• a trade mark – these are leagal properties
• a mission statement – this is a reminder
• a logo or a slogan – these are your signatures
• a product or a service – these are just the tangibles
• advertising – they deliver your messages

A brand is:

• Point of view – branding is a strategic point of view, not a select set of marketing activities
• Customer value – branding is central to creating customer value, not just sound bites and images
• Competitive advantage – branding is key tool for creating and sustaining competitive advantage
• Engineered – brand strategies must be “engineering” into the strategic planning process
• Alive – brands get their identity from meanings. Products and services are the blood of a brand. Your organizational culture and standards for action are the heartbeat.
• Logic and emotion – branding is part science and part art

Source

Related posts:

1. 7 Steps to Design Your Brand Every company has a brand whether they created it through...

Here is an example of that from Martin Lindstrom:

…branding is much more than developing a familiar consumer image.

I realized a couple of years ago, when one of my colleagues was asked by a major U.S. airline to write a standard announcement to be used by the airline’s captains, that many operational elements, as well as deliberate promotional strategies, are all integral to branding and the establishment of image and identity.

The speech was carefully composed incorporating the advice of a psychologist and a marketing expert, and the writing of one of the country’s best copywriters. The aim was to achieve an announcement that would carry the airline’s image message to the passenger, just as the company’s logo did. This event made me realize the full potential of branding: the 360 degrees that I briefly discussed last week. And 360-degree branding is everything.

Full article here.

Related posts:

1. How to Create a Logo Ideally, your company logo enhances potential customers and partners' crucial...
2. Animal Planet Logo Change You might consider me very late on this, and in...
3. Logo And Slogan – Key Elements of Brand Positioning Interesting article approaching the use of visual identity and positioning...

Web Presence

An English major wouldn’t choose an online school that featured a web site or brochure with grammatical errors and misspelled words, so if you’re interested in marketing why would you choose a school you’ve never heard of? Granted a school’s ability to advertise itself to potential students relies on the amount of money it has in its budget for marketing purposes, but at the very least a good marketing school should have some sort of web presence beyond the school’s home page.

A school that has a presence on social networking sites is also easier for you to research as you will have the ability to read more about what current students and alumni have to say about their educational experiences at the institute. A school with a good web presence will also look better on a resume as employers are more likely to have heard of the school and to know what kind of education it provides.

Success Stories

If at all possible, try to find out some information about graduates of certain online schools to see what types of careers they end up with and what kind of companies they work for. The best online marketing schools are the ones where students go on to have success in the marketing field, working with companies and brands that you have heard of. By evaluating the marketing strength of the companies where graduates from a certain school work you start to get a sense of what kind of education you might receive from that school or how well they prepare their graduates for working in an evolving field such as marketing.

Educational Needs

In order to be successful as an online marketing student you have to be completely honest about your educational goals and needs and pick the best strategy for fulfilling them. While studying online can give you the freedom to complete your degree in your spare time it also requires a great deal of self-discipline and focus. Some students may find they need online courses with more structure where virtual classes are held at specific times, while other students may prefer programs that allow them to complete coursework whenever they have the opportunity to do so.

When considering online schools you should pay close attention to how the classes are modeled and what types of educational resources are utilized. The best online schools give students a multi-media education with videos, interactive educational modules and topical discussion forums. Your education should reflect your future career so if you want to pursue a job in a specific field, such as social media marketing, choose the online school that has the best curriculum regarding social media.

Mixing Online and Offline Courses

Students already attending school for marketing may have the option of taking some of their courses online through the school they already attend or another magnet program. It’s also possible for students to take graduate level courses online while finishing up an undergraduate degree at a university, community college or business school in order to complete a master’s degree quickly. Online courses can also be used to complete additional graduation requirements, such as math, science and English courses needed for a bachelor’s degree. Find the schools that make it easy for you to transfer the credits you receive online or look for schools that offer a mix of on campus and off campus courses.

Guest post by Stella Waldorf from www.onlineschools.org.

Related posts:

1. Make Brand Advertising Work Online, the Yahoo! Way Considering the latest Forrester Research study about online advertising the...
2. Branding, Online Ad’s Goal PointRoll Inc., a leader in rich media technology and service,...
3. Online Branding Dollars MediaPost and Deutsche Bank surveyed advertising executives regarding their online...

Brands like Apple, Oprah, Harley-Davidson, Ikea and Southwest Airlines have made their competition irrelevant through brand communities they have helped nurture over the years. But why do brand communities form? And what can we learn about them?

Psychologist Jenny Lee, a brand consultant at The Cult Branding Company, explores the social and psychological motivators that fuel the development of brand communities in a compelling new white paper.

The white paper titled, “Why We Join: A Sociological and Psychological Analysis of Brand Communities,” along with an illustrative presentation can be downloaded freely here.

Here are seven steps to take in order to create a cult brand:

1. Determine how customers are emotionally connected with your brand
2. Determine what your brand symbolizes in the minds of your best customers
3. Support the community so that it reinforces psychological attraction customers have towards your brand
4. Whenever possible create a space where your customers can meet and interact with one another – either in person or online
5. Sponsor social events that reflect your brand’s mission
6. Set up conditions for a fun, playful environment where friendships can be made
7. Don’t control community. Instead participate as a co-creator

Related posts:

1. Create a Brand that Sticks Most people, when they hear the word branding, think logos...
2. Brand Value – 10 Ways To Create It Consumers love brands because they offer an extra value—that is,...

