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Personal Branding: 5 Profitable Reasons Why You Should Brand Yourself

By David Jackson in Branding

Have you ever tried to hammer a nail with the heel of your shoe? I did once, when I was a kid and didn’t have a hammer handy. It can be done, but I can assure you, it’s difficult – very, very difficult. So too is trying to build a business without branding yourself.

So, what exactly is personal branding?

In essence, personal branding is the process by which business people differentiate themselves by identifying and effectively articulating what makes them different or unique from their competitors – what makes them stand out from the crowd – a sort of personal USP (Unique Selling Proposition), if you will. This is especially important if you’re a service provider in a competitive field.

Why is personal branding so important?

Because if you don’t stand out from the crowd, that means you’re just like everyone else – a white jelly bean in a jar full of white jelly beans. And if you’re just like everyone else, why should customers or clients choose you over your competitors? Answer: They shouldn’t, and they probably won’t!

Using myself as a real-life example, let me illustrate the importance of personal branding, and how it can make you stand out in a crowded field.

My name, “David Jackson” is a relatively common name. To make matters worse, there are many other David Jackson’s with business websites who have been online a lot longer than I have and are far more established.

But if you type “david jackson marketing” into Google without the quotation marks, I rank at the #1 position out of nearly 3 million pages. And if you just type in the name “david jackson” without the quotation marks. I rank #4 out of over 42 million pages. That didn’t happen by accident. That happened because I was relentless in establishing my personal brand.

When I created my website 3 years ago, my #1 objective was to have people associate my name with marketing – consistently solid marketing advice and quality marketing articles. And I was relentless in pursing that objective. Mission accomplished, but I’m not resting on my laurels.

Today, I’m just as relentless in trying to hold on to my top Google ranking. The numerous published articles on my site, as well as top authority sites keeps me highly visible, as well as provide the search engine spiders with plenty of fresh, quality, relevant nourishment.

And what are the overall results of all my hard work? Well, because of my personal branding efforts, I’m so busy with my consulting business, I’m actually turning clients away. Such is the power of personal branding and relentless execution.

Following are 5 profitable reasons why you should establish your personal brand:

1. Gain Expert Status

Without branding yourself, people will not perceive you as an expert. You will simply be another carnival barker in a sea full of carnival barkers. Branding yourself will give you expert status (provided, of course, you really are an expert) – and a much bigger megaphone.

2. Credibility and Trust

With the advent of the Internet and the world-wide dominance of Google, nowadays, as a business person, you are pretty much your Google search results. Let’s face it, any responsible person considering doing business with you is going to do their due diligence and search for information about you online to see if you’re legitimate and trustworthy. And if they can’t find you, or have a hard time finding you in Google’s universe, guess who’s going to get their business?

That’s right, if your competitors are more visible than you are in the search results, the perception will be, they’re more professional and trustworthy than you are. That means they’re going to get the business you could be getting. The best way to prevent that from happening is to effectively establish your personal brand – stand out in the crowd.

3. Gain An Edge On Your Competition

Earlier, I described personal branding as “the process by which business people differentiate themselves by identifying and effectively articulating what makes them different or unique from their competitors – what makes them stand out from the crowd – sort of a personal USP (Unique Selling Proposition).”

I also said, “If you don’t stand out from the crowd, that means you’re just like everyone else – a white jelly bean in a jar full of white jelly beans. And if you’re just like everyone else, why should customers or clients choose you over your competitors?”

Well, by effectively establishing your personal brand, you automatically become a black jelly bean in a jar full of white jelly beans. You stand out!

4. Increase Your Value

Establishing your personal brand will increase your perceived value and give you the ability to charge higher fees – provided, of course, you’re good at what you do. This will automatically increase your income. And if you are really good at what you do and your clients are satisfied, they will refer you to other clients. Higher fees, satisfied clients and referrals…This personal branding thing is sounding better all the time, isn’t it?

5. Gain Confidence

As you become more and more successful because of your personal branding efforts, you will also become more confident. This confidence will be obvious to everyone who comes into contact with you, including potential clients who will be magnetically attracted to you because of your confidence.

