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Branding

Building Your Brand - How to Develop Your External Value

In a conversation this week with a client who was formerly President and Chief Executive Officer of a multi-billion dollar company, I asked him to tell me about his external Reputation Enhancement Plan. His blank look was an indication that he didn’t know what reputation enhancement means and he had no idea why I was asking that question.

He was fired from his position as a result of a corporate restructuring initiative. I was engaged to help him through transition; help him identify options for his next role; prepare him for interviews with search firms, corporate board members, private equity firms, etc.

Over the years, I have received the same blank look from hundreds of senior executives. These corporate movers and shakers understand the value of meeting and exceeding revenue and net profit goals, they understand the benefits of executing a turnaround and achieving record customer satisfaction ratings. They understand the value of employing a legacy leadership approach, energizing their team and streamlining the operations.

What they don’t understand is the fact that their continued tenure is based not only on their internal track record - but also on their external reputation. Achieving spectacular internal excellent results is no guarantee of continued employment in their executive position.

Why?

Companies are acquired, CEOs come and go, board members have different agendas, infighting happens and today’s fair-haired executive becomes tomorrow’s has been. The investment that an executive makes today in developing an external leadership presence will assist him or her in attaining career goals and will greatly improve their external marketability.

So, how do you implement an external Reputation Enhancement program? Write, speak, volunteer with non-profits, get on a corporate board, accept an officer appointment with an industry or trade association, regularly interact with industry “influencers,” etc.

It’s not who you know, but how you interact with “influencers” - that’s how you achieve your career goals and maintain market presence.

It’s All In The Name - Brand Identity And Promotional Products

From large corporate conglomerates and global organizations, to small High-Street stores and independent retailers, the one thing they all value besides their customers is their unique brand identity.

Having a familiar, recognizable brand is priceless in consumer culture and really can’t be underestimated. Given a choice between a known brand and a new brand, a consumer will invariably go with the one they are familiar with.

Of course, the bigger organizations have whole departments dedicated not so much to promoting individual items, but to promoting the entire brand and ensuring its reputation and integrity is protected. But these are organizations that have millions of pounds at their disposal, and can afford television, radio and magazine advertising campaigns.

So, where does that leave the rest? How can the smaller organizations get their message out there and create a brand identity?

Well, there are many promotion and marketing strategies that can be employed that won’t need a blank check to fund it. The key is to simply get their name in the public domain, whether it’s on flyers, websites or newspapers. The more exposure a brand has, the more familiar the public will be with it and subsequently the more likely they will be to use their wares at some point.

Branding promotional products such as pens, bags, keyrings and other commonly used items is a good way of getting a company’s name widely circulated. And producing promotional mugs, in particular, is an effective way of getting a company’s name onto the desk of existing or potential business partners.

The great thing about such promotional methods is that they are relatively inexpensive to produce and it can all be organized with minimal hassle. With promotional mugs, for example, the type of mug (ceramic, china, glass etc), size of mug, colour of mug and quantity required, can all be requested.

Of course, it isn’t only the smaller organizations that use such promotional items. All the big names in the business world produce such items in addition to their media campaigns to help maximize their presence and ensure their brand identity is preserved.

With so much competition in the consumer world, even the smallest of advantages that can be gained over a rival is worth every penny. Brand recognition is central to any successful business, so whether it’s keyrings, bags, pens or mugs, getting the brand name circulated widely is crucial.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Paul_Mcindoe

 

Questions on how to start branding your business or organization? Contact us!

Creating a Strategy To Market Your Business and Your Brand

An effective marketing strategy identifies and targets your customers and prospects with the appropriate materials to communicate your company’s “value added” proposition. A strategy that, when it is well articulated and clearly charted, ensures that all your marketing and promotional materials are on target to your audience, have a consistent look and feel appropriate to your brand, and have the correct tone and tenor to communicate your unique selling proposition. If these elements are in place then all the oars of your marketing boat will be in concert, pulling your marketing efforts in the right direction.

The first step in developing a comprehensive marketing communications plan is to write out and clearly articulate what products and/or services your company is selling, to whom, why and what differentiates you from your competition.

Having a firm grasp on these concepts is a requirement to creating a strategy that will elevate your marketing effort to the next level. Capitalizing on this strategy what successful marketing is all about.

