Strategy & Brand

As a general rule, BlackDog doesn’t brand upstarts. Here are some resources to help get your brand new brand off the ground though…

If you can’t find the answer to the brand query you’re muddling over, puzzling out, and Googling till the cows come home, send it our way. BlackDog’s 365 blog is an ongoing, evolving, question and answer guide developed to help business owners and entrepreneurs understand and hone their brands. Submit your questions on brand, branding, or branders to BlackDog and we’ll send you a personal response with the answer. An anonymous and confidential version of your question and our response will then be posted on BlackDog’s 365 blog to help out your fellow ponderers.

What’s a Brand?

• The Big Idea
• Logo vs Brand
• Who Defines a Brand?
• Brand Success – Just a Marketing Plan?
• Brand vs Advertising

Do You Need a Brand?

• Why Do I Need a Brand?

Naming Your Brand:

• How to Name a Startup
• 10 Ways to Name Your Company or Product
• Types of company and product names — A field guide

Slinging a Slogan:

• What’s The Difference: Good Tagline vs Bad Tagline

Picking a great URL:

• How to Find a Good URL without Having a Brain Hemorrhage

Finding Your Big Idea:

• The Big Idea

Differentiating Your brand:

• Differentiators…Let me count the ways
• Crazy. Inspired. Bold. Successful.
• How Do We Crate an Iconic Brand?
• Strip Away All the Filler…

Missions and Visions:

• Is Our Mission Our Brand Promise?

Components of a Brand Strategy:

• 19 Components of a Brand Strategy

Identifying Your Customer:

• Who Is Our Customer?

Identifying Your Brand Touch Points:

• What’s a brand touch point?

The Best Brand Book for Startups:

• Is There a Brand Book For Startups?

The Best Brand Books Period:

• Do You Have a Favorite Brand Book?

How to Write a Business Plan:

• Writing a Business Plan

Identifying Core Values:

• How Important are “Core Values”?
• Changing the World… One Brand at a Time

Developing Brand Standards:

• Hey, I Have Standards

Sponsorship  & Strategic Partnership Standards:

• Banners, logos, & Neon Lights, oh my!

Diversifying into New Markets:

• How Does A Brand Diversify Into New Markets?

The Truth About Brand Loyalty:

• Do You Believe in Brand Loyalty?

Synching Your Brand with Your Brand Experience:

• How do you sync brand and brand experience?

On Relevance, Transparency, & Avoiding Bullshit

• Do you ever get over whelmed by finding ways or trying to be inventive and original?
• The Better You Are, The Better You Look

Do Charitable Actions & Social Giving Build Brand Equity?

• Do Charitable Actions Build Brand Equity?
• Redux – Do Charitable Actions Build Brand Equity?

Bringing Your Humanity to Work:

• Brand Is An Inside Job

Communicating your Differentiated Brand:

• We Don’t Brand Bullshit: How BlackDog Does Communications
• Narrativity: You’re Too Good For Boring
• How Buff is Your Brand Narrative?
• Crafting Content out of Fingerprints
• Top Shelf: Communications Reads We Recommend
• Top Shelf Part II: More Communications Reads We Recommend

Brand & Social Media:

• Social Media – The Prize Inside
• The Rolling Stones Didn’t Have to Bribe THEIR Groupies
• Twitter, the Medium is the Message
• Social Media Masterminds: Facebook Pages that Are Getting it Right!

“Conscientious Objectives: Designing for an Ethical Message” by John Cranmer & Yolanda Zappaterra… An inspired look at the correlation between messaging, design, and social ergonomics. Cranmer and Zappaterra brilliantly tackle the design world’s accidental mantra: “if it looks good, it is good.” Written to fill a glaring gap, this book addresses the impact of design on ethical, sustainability-oriented, purpose-driven messaging.

“Guerrilla Advertising: Unconventional Brand Communication” by Gavin Lucas and Michael Dorrian… This book explores a varied array of noteworthy experimental campaigns that chose brand experience and guerrilla engagement over the same-old same-old way advertising had always been done. While a few of the examples depicted are likely to cause a well-deserved cringe, this read is guaranteed to get your creative cogs wheeling.

