When an entrepreneur brands his or her product, business or concept, inadvertently the entrepreneur himself often becomes associated with that brand.

Basically the decision is to determine which company relies most on you personally for its brand recognition.

When it comes to building a powerhouse brand, the little guys have a huge advantage over the big guys because small businesses and entrepreneurs do not suffer from organizational inertia and usually the vision of the founder of the company is closely linked to the essence of the brand and embedded in the organization.

Entrepreneurs have a chance to build entire businesses based on a powerful brand promise while large companies tend to drift away from the original promise that made them compelling and then they foolishly spend millions to try to “re-brand” which may or may not be possible.

Entrepreneurial branding is about being: hands-on, holistic (looking at and trying various branding techniques, not just one), taking responsibility for lots of things, being really open-minded, understanding the overall business you work in as well as affiliated businesses, and so on. Of course, most branding jobs would require these skills / attitudes / approaches, and, yet, certainly, the bigger the organization you work in, the more you have to work on other things i.e being an expert in your job role, focusing on thorough success in your job role, and so on … the focus being on ‘your job role’ in the sense that the scope to do other things isn’t so great (compared to a smaller organization) and you will be judged more on ‘your job role’ than what you do outside it.

In today’s world where advertising is becoming so much more complicated, where digital and traditional advertising are merging, and so on, it is even more important than ever for people looking for jobs in this industry to have this entrepreneurial branding approach.

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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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So yes, this really is all about ego. We don’t like to admit that we need our ego stroked, that we want to be recognized and feel important. But hey, it’s a fact AND it’s a huge motivator for purchase (like L’Oreal’s tag line: “It’s more expensive, but I’m worth it.”) Obviously all fashion, cosmetics, car companies, etc. are playing on Esteem, but as you can see from the above examples, any company can meet this need.

Re-Branding…

When re-branding ourselves – our organizations – we are making a declaration to be free of attachment to the comfort of the known. Free of the comfort of the predictable. We as organisms – be we individuals or organizations – seek stasis; predictability; comfort. The great trap of the human condition is a striving for comfort. As managers we organize work processes to gain as much predictability as possible. We become slaves to our forecasts and plans.

Coloring Your Brand Perception

Brands are defined by the perceptions and experiences that someone has with a company product or service, what it looks like, what it sounds like and how it acts. One element in shaping an image is the use of color. Although color alone does not establish your brand it is one element that effects consumers emotions, behaviors and perceptions in relation to your company, product or service. In designing it is important to pick the right colors for the right effect to help reinforce the brand. A good place to start is to recognize the product or service being advertised, the target market, and the desired reaction and response of the consumer.

Olympic strategy key to branding gold

How companies try to get the most from the Games is a sport all in itself. While some companies pay hundreds of millions of dollars for rights to the rings, marketers say there’s more than one way to play the sponsorship game around the Olympics.

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The tagline, ending the decades-long reign of “It’s everywhere you want to be,” is “Life takes Visa,” Lyons said. Although the tagline was used in the last couple of years in English-language communications in Latin American countries (actually Visa is using 5 different taglines for 6 different regions of the world – more here), TBWA\Chiat\Day decided to go with it and start promoting it next week during the Winter Olympics Openning ceremony.

The new brand campaign is the latest in a series of milestones marking Visa adapting its brand to its corporate evolution, with recently introduced new governance structure; new brand architecture, including a new logo and a new card design. More about the new branding campaign here: http://www.visa.com/advertising.

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Along with the logo change the famous “Intel Inside” phrase is out, and the company will now encourage consumers to “Leap Ahead“.

the new branding system simplifies and unifies the look and feel across Intel products and platforms in an effort to better communicate important characteristics and value to consumers.

says the press release on Intel’s home page.

The changes take the focus off individual chips and put it on “platforms” that the company hopes will spur the integration of Intel-based computers with digital media and networks in homes, businesses and schools. The new campaign also plays down Intel ‘s venerable Pentium brand while emphasizing its Centrino line of laptop chips and a new effort called “Viiv,” which aims to integrate PCs into home entertainment such as by recording TV shows and sending them to other devices.

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