With so much competition and an uncertain economy, raising the visibility of your brand above the clutter is key to growing your business. In a constantly changing business environment, measuring results and charting successes and failures of your marketing efforts will show you how to adjust and react to this changing environment. Being armed with measured results and being flexible, you can reinforce the winning efforts and rethink or abandon ineffective and under performing ones. Go with the winners!

Periodic reevaluation of your entire marketing effort will enable you to stay on top of the changing business environment with an active rather than reactive approach. It is far better to be setting the pace rather than chasing your competition. By constantly monitoring and assessing the results of your program and then making adjustments as appropriate with updated and fresh ideas and images, programs and initiatives, you can make sure your company puts its best foot forward with customers and prospects.

Often overlooked and just as important as your customers and prospects, your staff and employees must understand your brand, internalize and deliver on your unique selling proposition. Without buy-in from your staff, you will not have a level of delivery on your value added proposition to keep true to your brand and keep you competitive in the market place.

How much should you be spending towards your marketing efforts. You should consider committing 2%-7% of your gross sales towards your marketing efforts. If this seems like a lot of money, remember this is an investment that will keep the orders and sales coming and keep you profitable.

Finally, get some professional help.

Professionally prepared ad copy, an excellent website, or a great brochure all require the expertise of professionals. While you or your staff may be able to create some of these materials, truly professional marketing can make all the difference in how your customers and potential customers view your company.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jeff_Gellis

Develop a Branding Strategy

Developing a brand strategy can be exciting, but at the same time intimidating. Your brand image is a major part of your marketing plan, but executing it may be a tad more difficult. Building your company’s brand image and identity is a very important step and you want to do it right the first time.

Your brand strategy is something that you will want to implement and promote throughout the life of your business. Branding your image throughout your store can involve the smallest decision, such as which hangers you choose. For a retail clothing store, the hangers you choose can tell your customers if you are a high-end high quality wooden hanger boutique, or if you are a discount plastic hanger outlet. These decisions affect your business in a variety of ways, for example, suits being sold on wooden hangers consistently sell for more than the same suits on plastic or wire hangers. This just gives you one scenario of the type of thinking that should go into branding your image.

A good brand image should communicate something to your customers. The message should be clear and concise. You don’t want your image to be all over the place, but to the point. If I want to offer the best products, then I also want it to be clear that they are the best. I want courteous and professional staff. I want dressing rooms with good lighting. I want everything that you see in my store to give you the impression that you are in the highest quality store around.

Giving a vibe of a certain image helps you connect with your customers. If they feel a type of emotional connection with your store, then they are more likely to return. Connecting with them can motivate them to spend more money. They want to take that feeling that they get in your store home with them. They also will experience the emotion that you evoked every time they wear the item that they purchased from you. When that feeling wears off and they want it back, then they will want to return to the same place and find a new item to renew the feeling.

Coming up with an effective brand strategy isn’t an easy task, but it’s worth all of the time and money that you put into it. Communicating your intentions with your customers can be done through branding. Your unique branding strategy sets you apart from your competitors. Do your research and decide on a major theme that you want to promote. Research your target customer base and find out what makes them tick. Most importantly, what makes them spend money and what makes them come back for more. This could be an emotion that they feel in your store, the type of products that you offer or the deals that they get at your promotional sales. Whatever the motivation is, you need to find out and push the brand image on to everything in your store. Once you do, you’ll enjoy the identity that you create and reap the benefits for the life of your business.

About the Author: Ron Maier is the owner of The Hanger Depot, a leading provider of high quality hangers,including wooden hangers. For more information, please visit http://www.thehangerdepot.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ron_A_Maier

Create Unique Favicons for Your Website

Favicons aren’t new in the web design world, they do however add another level of professionalism to your site. It only takes a few minutes and easily extends your brand one step further. Favicons are relatively simple to make, essentially all you need is a 16×16 pixel image saved in the correct “.ico” format (more on that a little later) and then the proper code inserted in the head tag of your web pages.

To start your favicon project, first grab the image you’d like to use as your favicon and open it an image editor such as Adobe Photoshop. Keep in mind that your favicon will be small, so it’s better to choose a simple graphic rather than something like a photograph, which could end up just looking like a blob. Create a new file in RGB colorspace with the dimensions of 16 x 16 pixels. Copy your image into your new document and using your transform tool, scale your image to fit into the new 16 x 16 pixel document.