One thing that both these natures of brand have in common: ultimately they depend on the values, integrity and effectiveness of the organization that creates the brand. If the brand is a promise of a level of quality, you can’t break the promise with immunity, especially in a digitally amplified world of blogs, forums and buzz. Each of the “promise” brands I used as examples, GM, United and Microsoft, stand in danger of their promises losing all meaning with customers. A promise is only as good as the level of trust you’ve built with the recipient.

But if the brand is a religion, the culture of the organization becomes even more important. Irrational decision factors run amok: the perceived culture of the organization, how the brand label connects with who we are, the social circles it places us it, or the circles we wish it would place us in, the values the company stands for, the exclusivity of the brand. The brand relationship becomes a complex stew of beliefs and emotions. We only make this investment for brands that hold a unique position in our mindscape. We feel we have to get as much from the brand as we’re willing to give it in terms of our emotional loyalty. And if a brand doesn’t reciprocate, it is quickly downscaled from a religion to a passing fancy.

Related posts:

1. Brands As The Core of Business Brands Create Customers blog is presenting an interesting business model...

Think of your brand as a promise … a promise you make to your clients, prospects, employees, and even your vendors. But before you make that promise, be sure you never forget this fact. It is imperative that you are able to back it up. You cannot build a successful, long-term brand on unsupported claims and wishful thinking. History is littered with companies — big and small — that have promoted themselves or their products as something they would like to have lived up to but could not.

To separate you from your competition, your brand — your promise — has to differentiate you from others in the minds of your prospects. This is the reason you cannot use quality, integrity, or price when positioning yourself in your marketplace. So many companies claim to offer these particular characteristics that none of them stand out from the others. BMW has taken note of this. Although it is thought by many to be the best car made, the company has built its brand as “a driving machine.” It sells the experience. BMW knows that there are other high quality cars on the market, so a brand built on quality would be diluted and therefore, less profitable.

No related posts.

1.   Presentation (basic look/feel) – this is less a true branding exercise, than an attempt to arrive at consistent visual standards. Often, this will involve a logo of some sort, and some graphical/color standards that are designed and enforced in all production (e.g., a stylized T&D with a red and grey scheme).
2.   Message and Presentation – this includes the above, plus the addition of some sort of defining and aspirational message that truly represents the aim of the group.
3.   Identity, Message, and Presentation – this involves a more thoughtful process of seeking to articulate the value, culture, outlook, and goals of the department, now and for the future, and crystallizing this in clear summary statements and messages. In this case, an exercise of “brand-storming” precedes development of messages and presentation element, since those are the outflow of identity definition.

More here.

Related posts:

1. 9 Responsibilities of a Marketing Department Rob Engelman is putting up a list of nine core...
2. Employees Branding Guidelines The brand-developing process centers on the messages the organization sends...
3. Corporate Identity and Six Steps to Improve It In a world full of confusion and contradictory messages, effective...

The conclusion of the article tells it all: It’s time to remember that advertising needs brands more than the brands need advertising. A good product creates its own relationships.

Understanding what the consumers want and bringing solutions that will inspire them is the most powerful way to support any business strategy. Putting consumers and the product at the center of the equation is fundamental to a brand’s success. Design then becomes the message and the advertising, as it’s proof of a company’s commitment to people and to innovation.
In an emotional economy, success is judged by a profound and indelible connection with people through sensory experiences. The challenge for CEOs, CMOs, and clients the world over is to remember what’s at the soul of their brand: the credibility of a well-respected product and the passion of the culture behind it. Design is the expression of that culture and the link that will cause people to be irresistibly drawn to the brand. If your brand doesn’t connect emotionally, you will have to rely on media or advertising hype, a short-term and risky proposition.

By forgetting to focus on the way your product will be experienced, and failing to respond to people’s need to be stimulated, you fail their expectations. No amount of money can buy the media to fix a boring product, no PR message will work once you lose that trust. The best brands of all jam with their consumers to invent and imagine ideas designed for the future—ideas designed to revive the advertising impact and exponentially maximize your communication dollars.

Read full article here.

Related posts:

1. Make Brand Advertising Work Online, the Yahoo! Way Considering the latest Forrester Research study about online advertising the...
2. Branding as an Emotional Process An interesting article in KioskMarketplace on the importance of branding...
3. 10 Rules of Emotional Branding Between the old concept of brand awareness and the new...

1. Every company has a brand. The question is, “Is it working for you?” Creating a brand isn’t just for the big companies; it’s for companies of all sizes.
2. Your brand must evoke a strong emotion. Customers buy from emotion and back it up with their head.
3. Your brand isn’t a logo. It’s everything you offer, say, and do.
4.  Your brand needs constant tweaking. You have to start somewhere. So, you launch your company and brand, see what works, and you keep adjusting. What ultimately matters is what the customer thinks and feels.

Okay, I skipped the 4th point, I’ll let you (ladies) go to the original post and find it.

Related posts:

1. Branding: Five new lessons Starting from P&G and Gilette merger, and their wide experience...
2. 5 Brand Lessons For New Entrants Janice Spark in bizcommunity.com has five valuable lessons for brands...

In tests on young adults using real-time functional MRI, the logos of well-known auto and insurance companies “lit up” areas of the brain associated with warm emotions, reward and self-identity.

“Furthermore, strong brands were processed with less effort on the part of the brain,” said Dr. Christine Born, a radiologist at University Hospital, part of the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, Germany.

In contrast, less-recognized brands triggered more activity in brain regions associated with working memory and negative emotions — suggesting these products were less easy to “process” and accept.

Full article here.

Related posts:

1. Most Popular Brands With Teens Worldwide Teens are mostly influenced by the culture of brands. Once...