“Marketing Lessons From The Grateful Dead” By David Meerman Scott and Brian Halligan… An easy reading case study on how the Grateful Dead broke the rules on purpose, for a purpose.

“This One Time At Brand Camp” by Tom Fishburne… The collected and cartooned satirical “What Not To Do” wit of Tom Fishburne, inspired by brand builders gone enthusiastically awry.

“The Elements of Content Strategy” by Erin Kissane… The charming, pink-haired, content-loving strategist we’ve come to know as @kissane has captured the nitty gritty how-to’s of content strategy and compiled them into a concise little manual that would make Strunk &White darn-right proud. A brilliant guide for accidental and aspiring content strategists alike.

“100 Best Annual Reports 2010” edited by B. Martin Pedersen… A collection of 100 annual reports that convey the brand, utilize design principles, and create distinction. If boring isn’t for you, this book might be.

For more reads we recommend, check out the Top Shelf  Part I.

Narrativity: [nar-uh-tiv-uh-tee]: 1.) the degree to which your brand spunk, funk, credibility, attitude, and vibe shines through your messaging. 2.) Your voice, your verbiage, your tone.

While preparing for a wine-touring camping trip to Watkins Glen, I began perusing the websites of the nearby Seneca Lake wineries and plotting my prioritized must-see, must-visit list for the alcohol-inspired excursion. I was frustrated to find that, with a mere handful of exceptions, every winery’s website looked and sounded the same, and they all lacked personality, pizzazz, and panache. Armed with an adventurous spirit, I finally gave up pre-planning my wine trail route, and decided to wing the whole experience. I visited several wineries I liked, several I very much didn’t, and I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d accidentally by chance driven right past my dream winery and missed my one chance at true varietal bliss.

If every brand looks and sounds the same, has same perspective, purpose, product, it doesn’t matter which winery you visit or which brand you choose. The one is as good as the other, and if you’ve had one you’ve had them all. If you’re distinct, worthy of note, and you hide behind  the same humdrum look, feel, sound, and practice as everyone else, no one will ever know you’re worthy of their time or attention. When everyone is just a different shade of beige, popped from the same drone mold, we’re all being robbed of an opportunity for preference and our worlds all have a little less color in them. Boring is thievery by complacency.

Narrativity is one of the ways bold brands with a story to tell differentiate their experience, brighten their color spectrum, and tell their too-good-for-boring tale. Your brand’s story is made up of your brand’s real-life, day to day, actions, decisions, products, events, partnerships, sponsors. It’s who you are, how you work, what you do, and why you do it.  Narrativity is the voice, tone, and verbiage you use to tell that vivid, appealing, authentic story. Narrativity is like a person’s distinct vocabulary and speech pattern. It’s the words and phrases you own, and it’s what makes you sound like you, instead of just like everybody else.

Here are a few examples of vibrant, saucy brands that have high degree of Narrativity:

Urban Daddy: A racy, random, irreverent city guide for liquor drinking, women loving, wannabe jet owning, good humored James Bond types the world over. After reading an article or three from Urban Daddy, you and your grandmother could both pick their work out of a line up blind-folded (if it was being read aloud).

Harley-Davidson: Harley doesn’t sell motorcycles, they sell freedom, self-expression, great escapes, and the open road. Harley’s “grab life by the bars”, “leave well enough behind”, “out to free the world” attitude is captured in and on everything from their advertisements to their annual reports.

Kraken Rum: This edge-of-the-world nautical brand is steeped in legend and only distilled for the fearless, seafaring, adventuring, unshaven at spirit. Once you’ve heard a Kraken ad, you can’t help but read the Kraken bottle and the Kraken story using their narrator’s speech pattern- it’s that alluring and distinctive. Kraken’s tone is so consistently conveyed with such a distinctive verve that their narrator’s voice and their content’s verbiage isn’t ever separate from the story, it’s part of their story.

For a sneak peek at Kraken’s vivid storytelling in action, check out their tale of the man-eating, ship-wreaking, sea-monster The Kraken, via their website.

