Brand Aid 6: 3 Steps To Brand Heaven

Now, there are 3 steps to ‘Brand Heaven’, just listen and you will plainly see – and as life travels on – and things do go wrong – just follow steps 1, 2 and 3, wap wap oooooh…

When Eddie Cochran wrote these catchy lyrics back in 1960, he was of course singing about love. I was only 1 at the time but made a mental note that one day I should reflect upon their wisdom and tenuously shoehorn them into a blog about branding! 50 odd years later, here we are:

STEP 1: Stand o-out from the crowwwwd…

Make sure that your brand stands out from, rather than blends in with your competitors. Standing out doesn’t have to mean being bold and brash, it just has to be right for your target audience, with ‘something’ to make it unique. Where possible, if that ‘something’ could be memorable and relevant to your business, all the better… dare to be different!

Even way back then, Eddie’s record label had a good go at making him stand out:

Vertical and upside-down text were considered ‘well wacky’ in the early 60’s.

In this more recent example, Grill 55 had unknowingly banished themselves to ‘Brand Hell’ – they’d made the unfortunate mistake of using a Clip Art logo and were sinking fast into marketing mediocrity.

Not only were their colours all over the place: brown, orange, lime green, grey and beige (which were never going to be a winning colour palette) but unfortunately, they’d used one of those shameful ‘design to a template’ systems.

Your name here…

Pick one of our ‘off the shelf’ ready made logo’s here…

Your ticket to ‘Brand Hell’ here!

“Hellllllllp!” We heard their muffled cries, “somebody hellllllllp us!” We just happened to be passing through ‘Brand Hell’ on a crusade against mediocre design and arranged to meet them for a coffee and a chat in Café Design Purgatory.

They’d heard a lot about ‘Brand Heaven’ and fancied a change of scenery. As luck would have it, we knew of a tried and tested route to get them there and were happy to give them a lift…

“To the Brandmobile!”

Before we set off, we paid a quick visit to our trusty sketchbook, a good place to map out a route and make sure we were headed in the right direction.

When designing logos, it often helps to look out for something unusual – a ‘quirk’ to base your concept on and provide a point of difference. With Grill 55, when written in upper & lower case, we noticed that the two ‘l’s at the end of the word were very similar to the bars on a professional BBQ grill, so our concept was to extend the ‘l’s and cook the ‘55’ on the newly formed grill area.

When developing the design, the grill area worked much better with a finer typeface. Here’s the final logo in both positive and negative versions.

Tilting the main part of the logo, but keeping the ‘55’ straight made it more unusual and memorable. Once you have step 1 covered and you have something which is unique and relevant to your business, it’s time to move on to step 2…

STEP 2: Be cle-ear and con-cise…

Step 2 is all about clarifying your offer; you know your own business inside out but never assume that potential customers will automatically understand what you do, spell it out for them in the simplest terms.

The name ‘Grill 55’ hints that there might be cooking involved and some people might guess that it’s a restaurant but equally it could be a BBQ manufacturer with a range of 55 grills. Your logo is one thing but your brand should summarise what you do as clearly and concisely as possible…

This clarity of message then needs to be applied to all forms of your business marketing and communication. Once customers know who you are and what you do, the last thing you need is to blind them with science and bore them to death with technical details and irrelevant info – keep things simple!

STEP 3: Take care to be consistent…

A good logo and strap line are the cornerstone of your brand but that’s just the starting point, now it has to be built.

Your customers need to be regularly reminded of your products and services with consistent, quality branding messages.

Whether it’s your website, leaflets, posters, vouchers, business Social Media, e-mail marketing or press advertising, it has to be of good quality and be consistently ‘on brand’.

Experts tell us that it can take 6-12 ‘points of contact’ before customers truly remember you and make a connection with your business, therefore a consistent marketing presence with regular brand reminders, mixed with good old honesty, professionalism and excellent customer service should stand you in good stead at the pearly gates.

It doesn’t happen overnight, it could take months or even years of strategic marketing to reach your ‘Brand Heaven’ but remember: as life travels on – and things do go wrong – just follow steps 1, 2 and 3!

Yeah! that sure seems like heaven to me – wap wap oooooh…

To any younger readers who haven’t got a clue what I’m talkin’ about – check out this kickin’ You Tube Video ?