing and sportswear worldwide.

Howies’ popularity was given a boost thanks to threats by Levi Strauss to sue it for featuring a name tab on its jeans. The story of David standing up to Goliath helped distance itself from the cold corporate world and pushed its popularity from the extreme sports fraternity into the mainstream.

Howies also donate 1% of their profits to environmental causes, reflecting its story of a genuine love for the outdoors and being run on passion rather than balance sheets.

Stories enable emotion to override reason

As these examples illustrate, your brand’s story is integral to how people feel and respond to you. Your story needs to reflect your history, your beliefs and appeal to the worldview of your audience.

Emotion can often override reason, and people are attracted to brands that appeal to their attitudes and make them feel good about having a relationship with them. Feelings which telling them a great story can arouse.

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BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog - real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.

‘If Coca-Cola were to lose all of its production-related assets in a disaster, the company would survive. By contrast, if all consumers were to have a sudden lapse of memory and forget everything related to Coca-Cola, the company would go out of business.” – unnamed Coca-Cola Exec

A business’ brand is the set of thoughts and feelings people associate with it. More than just an eye catching logo, a brand can provoke positive emotions, such as excitement, trust and desire, which seduce people into wanting a relationship with it.

People prefer to interact with those they like and trust. So a business’ brand is its biggest intangible asset because of its influence on customers; if you can influence the way they think you can influence the way they behave.

People don’t buy Nike trainers because they feel more comfortable, but because they want to buy into the lifestyle promised on adverts and endorsed by some of the world’s biggest sports stars. When Nike’s customers see their ‘swoosh’ logo they see a status symbol and feel a set of positive associations which they want to be a part of.

“A great brand raises the bar – it adds a greater sense of purpose to the experience, whether it’s the challenge to do your best in sports and fitness, or the affirmation that the cup of coffee you’re drinking really matters” – Howard Schultz (CEO of Starbucks)

It’s not always the best product which wins, but the one with the best branding

When people are in a shop choosing between two products they’re not merely pondering which has the most speed settings or loudest volume, but how the products make them feel.

People make buying decisions based on pragmatic and emotional triggers. So to encourage them to pick your box from the shelf, you need to make them feel good about you when they see your logo.

People are often happy to pay extra for a branded product because of the positive emotions triggered by the brand’s charisma (and advertising).

“Coca Cola does not win the taste test. Microsoft does not have the best operating system. Brands win.” – Bob Pittman (President of AOL)

Defining your business’ brand

When assessing what your brand should say about you and how it should make people feel, you need to consider:

• What’s your big idea – what makes you special? What’s at the heart of what you do? Ikea, for example, sells stylish furniture at affordable prices based on the big idea that well designed furniture should be available to everyone.
• Values – What do you believe in? What do you strive for in the service you provide? Easyjet’s brand is built on the values of easy and cheap.
• Vision – what are your aspirations and plans for the future?
• Personality – How do you want to talk to your customers? In a witty ‘Innocent’ drinks style or like a straight talking ‘John Smiths’ Yorkshireman?

These questions provide a blueprint for the thoughts and feelings you want your brand to communicate to your customers.

Communicating your brand

Once you’ve identified your big idea, values, vision and personality, you need to communicate your brand’s message through everything you do, including your business’ culture, customer service and advertising.

The tone, visual identity and appeal of your advertising must be consistent and carefully designed to reflect want you want people to feel when they see your logo. Whether it’s trust, excitement, reliability or prestige, the emotions triggered by your brand will influence how people respond to you and whether they’ll buy your products.

Selling bottled water is environmental insanity, with water being shipped half way around the world from Fiji and millions of barrels of oil used to make the plastic bottles.

However, the successful branding of bottled water as a purer, more natural and healthier alternative to what you can easily pour from the tap has seen sales increase 60% this decade and created a market worth £2 billion a year. This just goes to show that if you can influence how people feel you can influence what they’ll buy as well.

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BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog - real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.

Aren’t digital video recorders great: they let you watch what you want when you want, and the best part is you no longer have to sit through tiresome adverts? Well, ITV certainly doesn’t think so, but its desperation to force ads onto viewers could easily backfire.

Now that people are fast forwarding through the ad breaks, ITV are eager to find a way of shoehorning ads into the programmes themselves, and are currently trialling a new ad overlay technology, which enables logos and messages to be embedded on blank surfaces (such as a wall, the sky or someone’s forehead) during programmes.

The risk for ITV is that is that in its dash for cash it damages the viewing experience, and people give it the thumbs down with their remotes.