Coffee Fool: Coffee Fool comes with a warning: their coffee is so fresh and delicious, everything else will taste bland and stale in comparison. What the warning doesn’t mention is that everything’ll look and sound bland in comparison as well. While other coffee roasters talk in coffee-speak about notes and tones and soils and geographies, these guys have a style all their own…. An example: the description for their only-brewed-on-Fridays flavor, Vanillamykahlua, proclaims it: “Tastes just like it sounds, with a little Hawaiian rumble in the jungle.” And the description for their knock-your-socks off bacon-flavored brew: “If everything tastes better with bacon, then why not coffee too? Our bacon flavor is not just roasted – it’s spit roasted. It’s so aromatic, you’ll be instant friends with your work colleagues and … any neighborhood dogs.”

What are your favorite taglines? Least favorite?

My favorite is “Live Free or Die”, the official motto of the U.S. state of New Hampshire, adopted in 1945.

I like “Don’t just watch TV; Direct TV”

I loved the Salvation Army’s Red Kettle Christmas Campaign in 2010: “When you put money into our Kettles, Expect Change”

The following reflect some of the most notorious tag lines:

Got milk? (1993) California Milk Processor Board

Just do it. (1988) Nike

Ring around the collar. (1968) Wisk Laundry Detergent

Where’s the beef? (1984) Wendy’s

Don’t leave home without it. (1975) American Express

It’s not a job. It’s an adventure. (1980s) U.S. Navy

Takes a licking and keeps on ticking. (1956) Timex

What happens here, stays here. (2002) Las Vegas

Pork. The other white meat. (1986) National Pork Board

It keeps going, and going, and going… (1989) Energizer Batteries

Friends don’t let friends drive drunk. (1992) U.S. Dept. of Transportation

The toughest job you’ll ever love. (1970s) U.S. Peace Corps

It’s not your father’s Oldsmobile… (1980s) Oldsmobile

(It was memorable but it did break the rules; after all “old”smobile has always been our fathers…and grandfather’s car)

As for least favorites: Never reward bad behavior…If it’s not worth repeating, don’t.

I have partners. I have very smart partners that are not very creative. For being very smart they don’t seem to mind that we have a tagline that is not smart or creative. I think that they (we) are concerned that we won’t know the difference between a good tag line and a bad one if we were to hire creative services. Any advice?

The word “slogan” derives from the Gaelic slaughgaiirm. As it turns out slogans are not for the faint of heart, a slaughgaiirm (slogan) translated is a “war cry”.

A Powerful Tagline is defined by essential characteristics:

1.)    Pop: A powerful tagline gets to it. A well-turned phrase is direct, succinct, and to the point in a few words. Excavating an expression that represents your brand is critical. Big ideas condensed create sticky messages. If you want it remembered and repeated…just say it.

2.)    Differentiates:  The goal is to tell your story with a little punch in a memorable quip. Communicate your attitude, core competencies, flair, and novel purpose in your own voice.

3.)    Capture the truth: Your tagline should be believable, straightforward, clear, focused, and original. Avoid lofty, pretentious, phrases that won’t turn a head, capture anyone’s attention, or mean anything to anyone. Stay clear of jargon and clichés (unless you have a new spin on an common quip).

4.)   Operationalized:  The last thing you want is a message that you can’t deliver and a brand promise that you can’t keep.

5.)    Recognizable: To thine own brand be true. Taglines are intended to reinforce the “word” that you want to own in your customers mind. The trick is to capture and communicate the brand’s collective persona.

6.)    Discover the universal truth in your brand: Sticky slogans get to the heart of the matter revealing an inherent quality, a universal truth, or a drive that all users can relate to at a meaningful level.

8.)    Bold: You want a slogan that is impossible to mimic. This is no time for obscure promotions. Your audience is listening for bold brands to speak up and in a customer centric voice. Be impressively, unequivocally, explicit about who you are, what you do, and what you stand for. Bland is boring. Avoid copy cat, cookie-cutter, safe, vague, tired, homogenized, and drab slogans. A bland brand is nothing to brag about.

9.)    Enduring value: Taglines that have stuck and lasted the test of time have dug deep with a simple message.

10.)    Customer focused: Never forget who you are talking to. Why do they care? Why should they care? What’s the need? The need behind the need? The shared perspective? The promise that compels? The real deal?

