But sometimes it can prove difficult to transfer the brand image from one medium to another. What works well on paper may not work so well on the screen, when translated to web technology. Again, what may work well on a huge billboard may fail when transferred to a business card, and radio may see another possible pitfall waiting to happen. Branding is important, whatever medium is used, and so when embarking on a branding or re-branding project for your company or business, take care to consider all of the possible media which might be used to promote your business in the future, and consider how the brand image will translate across all of them fluidly, consistently and recognizably.
Don’t make the same mistakes made by some companies, many of whom are no longer with us. Never try to piggy back your business into the marketplace on the success of a rival company’s brand image; it rarely works. It will also be important to plan your branding not for the present, or even the immediate future, but for as long as it is possible to imagine the company continuing. Don’t brand your company on the basis of current fashion trends, as such branding could easily date your company.
Today one of the most essential elements in terms of successful branding and choosing a brand image and name which will work in your favour is to consider effective use of keywords. This applies both to the brand name itself and also to the slogan or tagline which will be associated with it. The reason for considering keywords is that today, in a world driven by internet technology, this is how people are searching for products and information relating to them.
Why else are some of the biggest prices online associated with domain names? These commodities, which in themselves are nothing more than a phone number equivalent, can sometimes be valued at many millions of dollars, simply because they contain, or are, a particular keyword which is highly associated with that industry or product or service.
By considering the keywords which people are tending to use, and there are many tools, including Google’s own version, which can enable you to do this, you can start to identify appropriate wordings and terms which can be incorporated into the product brand name or slogan.
Don’t ignore the slogan or tagline, as often these can prove to be just as successful at promoting the brand as the brand or product name itself. Because you can squeeze one or two keywords into these, they actually carry more advertising weight than the product name itself in many cases.
Visual recognition is increasingly important too. With an unbelievable quantity of slogans, brand names, images, adverts and slogans bombarding all of us every day we have grown very used to the same old forms of advertising and promotion. We tend to walk around with a special pair of lenses in our glasses which filter out almost all of the adverts which we see each day.
If you were asked right now to state how many adverts or promotions you saw yesterday, you may well hazard a guess at a dozen or perhaps twenty. The truth is that almost certainly you were exposed to many hundreds, through a wide variety of media. The fact that we estimate the actual number so low is evidence in itself of the importance not only of brand image but successful marketing of that brand name or slogan, as people will almost certainly filter out anything which falls within their peripheral frame of consciousness.
This peripheral frame of consciousness is the average person’s ability to subconsciously deduct what slogans, brand names, images, adverts or promotions might prove worth picking up on and carrying through to our conscious perception, and ultimately to the possibility of us actually taking notice of it. To achieve this takes a good deal of trouble and if you are on the path to launching a new product or service, or perhaps even a new business, then thinking about ways in which you can break out of the traditional mold and offer something which can succeed at getting people to become conscious of your product or brand name will be of tremendous importance.
Since people are actively using keywords to search for products or services it makes good sense to consider branding a product or service which taps in to this active searching, since already you’re more likely to break through that peripheral barrier. Well thought out business branding can make all the difference!
By: Naz Daud
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