Ultimately, ITV could be forced to import more US shows because, unlike the UK, American networks aren’t banned from using product placement for funding.

A brief history of product placement

Embedded marketing has been around nearly as long as broadcasted entertainment itself. Back in the 1930s, Procter & Gamble sponsored radio daytime serials to get housewives hooked on its soaps in more ways than one. P & G (along with Unilever) then went on to sponsor numerous ‘soap’ operas from the birth of TV, in the 1950s, right up until present day, with its household products getting as much camera time as the actors.

In the 1980s it was the film industries turn to get invaded by brands, with Ray Bans featuring in Risky Business (Tom Cruise helped increase sales 55%), breakfast cereals luring out aliens in ET and Marlboro trucks used as bowling balls in Superman II.

Brands and modern movies

Product placement is now becoming an integral part of how movies get marketed, with brands falling over themselves to promote their movie star endorsements. Audi’s concept car in iRobot helped generate 34,000 search engine hits, whilst Sex and the City was proclaimed ‘the Super Bowl for women’ as advertisers virtually bankrolled the film’s publicity for a share of the limelight.

The Bond franchise is a particularly juicy cash cow for studios: the films are almost guaranteed to fill seats and advertisers rush to buy time with the world’s most famous secret agent. After ‘Buy Another Day’ and the two hour Sony promo that was Casino Royale, you can expect Quantum of Solace to continue the tradition, with close ups of Daniel Craig planning his route on his Sony Ericsson before making a daring escape in a spotless Ford Ka.

Does product placement work?

Product placement can be effective because it’s embedded in the entertainment itself. Viewers can’t fast forward or ignore it, and it can bypass their subliminal anti-ad filters. A movie star seen wearing a particular brand is as good as a celebrity endorsement, helping to enhance a positive association and a desire to dress like the hero.

Last year US advertisers spent $2.9 million on product placements, which was a 34% increase on 2006, and this year it’s expected to be higher still. American TV networks are already switched on to the fact that people aren’t watching their ad breaks, so weaving brands into the script is now the only way shows are going to get made.

As the old adage goes ‘if you can’t measure it you can’t sell it’, so (along with their own private armies of trackers) advertisers ask 2.5 million people to fill out online surveys on whether they’d noticed the product, whether it improved their opinion or if they found it annoying.

It will be a while before sense can be made of the data on whether product placement is the future of advertising, but for the time being it’s the direction ad spend is pouring.

ITV’s quandary

Product placement works when it’s a relevant part of the entertainment and fits in with what the characters would wear and use, such as reflecting the materialistic lives of the Sex and the City girls. However, it can back fire if viewers think they’re being manipulated and advertisers are trying to trick them.

ITV’s problem is that it’s unlikely viewers are going to be as accepting of logos suddenly appearing all over Coronation Street as they are of the American Idol judges only drinking Coke.

As with all forms of marketing, if message are irrelevant, annoying and of no value then it will either be ignored or make prospects switch off altogether, which is the danger ITV faces.

Are you happy being average? Or would you prefer to stand out from the herd? That was the challenge posed by digital marketing guru Seth Godin in his popular book ‘Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable‘.

His book’s theme is that, with markets full to bursting, you have to be remarkable if you want to get noticed and pulled out from all the other businesses milling around for attention.

What is a Purple Cow?

Seth’s definition of being a Purple Cow is to have ‘products, services and techniques so useful, interesting, outrageous, and noteworthy that the market will want to listen to what you have to say’.

So being a Purple Cow isn’t about being loud or quirky. It’s about finding a way to show that you’re more passionate, special and remarkable than your black and white spotted competitors.

What’s Purple Cow marketing?

Delivering superior products and services so amazing that people can’t stop talking about them can make you a Purple Cow. However, creating the perception that your products are exceptional can be equally as effective, which means your marketing needs to be superior instead.

A key theme in Seth’s ‘Purple Cow’ is that marketing needs to be remarkable because the ‘TV industrial complex’ is broken: people have been bombarded with so much mass targeted advertising that TV and print ads are failing to get noticed.

Whilst the effectiveness of traditional methods alone to launch a new product is questionable, TV and print advertising can still be effective for brand maintenance and keeping your jingle ringing in people’s ears whilst they’re browsing supermarket shelves.

However, for awareness campaigns targeted at specific sectors an integrated and personalised direct marketing campaign is the way to go.

How can I become a Purple Cow?

If you want your marketing to be remarkable, and stand out from the rest, then you need to think about how you can make your message more unique and special to your customers.