Once you’ve got your image into the new document and positioned just way you’d like, save your image using the name “favicon.” SIDENOTE: Incremental saves are crucial to not having to repeatedly recreate work that’s been lost due to a software or system crash or some other catastrophic event that would cause you to lose your work. See our previous posts on autosaves and backups.

Now, from this point there are two schools of thought. If you don’t have an image editor that can save to the .ico format, you can save your image as a .bmp (bitmap image) and then after saving, simply change the file extension from .bmp to .ico. This will work for this project, however won’t work for some uses, such as if you’re making a call in a C app and your filetype needs to be .ico, even though the file was renamed with the correct extension, the call will fail. The alternative here (and the one I prefer) is to use an image editor that will allow you to save as an .ico file. Photoshop users can download this nifty plug-in from telegraphics that will allow it to manage .ico files natively.

With our new .ico file saved, all we need to do now is upload it to the site. Using your favorite FTP client or website development tool such as Adobe Dreamweaver upload the image to your site’s root folder (usually “www” or “public_html”)

Now that the favicon is in place you’ll need to add a small snippet of code just after the </head> tag of your page:

<link rel=”shortcut icon” href=”favicon.ico”>

Pasting this code into the head of a template is a good idea. This will make sure that any new pages you create with your template will display your new favicon.

Make sure to save your changes and upload the new page to your site. You may have to clear your browser’s cache and reload your page to force your browser to reload the link to the favicon.

That’s it! Enjoy your new branding extention!

3 Booming Uses of Print to Market Your Brand

In building your business identity, it pays to invest in your print materials. They are likely to come in contact with your clients before they enter your store and will make the first impression. Outsourcing your business printing to a commercial advertising company is your best bet to getting high quality print outputs that will surely impress your customers.

Your marketing materials and advertisements are a crucial factor in building your identity or business brand. It communicates intentionally or unintentionally promises or standards your products or services are set to deliver, or connect emotionally to your customers.

When you are building your brand remember to create a unique selling point or USP that differentiates your product and service offerings from those of other businesses. Your brand gives your customer of what to expect from your business. Do this and observe these following points, for both you business and printing concerns:

1. Educate your niche market with brochures and catalog printing

a. Innovate or market your business in a way that it meets highly specialized needs your customers are willing to pay a premium price for. The niche market is often a market segment large corporation with thick layers of bureaucracy and mass production fails to address.

b. Small businesses that innovate new ways to expand on current offerings find that they have to orient their customers about their products and services. Brochures, leaflets, and other print resources are the preferred marketing materials as they can be laden with tips and information.

2. Create emotional value with outdoor advertising

a. People associate themselves with the products they use and the services they hire. The brands of these businesses often communicate a set of attributes and values that reflect the customer’s own personal beliefs. These values are often unrelated to the products and services themselves, but influence the customers’ experience with the business and thus affect their purchasing decisions.

b. Posters, billboards, and other print materials that emphasize on images that resonates their emotional content are often the choice advertisements. They market their products and services as part of a lifestyle or a subculture that your customers are already predisposed to believe in.

c. Popularly, posters or print designs communicate notions that appeal on beauty, sex, distinction, confidence, and so many other facets that can attract clients. This gives them something to aspire for or lead them to believe that such products and themselves share a common ground.

3. Build Credibility with One-to-One Marketing

a. Your business brand creates and maintains the prevailing perception about your business. This reputation is a reflection of customers experience with your business or what you intend for them to expect in your products or services.

b. Credibility and building a reputation is a result of sustaining a relationship with the customers themselves. Enhancing the customer’s experience requires special treatment and personalized service. Postcards, greeting cards, and other one-to-one direct-mail-strategy are best used to build long term relationships and build credibility.

Brand management requires a sustained advertising effort. Dominating the consumer consciousness means saturating the market with marketing materials that affect your customers perception.

Having your marketing materials custom printed with business printing services allows you to create a premium brand for your small business. It reflects the amount of professionalism you place in every aspect of your business that will win your brand customer loyalty.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Carla_San_Gaspar

Aligning Brands and Channels

People look like their dogs. I say this based on my non-scientific sample of fellow pet owners I have met while walking through Oz Park in Chicago with my own (handsome) dog, Kelsey. My informal assessment is supported by researchers at the University of California at San Diego. Dog owners, the researchers theorize, pick pooches that reflect the owner’s disposition–happy, moody, tough, etc.

