This is a short film that was directed by the French animation collective H5, François Alaux, Hervé de Crécy + Ludovic Houplain. It was presented at the Cannes Film Festival 2009. It opened the 2010 Sundance Film Festival and won a 2010 academy award under the category of animated short.

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So the question arises here how much you should pay for a logo? Answer of this question is difficult, because there are several factors behind it. Now, let’s see what are the major factors which influence the cost of your logo?

Price should not be the first consideration

Price is often considered first while going for a custom logo design. It is fine if you go for a cheap logo design. But think before how much importance a logo can have for your business. Your logo is going to be placed on the mediums like stationary, website, promotional material and so on. These marketing collaterals make your customer comes into contact with you and builds an image about your company. Therefore, spending very low amount may not be reasonable, but spending thousands of dollars also doesn’t make sense. The better option is to spend in between $100 to $500. You will possibly use your logo for at least 10 years, and if you divide cost with the number of months, it only comes out to a few dollars a month. By having these thoughts in mind it is clear that price should not be considered as the major factor among other important aspects.

Must check the Level of Service

Service level should be considered on top while selecting a logo design service. It’s usually depends on the package you select. The more you pay the more service options you will get. The service level of a company can be determine by the number of designers who will design your logo, the number of round of revisions (requests for changes), and the number of initial concepts provided at first round. In addition, money back guarantee is also an important element that should be considered if you don’t like the design or if they don’t deliver your work on time.

Design quality is one important factor

Design quality is one other major factor that determines the worth of your logo. If you are agreed on paying $1000, it means you also make sure to get the value of your money back in shape of a great design. To assure the quality of design, you should check out the design portfolio of the company, the testimonials written by the customers, and the experience and knowledge they have about logo designing.

Location of a company saves you from future consequences

Company’s location provides great deal of advantages to the business owners. If you hire any designer who is located outside your country, for example, China or India, it would nearly impossible for you to take legal action against him if you unluckily come under the case of trademark infringement. Moreover, a design company which is located in the country same as yours, it is an advantage for you because they can understand the need of the local market, and at the end you will get a logo according to your local marketplace.

Remember

considering price, hiring a logo designer, and getting the final formats – for all this you pay some amount that may be higher or lower, but besides designing, your logo is that element which give your company an identity, therefore no matter how much you pay but if you don’t get your logo according to your business and target market, all the money you spend will be wasted. Hence, spend considerable amount of time on searching a suitable logo design company before hiring one.

This is guest post from Ben Johnson of Logoinn, custom logo design service provider based in UK.

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I mentioned here the much discussed Pepsi Rebranding.

Fast Company revealed a leaked pdf that outlines the thinking behind the controversial new Pepsi logo.

If with this the designer team is trying to get excuses for their results and 5 months of working or the million dollar invoice, then they should listen to what everybody comment on this: it is a lame excuse.

Mixing gravitation in the Pepsi galaxy, energy fields, relativity of space and time, some mythical perfect proportions, some da Vinci Code and some smiley faces the document is trying, without a final conclusion, to make us stand up in ovation by the end of the reading.

Well, we will stand up…. And leave.

Download the document here.

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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.

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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.

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Band branding appears to know no bounds. The Black Crowes market rolling papers, Bon Jovi offers $1,000 signed canvas art prints and Mötley Crüe peddled Mötley Brüe, a carbonated drink. Celebration Cellars, a California winemaker, teamed up with several rockers, including Bon Jovi, Kiss, Madonna and the Rolling Stones, to issue special-edition wines that feature band logos and sell for $100 or more a bottle.

branding lucre rolling in for those who do choose to indulge, some record labels are pressuring artists to share their promotional and merchandising income as a condition of getting record contracts — so-called 360 deals.

Read full If It’s Retail, Is It Still Rock?

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1. Focus on the Customer
2. Monitor the Competition
3. Own the Brand.
4. Find & Direct Outside Vendors.
5. Create New Ideas.
6. Communicate Internally.
7. Manage a Budget.
8. Understand the ROI.
9. Set the Strategy, Plan the Attack, and Execute.

As per the 3rd point in the list Rob is saying:

The perceptions and feelings formed about an organization, its products / services, and its performance is what is known as its “brand.” The Marketing Department is responsible for creating meaningful messages through words, ideas, images, and names that deliver upon the promises / benefits an organization wishes to make with its customers. Furthermore, the Marketing Department is responsible for ensuring that messages and images are delivered consistently, by every member of the organization.

I cannot agree more with the this, with only one point to add. While it’s true that the marketing department is usually the one that gets the praise or blame for a good/bad branding I believe that both the ownership and message delivery of the branding message / image are the responsibility of the entire organization.

Read detailed list here.

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Consumers interact with brands locally every hour of every day. With expanded creativity around media from agencies, brands and media owners, these media touchpoints are expanding rapidly. How do large organizations managing a brand across different regions, markets and locations do so while ensuring flexibility across their local markets?

Once upon a branding time, local branches were free-wheeling with their marketing practices and the Bank of America logo was “wantonly” emblazoned on diverse products. When a national marketing exec saw the Bank of America logo stamped on a “piece of cake,” a memo went out advising: Local branches will no longer be allowed to “eat the brand!”

Bank of America’s solution? Centralize the development of consistent, national brand messaging and collateral and enable local markets to “attach” them to local marketing initiatives and sponsorships.

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As the people who deliver the brand promise are employees, making sure they understand and can deliver the brand to customers is vital—especially for companies within the service industry, where the relationship between employees and customers essentially is the product the company sells.

Re-branding takes time. The planning process that produces a new brand can take as long as two years. Educating employees about the new brand, and its implications on the company and their work, can also last years. That effort typically starts several weeks to several months before the new brand is unveiled to customers and continues after the official unveiling to external audiences.

The first step in getting employees on board is to get leadership on message. Once the leadership has been engaged, HR can begin to disseminate the new brand into lower levels of management.

The objective of the internal communications effort is to inspire employees to embrace and own the new brand. You want employees to hear first what their customers will eventually hear. The next step, training, even if it tends to be most intense in the months and weeks leading up to the external launch of the new brand, it does not necessarily end after the public unveiling.

Engaging events to commemorate a launch are often a component of internal re-branding efforts, and they usually occur immediately before the new brand is unveiled to customers and the public. When communicating about a new brand, there is no one way right for every person. So, deliver the message in as many ways as possible to reinforce the message.

The brand is about our client’s interaction with your company and your employees. It’s a small but crucial distinction. The aspect of the brand that matters most inside the company is an intangible one: how employees’ understanding of the company’s brand influences their behavior, whether they interact directly with customers or not.

Full article with details and examples, here.

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Here are six suggestions that Howard D. Hill, Ph.D., president and CEO of Associates in Education in Orangeburg is proposing to assist corporations (and smaller companies) in maintaining dominance in desired areas of operation:

1. Relate to targeted markets. Go aggressively after them and protect market interests.
2. Make periodic assessments of market conditions. Businesses must constantly mine market-related data to improve the products being promoted.
3. Study competitors to determine what promotes their successes or failures. Emulate corporate successes and minimize failures.
4. Maintain a focused commitment to customer service. Satisfied customers are assets.
5. Use technology to boost business operations: Web sites, fliers, online purchases, etc.
6. Demonstrate the use of savvy business and advertising practices, detailing how the corporation is better than its competitors. Let this be widely known!

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