Here are a few ideas:

Promote your customer service as a differentiator – publish testimonials, case studies, reviews and feedback on your website. People look for the ‘social proof’ of a product by reading for comments in forums and review sites. Save them the effort and build trust in your credibility at the same time.

Start a blog – providing useful, insightful content helps build trust, gives your website a voice and can maintain contact with customers long after they’ve left.

Integrate your print and digital marketing – in surveys, the majority of consumers have said they prefer to receive offers in the post compared to email. Print is far from dead, and smart marketers know that integrating the two can make your marketing more effective, as well as remarkable.

One-to-one digital marketing – people like to be treated as individuals, rather than drones with credit cards. Delivering campaigns personalised to appeal to an individual’s interests enables your marketing to be more relevant and remarkable, compared to the lazy one-size-fits-all approach of your competition.

Purple Cows do exist

With so much average marketing in the world, it’s the Purple Cows that get noticed and rewarded. They haven’t become remarkable because their products are necessarily better, but because of the perception they’ve cultivated of being more unique, special and remarkable than the rest:

Innocent Drinks – witty copywriting on the packaging and the story of a small group of plucky upstarts taking on the multinationals won people’s hearts and sent their smoothies and fruit juices flying from the shelves. They now occupy 71% of the UK’s smoothie market, hold their own music festival and are launching a range of exotic vegetable snack jars.

Red Bull- launched a fizzy energy drink that’s as high in caffeine as it is in price. Its association with extreme sports and cool clubbers saw its appeal spread to the mass market. Buzz marketing and relevant sponsorship (Formula One and the Air Race World Series) has kept awake their global domination of the energy drinks market.

Riedel – traditional glass blowers with a long heritage of designing glasses to enhance the taste of any drink. Their story and the popular belief/myth that wine tastes better from a Riedel helped them sell millions of glasses to wine connoisseurs worldwide.

So what’s your remarkable story?

If you want to become a purple cow then start thinking about what’s unique, special or exceptional about you. What’s your background story? How can you make your product sound more noteworthy than the rest?

Once you’ve developed your remarkable story, start thinking about how your marketing can be remarkable too. How can you use the tools at your disposal to tell people an engaging story which will capture their interest, connect with them on an emotional level and be a tale they’ll eagerly share with others?

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BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog - real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.

With the dark clouds of a recession looming, marketing budgets are being slashed as businesses get ready to ride out the turbulent storm ahead. Whilst reducing spend wherever possible helps boost quarterly figures, when sales are becoming scarce quietening your voice in the marketplace makes little sense.

In fact, all the evidence suggests that you should be marketing more, rather than less, during a recession. Or as Proctor and Gamble CEO A. G. Lafley put it, “We have a philosophy and a strategy. When times are tough, you build share.”

Why you should be marketing more

Over the years research has shown that increasing your marketing during a recession puts you in a much stronger position after it has passed.

When comparing the figures of those who continue to invest with those who haven’t, it’s the businesses who continue to spend that gain market share from their competitors during tough periods and position themselves to prosper afterwards.

Some of the reasons why you should market more:

•    If your competitors reduce their marketing then there’s less noise to compete with, and your campaigns will gain a louder, clearer voice
•    Customers will be looking for those businesses who are still actively engaging with them, and delivering messages that are relevant to their changing needs
•    Lowering brand awareness loses market share that’s hard to win back
•    With customers spending less, every sale will be harder to win. Therefore it makes sense to market more rather than less

The problem is that some business decision makers see marketing as a variable cost that can be cut without immediately harming sales. However, the evidence shows that this is a short sighted view.

So how do you convince those too worried about their bottom line to invest in marketing?

You have to change its perception to that of a revenue generator, and an essential activity for survival and future growth.

Marketing is a revenue generator

Last month Experian (data services provider) released their report ‘Marketing success in a slowdown’ (report is free after registering on their website), which provides 12 steps for moving marketing from a cost to a revenue generator.

The report outlines how digital media is integral for marketing smarter than simply carpet bombing messages onto your customers in the hope of hitting a sale.

Marketing is at its most effective when it understands and responds to people’s individual needs and aspirations. You can achieve this by using digital media to deliver campaigns that more closely reflect your customer’s mindset and are more compelling than your competitors.

Digital media makes targeted marketing more cost effective than ever

When investment is tight you need to ensure you’re making the best use of your budget. With digital you can launch targeted, personalised campaigns that are more cost effective than traditional advertising and measurable to every click.

Websites and email campaigns can be tracked and data captured on your prospects’ needs, preferences and desires to help you understand what messages to deliver and to whom. You can then segment and profile your customers so that you’re able to deliver true one-to-one marketing that’s more relevant and precisely targeted to trigger a response.