What does this have to do with marketing? Well, marketers should foster the same type of match between their brands and channels as pet owners do between themselves and their dogs. If your company’s brand stands for “productivity,” that’s what your channel should deliver. If you promote your “inventiveness,” your channels should be similarly creative. If your company is known for its “high style,” your customers expect to see that cutting edge image when they meet your resellers.

While this might seem intuitive, I am amazed by how few companies take proactive steps to ensure that their channels reflect the brand image the manufacturer is trying to present. In our brand implementation work with clients, Frank Lynn & Associates uses a detailed checklist to review all of the potential “touch points” between customers and the brand. While advertising, Web sites, product literature, and other media clearly play a role, the channel is frequently the most influential brand communicator on the list.

One of our industrial clients is working hard to promote a brand image that stresses cost-cutting and efficiency (by promoting the use of its products in six-sigma manufacturing processes). The client has educated its salespeople, enlisted industry consultants, created an online knowledge base, etc. Unfortunately, most of the client’s distributors are primarily “order-takers.” The distributors’ salespeople do not know how, and are not motivated, to make a consultative, engineering sale. Having visited our client’s Web site, or hearing our client’s CEO speak, a customer would be significantly confused when they visit one of the distributors.

The situation reminds me of the (possibly apocryphal) meeting between Albert Einstein and Marilyn Monroe. Monroe gushed, “Gosh what do you say, professor, shouldn’t we marry and have a little baby together? What a baby it would be–my looks and your intelligence!” Einstein then quipped, “Yes, but dear lady, it might be the other way around.”

Fearing such a result, our industrial client is taking steps to rectify the situation.

Before we get into the steps that any manufacturer can take to align brand and channel messages, we first need a sidebar on the issue of channel power. When I bring up the issue of brand/channel alignment, many clients complain they do not have the power to compel their channel partners to behave in a certain way. Sure, if you are John Deere, Lexus, Coca-Cola, or IBM you carry some clout in the channel relationship. But, even these companies cannot command adherence to a brand strategy. And, at the other extreme, manufacturers of tertiary products, those who might represent less than 1-2 percent of their partners’ business, sometimes feel powerless.

I do not believe the situation is as problematic as some companies might believe. We have developed a significant list of tactics that can help. While each tactic might not apply to your company, or a tertiary-product company, I am convinced there is something for everyone in our list.

Before pursuing any of these tactics, companies need to make sure they have a powerful brand message. Without going into much detail here, we tell clients to think about brands using an approach we call UCC–unique, compelling, and credible.

With such a brand position in place, companies can create a strong brand/channel alignment by adopting some combination of the following tactics:

1. Channel Selection. Perhaps the most powerful tactic to deploy is making brand alignment one of the criteria you use to select channel partners in the first place. If, however, you are already stuck with channel partners that do not exactly fit the brand message, then add even a few new partners that do fit, and promote them as a model. Competitiveness and guilt are wonderful motivators to the existing partners.

2. Company-Owned Channels. While we do not generally advocate that manufacturers open up their own dealerships or distributors (especially in competition with existing channel partners), this tactic is sometimes necessary. When IBM launched the first PC, they opened up IBM Product Centers, in no small part to demonstrate to new, independent dealers what a retail facility should look like. Sony, Nike, Viacom, and other companies have opened up their own dealerships for similar reasons. Some of our clients have even opened up company-owned channels, on a temporary basis, to get across their brand message–then turned around and sold the business to an independent dealer who understood the value of the brand.

3. Activity-Based Compensation. You may already know that Frank Lynn & Associates strongly advocates activity- or functional-based compensation, in general. You can tie some portion of the channel’s discount/rebate to performing activities that relate to brand alignment, e.g., training salespeople, using your promotional materials, or any of the other tactics in this list.

4. Store-within-a-Store If you sell through a retail channel, consider the store-within-a-store concept to bring a bit of your brand directly into the retailer. Perfume companies pay their own reps to work behind the counters at department stores. HP and Microsoft teamed up to create unique display areas within retailers, where customers could gain hands-on experience with products in a variety of applications. Industrial products manufacturer, Parker Hannifin, has established several hundred ParkerStores at its distributors. Kodak has placed thousands of its photo kiosks in retail locations.

5. Point-of-Sale. If a store-within-store or even a kiosk seems a bit overwhelming, do not underestimate the power of basic point-of-sale materials. These may be small displays that surround your product, stand-alone racks, or simply hand-out materials. Regardless, they bring your message directly to the customer. They can also serve as training (see below) for channel salespeople. Make sure to coordinate with channel partners since each has its own perspective of what fits (and what does not).

