Some of the best brands set themselves apart in their industry by coming up with creative brand names. Here’s what we can learn from them
If you don’t believe that having a good name will impact your business, maybe you should. After all, catchy names outperform long and complicated names on the stock market by 33%. Sometimes, being bold when naming a business pays off. These can be the names that stick in people’s heads and set up your business for success.
A name is an outgrowth of a business plan. The right name will support the growth of your business and can help improve your chances of becoming successful.
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A single tool can centralize efforts, simplify complex processes, and ensure the effective utilization of data
Regardless of new digital opportunities, companies still struggle with their brand development. A recent survey suggests that some of the most common brand management hurdles include putting data to efficient use, possessing a compelling vision, achieving integrated marketing communication and training employees to deliver a consistent message every single time.
These challenges are commonplace and dozens of companies are attempting to identify the right solution. Specifically designed to address the above-mentioned challenges, brand management software can be just the thing. A single tool can centralize efforts, simplify complex processes and ensure the effective utilization of data.
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Five common product branding myths
Branding is one of the aspects of running a business that people just can’t seem to get right. Here are a few nuggets of information that are not facts, but product branding myths.
There is a lot of information out there on the subject, but most of it is sadly incorrect. This has made it somewhat impossible for many businesses to properly exploit branding.
Myth 01 - Branding is all about the logo and colors
Technically speaking, if all you needed to make an excellent brand was a good logo and a perfect color palette, then brand designers would have become obsolete a long time ago.
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Branding is more than a combination of logos and colors. It is the…
Chart of the day: Customer Experience is the main focus for brand marketers looking to strengthen their brand marketing strategy for 2018
Branding has always been a hot topic of discussion amongst marketers, as there seem to be a number of different definitions and purposes of brand marketing that marketers can adhere to. Years ago, branding could simply be pinned down to defining a set logo, slogan, colour palette etc. However, in today’s day and age, branding has become a tad bit more complicated.
Branding can be that ‘feel-good’ emotion that your customer experience when they hear your brand name, it can be the feeling that makes them associate to your brand identity and the perception that customers get, when they see your brand.
Every year, the focus of branding and brand marketers keeps shifting, given the top marketing trends of the year and the latest developments in technology. A recent chart from…
Chart of the day: Neuroscience reveals that for long-term impact ads should appeal to emotion or make us laugh
In this example of neuromarketing, brain responses to over 200 TV ads were analysed. By looking at how the respondents' brains engaged in long-term memory encoding whilst watching the ads, Neuro-Insight were able to establish what makes for effective TV ads.
Since short-term memory only lasts a few seconds and then is lost forever, if you manage to get your ad into someone's long-term memory they'll be able to recall it for years. That means it's critical that your ads are able to make an impact and become part of someone's long term memory.
As the chart shows, information-based ads or discount-related ads make very little long-term impact on our brains. Opting for the 'hard sell' is clearly not effective. Humour stands out as the most effective…
Trump defied every expert and still won. The implications for brands are huge.
Yesterday, I prepared a piece about the anticipated Clinton win as President of America.
What a difference nine hours makes…
Despite all the sophisticated big data … the huge political advertising budgets from the Clinton camp… the faceless pollsters who number-crunched rather than listened to the unspoken authentic voice of the people… in the end Trump won.
…So why, from a branding perspective did a reported sexist, racist and narcissistic defy all predictions?
Perhaps the regular American saw what a mess the world has become – despite all the propaganda suggesting the contrary. Looking for example to the UK, they got the impression that its identity had been decimated by an open-door policy leading to the country’s spiritual, commercial, social and political foundations becoming at best ‘in transition’ and at worst, tatters.
They saw Europe down, despondent and divided.
They looked at how former hard-working…
Key lessons for brands emerge from the most anticipated ad of the holiday season
On initial viewing the John Lewis’ £7m Xmas 2016 commercial tells a quaint story of a girl whose trampoline becomes popular with the local wildlife community.
Set against a backing track of Randy Crawford’s ‘One Day I’ll Fly Away’. The commercial features a Boxer dog in a typical Middle-England home. The dog enviously stares out of a living room window as it watches two wild foxes, a badger, a squirrel and a hedgehog liberally jumping on a trampoline built by the household’s father for his daughter.
Come Christmas morning Buster (the Boxer dog) pushes aside a surprised Bridget (the daughter) to merrily jump on trampoline all for itself.
Given a tumultuous political year, John Lewis’s customer director Craig Inglis said:
“You could say 2016 has certainly been quite a year. We…
Plus three ingredients that you can combine to create a powerful name and strap line
The name you select for a brand, product or service will clearly have a major impact on how prospects and customers perceive your service, but what are the options for choosing the best name? There are lots of ways to name a business, a service, or a product. The addition of a strap line can take the name a little further. From nonsensical words, like Google, to highly descriptive names, like Compare the Market – there are just so many ways to think about naming! Whilst it's true that naming is a bit of an art and today we are often constrained by domain name availability, there are certainly a few issues to consider to guide you to choose a name that can work much harder for you.
1. Nonsense names – e.g. Google
The benefit of a name like this is that once you’ve lodged…
Guidance and examples for Buying Guides relevant for other sectors too
‘Buying Guide’ or 'Buyer's Guide' content are a common SEO tactic particularly amongst retailer ecommerce sites, but they can be used in other types of site too such as financial services. They're popular since they tick many of the boxes for effective on page SEO. They're naturally rich in keywords, dense in character count and recognisably original, it’s an easy target to hit on your SEO checklist. They also enable you to link to your main target category and popular product pages with relevant anchor text, so boosting their effectiveness.
Potential customers also love Buying Guides, since, done well, they’re a great research resource in the early ‘information gathering’ stages of the purchasing decision process.
If they provide great advice and a good experience in navigating them,…