The effectiveness of ‘one size fits all’ mass marketing is starting to wane. Customers now expect your messages to be relevant and personalised if they’re going to reward you with their time. And digital makes it easier and more cost effective than ever to run campaigns tailored to each individual.

Market smarter, rather than less

Based on the evidence and just pure common sense, a recession presents an opportunity to gain market share from your competitors if they have given in to the fear factor. And with digital you can now deliver campaigns that are more cost effective, measurable and targeted than ever before.

So before your budget gets guillotined, present the case for marketing as a revenue generator rather than a cost, and how you can use a downturn to gain customers from your competitors and a head start when the storm clouds pass.

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BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) - real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.

Last month, Google added another title to its bulging trophy cabinet after being voted the ‘UK’s top consumer brand’. This follows on from it being hailed as the world’s most powerful brand in April, and sees them leapfrog Microsoft as the ‘brand that people value at work and in their daily lives’. 

Google’s whirlwind love affair with the World shows how the nature of branding is changing in the 21st century, and teaches even the smallest enterprise a few tricks on winning customer loyalty.

What defines a superbrand?

The survey to find the UK’s top superbrand was conducted by the Superbrands Council (a group of marketing, advertising and media experts), who define superbrands as:

‘A superbrand has established the finest reputation in its field. It offers customers significant emotional and tangible advantages over other brands, which (consciously or subconsciously) customers want and recognise. All superbrands must represent quality, reliability and distinction.’

This definition goes a long way towards explaining why Microsoft has been usurped from its throne, and why (as discussed in my previous article) it needs to fear for its future.

Both Microsoft and Google provide products and services people use everyday. But whereas Microsoft’s reputation was won through shear domination, Google won praise because of its popularity and the perception of its superiority.

Why are Google the #1 brand?

Google’s recognition as the UK’s (and World’s) biggest brand is arguably the fastest rise of a brand in history. Barely past its tenth birthday, Google has overtaken seasoned thoroughbreds, such as the BBC, British Airways and Mercedes Benz, as a name synonymous with quality, distinction and a service that’s superior to the rest. 

To be fair, Yahoo and MSN have been fighting an uphill battle ever since their competition’s name became a verb. With around 80% of web users ‘Googling’ to find the answers to their questions, Google is now synonymous with search.

As with any successful marketing strategy, perhaps Google’s dominance is as much to do with the ‘perception’ of product superiority as it is to do with reality. 

It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly when Google started chomping into Yahoo and MSN’s market share. But its expansion into a plethora of high quality, free products (e.g. Google Earth, Maps, Gmail and Googledocs) is arguably the catalyst that generated its huge popularity in such a short space of time. 

Perception can be as important as your product

The best marketing talk in the world isn’t going to turn you into a superbrand if you don’t have the products to back it up with. However, the perception of superiority can be as important as the quality of your wares in making people lust for your label. 

Building the perception of superiority is an increasingly complex puzzle for marketing and advertising agencies. Because people are looking for brands that engage with their interests and passions, rather than merely bombard them with one way advertising messages. 

This changing consumer mindset is being shaped by both an ad averse culture and the fact that people now have control over what content they want to receive.

Google’s rise comes from feeding a modern consumer need

Last May, BT released their 21^st Century Life Index Report, which estimated that most Brits now spend over six hours per week surfing the web. With one in five visiting more than 20 sites a week, the TV is now being left switched off whilst people ‘Facebook’ their friends, shop and feed their thirst for knowledge. 

The spread of broadband and explosion in online content is changing the consumer mindset from that of waiting to be fed to that of feeding itself. Today’s consumer now actively devours content that offers valuable insight and helps them make smarter buying decisions. 

So what does a global superbrand’s success have to do with me?

Google’s rise as the world’s biggest brand occurs not only from providing a better product, but also the perception of being superior to their rivals. Through the provision of additional services it was able to foster a positive association to its brand and encourage people to adopt it as their search engine of choice.

Google’s success demonstrates that you have to look beyond just your core product in raising perceptions on your brand’s value. Whilst you might not have the billions to spend on giving away free internet applications on a global scale, there are many ways in which you can enhance your brand’s image. After sales support, your customer service record and content that offers value to customers can all be utilised to foster positive associations with your logo. 

When you consider that brand perceptions are being formed online more than ever, a good place to start in boosting your profile would be your website. Are you providing merely a branded message in the form of an online brochure? Or are you providing insightful, useful content to customers that enhance the quality, reliability and distinction of your brand?   

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BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) - real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.