6. Channel Training. Partners may not reflect your brand message due to a lack of employee skills. Or, perhaps your message never filtered down to the individual sales or technical people that “touch” the customer. You can roll out a separate course just on branding and marketing your product, or you can combine it with product training. If you are on a budget, try webinars or CD/DVDs.

7. Champions. If training does not get you far enough, consider building channel champions. These are channel employees that, for whatever reason, are, or could be, boosters of your brand. Maybe, they have had a good experience using or selling your brand. Maybe they are just really into your technology or style. Maybe they have a good relationship with your channel account manager. Whatever the reason, find these people and treat them right. Their enthusiasm for your brand can be infectious. This strategy works particularly well for manufacturers of tertiary brands. Maybe you cannot get the attention of your partner’s CEO, but the category manager or individual sales rep might care.

8. Marketing and Sales Tools. Aligning manufacturers and channel brands requires repetition. You need to communicate your brand position to and through the channel on a frequent basis. One means of accomplishing this is by providing channel partners with tools that they can use over and over. (Proposal boilerplate, partner portal with product, ordering, technical information, sales checklist, product configurator, planogram, or FAQs on your website) While these tools are not conventional brand media, each of these tools can slowly, but surely, shape the way your channel partners act and communicate with customers.

9. Account Plans. Partners often do not fully appreciate the strategic thinking behind your brand message. If so, I can guarantee that they do not appreciate the benefit of the various tactics I have described above. To help partners grasp your brand strategy, the importance of your tactical plans, and the financial impact on their business, you need to instigate an annual planning process with your partners. The plan, preferably developed by the channel’s principal or senior executive, should squarely address the issue of brand alignment. Channel principals/executives, especially in smaller firms, do not have anyone with whom they can discuss strategy. Your account manager becomes their business consultant. The plan should outline how you and the partner will achieve joint sales and profit targets. As such, it should cover all the activities that relate to brand alignment - training, promotion, advertising, customer targets, employee training, etc.

In a world of increasing commoditization, manufacturers must create and reinforce brand messages that trumpet their differentiation. Channels are arguably the most important media for communicating with customers. However, customers simply do not want to buy from manufacturers and channels that are not in agreement about fundamental premises and promises. The good news is that you have a wide variety of tools and tactics to bring channels into alignment with your brand message.

Oh, and don’t forget to take the dog out for a walk.

Bob Segal is a Principal of Frank Lynn & Associates. He oversees the firm’s industrial and technology practice groups. He has 24 years experience and is a nationally recognized author and trainer.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Bob_Segal

Building your Brand Identity

You’ve written your business plan, bought a nice identity piece, opened your storefront, maybe even placed a few ads. How else can you place your image in front of your potential customers in order make your target audience aware of your company? This concept is known as “extending the brand,” placing your company’s colors, logos, slogans, etc. within easy reach of your target audience to help burn your business’ name into their consumer minds.

One of the easiest ways to build your organization’s brand identity is to customize your documents such as reports, emails, presentation proposals and invoices with your company’s colors, logo and contact information. Additionally, highly customized reports are more likely not to end up in your customer’s trash cans. In this article, I’ll provide some helpful options for customizing your items.

Any item you send out to your customers, whether it be an invoice, newsletter or direct mail piece, should include your color scheme, logo and contact info. No communication, no matter how small, should be sent on anything other than your company letterhead and enclosed in a matching envelope. The same applies to business related faxes as well. Your fax cover sheet should include your logo and contact info. It’s easy to whip up a generic fax cover sheet in Word or to just have your fax machine do the same for you, but neither of these options do anything to extend your brand.

If you’re on a limited budget, but want to make an impact at your next presentation, consider using a clear covered binder with a high quality cover sheet that includes your logo as the front page. This is an inexpensive option for using reports and proposals to extend your brand identity. Presentation covers with a window is another inexpensive branding option if you don’t have a budget that will allow for your own custom printed presentation folders. Make sure to pick folders that are complementary to your company’s colors and make certain that your logo and important information show through the window.

Another creative choice for extending your company’s brand is foil stamping. Foil is available in dozens of metallic colors and can be imprinted on a variety of branding items. A clean stamping is a timeless classic touch to any business product, ranging from business cards to folders and giveaway items used to promote your business. The setup charges for foil stamping can vary, but once you have a foil die stamp made for your company, you can reuse it over and over again for different products.

