Better Blog Branding: Your Successful Brand

How do you know when your brand is successful?

A successful brand comes in two parts:

1. Recognition
2. Feelings

While those two properties are powerful, they are also imprecise enough to be frustrating for many people.

How do you quantify feelings? How important is recognition?

Recognition can be achieved simply enough. Repeated interactions with consistency. Just like Pavlovs experiments with his hounds, there needs to be a positive pay-off with those repeated exposures.

We are back to customer experience and evoking positive feelings again. Oh-no, the touchy-feely stuff!

Think about it though, we do feel different about certain brands. Some brands just make us feel good.

Consider Apple. I would bet a good portion of their valuation is based on how their products, customer experience and brand combine to make their customers feel.

People tell me, Apple is not just a company, it’s a “state of mind”. You know, I think there might be some truth to it 🙂

I enjoy going into my local Apple store. No, not just enjoy, I look forward to it and get a “kid in a sweet shop” buzz from it! While I can’t fathom quite what it is about Macs, I know my little laptop rejuvenated my enjoyment of computers.

Are Apple products recognisable? I would say so, despite competing MP3 player brands and computer manufacturers parroting a lot of their design features. What do you think of when you think of “Apple”?

Most of us could probably recognise Coca-Cola from a corner of a piece of packaging. I could recognise a Subway by smell alone, driving past in a bus with my eyes closed.

Too many people think a brand is a logo.

(I’m looking at you London Olympic Committee, heh).

All the pieces work together to create an overall before, during and post experience.

• Design
• Materials
• Product
• Promotion
• Service
• …

When you get it right, any small part of the brand evokes the whole, and it is a pleasurable experience. Of course, when you get it wrong, the negative version is also true.

On your blog, in your company, do you put as much effort into making people feel good as you do your content, design and product?

A poor experience can’t be fixed with even the worlds best logo.

Design your image carefully, yes have a professional looking logo, make sure everything you do fits together neatly, but make sure what you actually deliver within all that great packaging delights. That is what gives your brand meaning.

When your prospects recall your brand, make sure it makes them smile. If not … you would be better not being recognised at all.

Tags: branding, marketing, blog, blogging, design, tips