11.)    Works: And now that you have done all that…you need to vet it, “google it”, field test it on the outside, put it to the “mother-in-law” clarity check to ensure that it works for you and doesn’t belong to someone else.

We are always amazed at how many brand firms use the phrase “brand fuel” as their proprietary approach, in their taglines, names, and communications. Once upon a time it had zing…now it’s just overdone.

“Made to Stick” by Chip and Dan Heath
Why do some ideas make powerfully indelible impressions and others just don’t seem to stick at all? Chip and Dan Heath have the answer to what makes some ideas “stickier” than most. The official how-to guide on crafting and conveying ideas that capture attention.

“The Designful Company” by Marty Neumeier
A designful writer, editor, marketer, or advertiser  crafts messages that are relevant, alluring, meaningful, transparent, accurate, and that actually matter. The Designful Company addresses the ways that divergent thinking can help writers align a brand’s messaging with its operations to maintain relevance and drive thought-leadership.

“Content Strategy for the Web” by Kristina Halvorson
The ultimate intro guide to creating, organizing, and managing web content that works. Halverson covers everything from auditing your existing content to figuring out your site architecture and long-term content management.

“Brand Digital” by Allen P. Adamson
Loaded with case studies, research, and the hard-earned wisdom of industry experts, BrandDigital offers an insightful perspective on developing brand presence, touch-points, recognition, and engagement through digital mediums. An outstanding follow-up to Adamson’s book “Brand Simple: How the Best Brands Keep it Simple and Succeed.”

“Art Direction + Editorial Design” by Yolanda Zappatera
An in-depth guide to conveying brand identity and connecting with target audiences through editorial design. Covers everything from layout design to color psychology, pull-quotes, and type- with excellent case studies and full illustrations.

“The Subversive Copy Editor” by Carol Fisher Saller
This University of Chicago Press manuscript editor shares her stories and advice to help writers and editors avoid squashing spirits, injuring egos, and create hostile relationships when editing someone else’s content- or trying to convey some else’s Big !dea. Saller’s tips and tricks are also helpful for navigating problem areas when you’re working collaboratively to engineer copy.

“Slide:ology” by Nancy Duarte
A practical guide to creating vibrant visual presentations- from the presentation experience to communicating your brand, color wheels, and font size.

“Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing” by Mignon Fogarty
The ultimate layman’s guide to grammar rules and their exceptions. It’s clear, concise, and has an excellent index.

“If the writing is honest it cannot be separated from the man who wrote it.” Tennessee Williams

The hardest part of crafting an authentic brand narrative is excavating who you really are, what you really do, and why you really matter.

It’s easy rattle off a check-list of standard, homogenized, industry phraseology that mimics what everyone else has always said about themselves. But you can’t differentiate yourself with corporate bologna and cookie cutter content. Saying what everyone else already says just makes you sound like everyone else.

If your narrative, the way you’re telling your story, doesn’t flawlessly capture your real-life story, identity, and Big !dea – you haven’t gotten it right yet.

Excavating what really matters is rarely an easy task, and the process is exponentially more daunting, grueling, and gut-wrenching when you’re close to the story. In “Made to Stick,” Chip and Dan Heath help brand stewards understand what journalists have long called “burying the lead.” While explaining the “burying the lead” concept, the Heath brothers quote the hard earned wisdom of newspaper editor and communications professor Ed Cray: “The longer you work on a story, the more you can find yourself losing direction. No detail is too small. You just don’t know what your story is anymore.” [1] Instead of giving in, giving up, and settling for generic content, focus on what really matters: Your Big !dea, your points of differentiation, your unique perspective.

When you’ve gotten it right, your one-of-a-kind narrative will be inseparable from the real life organization. When it’s right, you’ll know it! It’ll feel authentic, ring true, and resonate with your customers, your employees, and your favorite barista at the corner coffee shop.

[1] Ed Cray, Professor of Communications at the University of Southern California. QTD In: Chip Health and Dan Heath. “Making it Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die.” New York: Random House, 2008. P. 32.

What have you been wanting to brand but haven’t gotten a chance to yet?