Promotional products are a great choice for extending your identity. The trick is however, to make sure your item is something not only creative, but useful as well. It makes no sense to brand your company on an item you give to a potential customer only to have it end up in the trash. Pens are always a popular choice for branding items, you may also consider having notepads printed to further extend your brand. The possibilities are endless.

Embroidering and screen printing your logo on soft goods is a smart option as well, especially if you have a storefront with employees. Not only will wearing clothing with your logo make your staff stand out from your customers, it also puts your brand in front of them one more time.

As you can see there are numerous options for promoting your organization and done effectively, will keep your business in front of your target audience’s eyes and in their minds.

Branding - it’s not just for cows anymore

Your company logo isn’t the only thing that makes up your brand. The service that you have provided to your clients, and your reputation are part of your brand as well.

If you think of your current customer base, how many of your clients or customers were referred to you by your past clients? If you answered “None”, you’re not cutting the mustard!

One of our clients who sells outdoor barbecue and kitchen islands has done a terrific job of building his brand name. He makes sure to include his company brand in everything he does. He’s consistently involved in local charity events, as well as donating his time to give back to his community. He passes out custom made T-shirts, hats, pens, and even branded butter mints (mmmmm). People who don’t even have a backyard in which to place one of his products know about his company. You can almost guarantee that when they do purchase their new home, they’ll be headed over to pick up one of his products to place in their new backyard.

I was on the phone with a friend earlier this morning, and he was praising our company for being ahead of the times in our town by being in the branding business. We were discussing that there are still many people who aren’t quite sure what branding is. He summed it up perfectly by using the example that he gives to people when they inquire about it:

He asks them, “When I say jeans, what comes to mind?” their response? “Levis or Wrangler”. Branding in a nutshell!

Be consistent with your branding. Everything you put out should have your brand on it! This includes the employees working for you. (No, I’m not suggesting that you literally “brand” them with a hot iron.) Are they consistently giving the best service to your clients and staying on course to grow your brand?

Two free branding steps you can take today:

1. Create an email signature with your company logo and website url

2. Add your website url to your on hold music or voice mail message

Do it today - build your brand!

Joanne Pele is the Vice President of Operations at Complete Business Systems.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Joanne_Pele

Company Logo - Your Unique Brand Ambassador

Alison Hulett said, “The logo or trademark is without a doubt the ultimate ‘branding’ tool.” The logo is the backbone to the brand - this statement perfectly defines the position of your company logo and the part it plays in your visual portfolio.

The word “logo” means a name, symbol, or trademark designed for easy recognition. To better understand the place of the logo in organizational branding we should glimpse over history. The use of logos goes back to the early days of the Renaissance, around the 13th Century. Goldsmiths, masons, paper makers, and potters, were among the first trades people to use symbols - pressings into gold, chiseled symbols, watermarks on paper, and simple thumbprints on pottery. Trademarks are still used for the same reason; they were established centuries ago to recognize a particular product for recognizing a particular product. These “marks” made it easier to differentiate a quality product from the ones that were not well made. The value of the craftsmanship represented in gold, paper, stonework, pottery, etc., could be expressed through the special, distinctive mark on the product. It’s still helpful to think of a logo in those terms: your logo is your symbol-your mark-of guaranteed authenticity. A simple swoosh on a pair of athletic shoes transforms those modest sneakers into desirable, quality footwear with an unspoken guarantee of “authentic athletic performance.”

Logos are still the front door to products and services today. Uniqueness is key to the success of the identity of a business. This is of utmost importance to avoid confusion in the market place. The popularity of a logo increases through the consistency of its presentation.

A good logo provides a recognizable image portraying the quality and professionalism of a business. A professionally designed corporate logo will allow you to create your brand and effectively market your product or service. Your logo should be simple and readable. The viewer should “get it” immediately and be able to get a “sneak peek” into your brand through the mark itself. The challenge then, is to create a unique without being boring or institutional. Your logo should convey a sense of emotion and personality. Think of it as the layers of an onion. As you peel each layer-the typography, the symbols, the shapes and textures, and color palette-you learn more and more about the brand, rather more about the company behind the logo. Your logo should express the appropriate tone and voice articulated in your brand strategy. Since brand consistency ensures that consumers will easily recognize the products, bra