Posts Tagged ‘branding’

Colorchart

Have you ever consider why traffic sings use red and white colors?  Why many restaurants use Red or Orange? Why Facebook has a blue logo and theme? If yes just keep reading

Color is an important factor that greatly affects human psychology and alters peoples’ perception. Research has showed that colors can easily make people feel happy, sad and generally affect their mood and decisions.

Different colors usually provide different thoughts to people.  Consider the case of the word Accessible: when the hear the word some people think the pink color while others the Green. A great tool that can be used to map words  into different colors and see the people coloring thoughts for different words is http://www.cymbolism.com/ .

Color usage plays an important role in highlighting a company’s business model and approach. A professional color scheme used in corporate logo and other company related material can portray its vision and mission towards customers. It is important to synchronize the color scheme throughout the company documents, logo and web site in order to create a positive image among customers.  Enterprises invest largely in understanding specific business areas and needs in order to select an appropriate color scheme for their marketing campaigns.  To experiment with different color schemes you can use the http://www.colorcombos.com and  http://www.colorjack.com/ tools.

A careful study needs to be conducted both offline and online to understand this perspective before laying out the actual designs. The color scheme in logo and brochure plays an important role in targeting the customer emotional quotient and psychological system. It is important to make the color scheme as much close to the business segment and customer demands.    To do this marketing experts need to carefully decide and understand on the possible customer’s target group.  Type of product and the customers’ age, sex, profession and marital status could all play an important role in choosing an appropriate color scheme.

For instance, IBM logo has been designed in blue color to portray its business strength. Coke, the coca cola company has a red colored logo, which matches with the second color of the soft drink. This gives a clear idea that a good, attractive, crispy and unique color scheme in logo, brochure and other company documents plays a vital role in company success and attracts new customers.  History has proven that color schemes used by most brands are not static. Such corporations are continuously researching their market, strategy and model. Such changes in their strategies have also driven changes in their logo’s and color schemes used in marketing materials.  (http://www.instantshift.com/2009/01/29/20-corporate-brand-logo-evolution/) .

Each color in the logo portrays a different image in customers mind. A blue colored logo is considered as secure, responsible and trust worthy color for customers. This is a color adopted mostly by financial companies for customers. The red colored logo is considered as aggressive, energetic and attractive color, which is targeted for young customers. Green colored logo is considered as color for freshness, money, health and varies from calmness to portraying wealthy business depending on light and dark green color. Yellow colored logo is considered as one of the brightest color; this color scheme works best with product selling site. A complete picture of positive energy is portrayed with it. Due to the color of sun, it fills energy in customers. Black color is considered the color of authority, power, mystery and strength while white is consider the color of purity and safety.

Few more popular colored logo examples consists of purple colored logo which is considered as the natural color for marketing business and portrays sophistication and business sensitiveness. The pink color is best suited to display a vibrant, intense, fun filled and main color for business selling fashion and trendy clothes.

Overall, color schemes play a vital role in business marketing and branding. Color scheme should comprehend with culture, carefully designed, and tested to ensure target customers flows in the business and global boundaries are never an important consideration. Therefore, choosing the right color can definitely create a perfect picture in the mind of customers and a careful market study is needed before a particular color scheme is chosen for brochure and corporate logo design.

A great presentation on the use of Social Sites to promote you small business brand.

A very interesting presentation that was given on Google TechTalks. It discusses the importance of branding, and comments on known brands as well as things that we must be careful with when selecting a brand.

Have you recently started a company with a great product or service but you are having difficulty coming up with a name? The name of your start-up company is a major part of branding and should be chosen carefully. Branding helps increase sales and is important for promoting a company. To be more successful in your niche, it is recommended that your company name is a brand. Your brand is the identity of your entire company from products or services to logos.

A brand is a name used to identify and distinguish a specific product, service or business^.

People Need To Recognize

By having a brand name, you are making it easy for people to remember and recognize your company. Whether they are your customers or people in a different country, a brand name should be easy to recognize. When people recognize your name, they are more likely to come to you than any other company.

Brand names are what make companies more appealing and successful. Franchises and independently owned companies benefit from a brand name. Brand recognition also leads to customer loyalty. With a brand name, you are creating an identity for your company that you can use to promote and market. You will know who your target audience is and your marketing campaigns will be more targeted. In many cases brand names is what actually make people to buy  by making them feel safe with a reputable.

As described in this  post ,  brand names come in many different forms and shapes:

http://www.adslogans.co.uk/site/pages/new-slogans.php

http://www.adslogans.co.uk/site/pages/new-slogans.php

Creating  a Brand Name

The biggest brand names are unique, clever and easy to remember. The companies themselves are more successful because of the brand. To create the perfect brand name for your company, think about brands out there that pop in your head.

Be Unique: Brand names such as “Google” or “Yahoo” offer a unique identity of the company. These names are also easy to remember and will definitely go down in the history books. These names are put together by combining letters arbitrarily to create a sound. The word itself does not have a true meaning.

Be Memorable: To help people remember and associate your company with something tangible, choose words that exist in real life. The perfect examples is the company “Apple.” They use words that we already know and this makes it easy to remember.

Get to the Point: You can create a brand name that also tells your audience who you are. “Bank of America,” for example, is a brand name that offers a description of the company. Everyone knows the company is a bank.

Brand Awerness

Selecting a good brand name is not a panacea. The next most important aspect is to make people aware of your brand. The process of creating and supporting a brand is known by many as  brand management. Brand awerness is  difficult and includes a number of different activities. Some of the activities that can be followed are  advertising campaigns, banners, taking part in social activities, getting publicity in known magazines and trade shows, printing and sharing  t-shirts,pens and mugs with your brand logo, giving free products in competitions (i.e. Radio, TV).  Especially now, the Internet is sometimes the cheapest medium to fast brand awerness (i.e . supporting known blogs,  posting really good content and by having a Web site that people will want to visit,email signatures, submitting white papers and presentations).  Many corporations today invest in such brand awerness methods  before ever having their products or Web Site on the market.

Branding Slogan

Before closing this post , we need to remember that a tag line or a branding  slogan is a critical factor for success for your brand .  The slogan will be the one that will draw customers attention to your brand. The slogan should be a phrase that will  summarize the most important aspects of your brand and provide the  advantages. Remember that the slogan could be at the centre of your marketing strategy so the process of choosing one should not be neglected. Some of the known brands and their slogans are given below:

• Barclays – Fluent in Finance; Its our business to know your business
• British airways – The Way to Fly
• CITIGROUP or CITIBANK – The Citi Never Sleeps
• BLOGGER.COM – Push Button Publishing
• Ernst and Young – Quality in Everything we Do
• FIAT – Driven by Passion
• JVC – The Perfect Experience
• LEE – The jeans that built America
• Macromedia – What the web can be.
• PHILLIPS – Sense and Simplicity
• Windows XP – Do More with Less
• Standard Chartered Bank – Your Right Partner
• NYSE (New York Stock Exchange) – The world puts its stock in us
• Monster.com – Never Settle
• Microsoft – Where Do You Want to Go Today ; Your Potential Our Passion
• Apple Macintosh – Think Different.
• Nike – Just do it
• Burger King – Have it your way
• American Express – Don’t leave home without it
• Maxwell House- Good to the Last Drop
• Wheaties – Breakfast of Champions

More slogans can be found in this site.