A Public School (likely our next pro bono project). Every kid should know why they “attend” this place, what matters around here (authentically), what it means to belong “here”, what “we” collectively stand for, are made of and contribute to, and what the expectations and outcomes are beyond what everyone supposes is “obvious”.

Retirement Community

A triathlon with an interesting history and spirited purpose

A carnival in Brazil

Accountants

Water; a product or cause related campaign having anything (healthy) to do with water

Branded art that captures and expresses the sense of people and place that come together to action a significant purpose

A philharmonic or symphony

Peanut butter and jelly

A Brewery

Library system

An arts or not-for-profit cluster. Yes, Porter’s cluster theory can be applied to cultural and human services…

The City of Amsterdam

A life saving device

Parking garages

Bookstores

Cruise Ships

Advertising/sponsorship criteria for Oprah’s OWN network. Smart partners make for an indelible impact.

Extreme Sports Brand

Magazine

Surf Gear

A natural or man-made wonder of the world

Real toys

Tequila

The exterior and interior working space that inspires a community of renegades; function, look, and feel.  ”We shape our buildings and thereafter they shape us.” Winston Churchill

Something culinary

Ski’s

Visceral way-finding

Chocolate!

Something that teaches the world to sing

Mountain bikes

Cereal…This may be a pro bono project that we commandeer as a public service announcement one of these days. Not because we love cereal, but because we are unnerved by the blatant advertising deception embraced by the dirty few that ultimately misleads the busy many.

Check it out yourself…Read Serious Play for Serious Girl’s case study “General Mills: A Case Study on Corporate Values” http://www.seriousplayforseriousgirls.com/?p=601 or the Rudd Center’s original report: “Cereal FACTS: Evaluating the Nutrition Quality and Marketing of Children’s Cereals.” http://www.cerealfacts.org/media/Cereal_FACTS_Report.pdf

p.s. *We’d love to design William Gibson’s next book cover

We came across a newsletter this week that actually said: “‘like’ our Facebook page and receive an exclusive offer.” We’re not sure what the offer was, because we’re not interested in being bribed, manhandled, or coerced into social media engagement (…but we’re guessing it’s free shipping or a discount promo code).

Social media revolves around community and conversations. It’s a place for art, expression, and contribution – not advertising. Facebook isn’t just another notch in your touch-point belt, so have some respect.

You don’t need the gimmicks if you’re doing something that’s actually worthy of people’s time, interest, and attention. Real groupies- genuinely impassioned and impressed followers- aren’t bought; they’re earned.

Before you go out and set up a fan page or start a promo campaign to non-organically grow your following, read our social media guide: Social Media- The Prize Inside

Make art- not advertising. Whether it’s a two page spread in a print publication or a vertical banner on a website, at BlackDog, we believe if the ad you’re placing isn’t as interesting, attractive, and useful to readers as the content it’s sandwiched between, you’ve missed the Big Idea. 
Promotions that are irrelevant or out of sync, campaigns that are boring, interstitial ads (the frustrating ads that hijack your attention by forcing you to watch an ad before a page will load), floating ads (the in-your-face ads that float across your screen to block the page and raise your blood pressure), ads that blink, pop-ups, and awareness initiatives that annoy your viewer all impact the way your brand is perceived and experienced.

Allowing these lackluster intrusions degrades the visitor’s experience, cheapens your brand image, devalues your ad space by diminishing your advertisers’ return on investment, and leaves your  viewers feeling as though (by tolerating all of the unwanted messaging they’ve been subjected to in exchange for the content provided) they’ve already paid for their subscription.

Here are a few characteristics of a good advertisement:
-A good ad is art- it is crafted, it utilizes design principles, it has meaning, it has relevance. The ultimate compliment a print ad can receive isn’t a marketing award- it’s when a reader carefully tears the ad out so they can keep it somewhere more visible (on their fridge, in a frame, etc.).

-A good ad is bold- it captures a viewer’s attention. Bland ads rob readers and visitors by taking up space that should have been allotted to more appealing content. Leave your ski mask and slim jim at home and give us ads worth looking at.

-A good ad is a mutually beneficial exchange for advertiser and viewer- it provides information that the reader actually wants, which, in turn, significantly increases the return on investment for the advertiser.