In closing, I didn’t write this article to teach you “how” to brand yourself. I wrote it to educate you on “why” you should brand yourself. If you want to learn how to brand yourself, there are personal branding experts far more qualified than I who can teach you about personal branding. One of the absolute best is Dan Schwabel (PersonalBrandingBlog.com).

There are also some excellent books on the subject. Two of my favorites are You Are a Brand!: How Smart People Brand Themselves for Business Success by Catherine Kaputa and The 10Ks of Personal Branding: Create a Better You by Kaplan Mobray.

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David Jackson is a marketing consultant and the owner of Free-Marketing-Tips-Blog.com – Powerful, free marketing tips to help grow your business! http://free-marketing-tips-blog.com

Creative Brilliance and Logo Design – A SPN Exclusive Article

By Gayle Hawks in Branding

David Ogilvy, who’s widely considered the father of modern advertising, focused heavily on creative brilliance – the BIG IDEA (which he always wrote in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS) was of extreme importance to him. In his opinion creativity and originality were useless unless they brought results for clients with whom he did business. When presenting something in an ad, it had to be functional and relevant. “Unless your advertising is based on a BIG IDEA, it will pass like a ship in the night”, he preached over and over again.

Thankfully, his emphasis on the BIG IDEA doesn’t need to translate into complexity. Simplicity, especially in the area of logo design is something we can still adhere to while following Mr. Ogilvy’s advice. So, with that in mind, I’d like to offer a few thoughts for those of you who are just starting the process of thinking through a logo design for your new company.

There are many logos that can be highlighted as examples of accomplishing the BIG IDEA while remaining simple at the same time. There are many global companies who adhere successfully to this:

- 3M
- AT&T
- Adobe Systems
- Caterpillar (CAT)
- Citi Group
- Dell
- Electronic Arts
- Verisign
- UPS
- SnapOn

All of these companies have simple, yet incredibly effective logos that identify their companies. These companies are industry leaders and well known around the world simply through their logos. Several of these companies have created incredible revenue streams just through the marketing of their logos. Many of these companies sell apparel and other merchandise that displays their logos, which in turn generates millions of dollars in additional revenue for their companies. They are simple, yet extraordinarily successful logos.

Logo designs for some recent corporations would easily fall under the same, simplistic design parameter. Some examples would include such company logos as:

- Aflac
- GoDaddy
- Apple
- Monster Worldwide
- Google
- Yum! Brands
- Yahoo!

Several of these companies are focused solely on the Internet. Google, Yahoo!, GoDaddy, and Monster Worldwide are primarily web based companies. However, their branding and logos are universally recognized symbols for them. Yum! Brands is an internationally recognized company. Not only is their logo simple and easily recognizable, but so are the restaurants it owns: Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Long John Silver’s. Aflac’s logo is simply a combination of their name and the primary character of every advertisement…the duck. However, every time someone sees it, they immediately recall the last advertisement they saw. They say “Aflac” in their best duck voice, and they recall the type of insurance services they provide. Their logo is simple, yet exceptionally valuable to their mission as a company. Their logo is the pinnacle of creative brilliance and sums up the BIG IDEA for Aflac. In fact, every one of these logos functions the same way for each of these companies. Their logo completely fulfills the mission of their BIG IDEA.

As we mentioned earlier, most of these companies generate millions of dollars in additional revenue for their companies by simply selling items that display their logos. Think about NASCAR, the NFL, and the myriad of other places where advertising reigns supreme. These companies are all present there. They have created an additional product by simply creating a recognizable symbol for their company that people want to purchase. The consumer is interested in attaching themselves to a company and identifying with them through the usage of their logo on apparel, stickers, and additional products.

The power of exercising creative brilliance and generating the BIG IDEA for your company logo is so amazingly important. This is the reason that virtually everyone recommends seeking professional help in designing a great logo for your company or new product. There are two very poignant quotes from David Ogilvy that sum up the importance of designing your logo correctly. Ogilvy said, “It takes a BIG IDEA to attract the attention of consumers and get them to buy your product,” and “Unless your advertising contains a BIG IDEA, it will pass like a ship in the night.”

So, what’s your BIG IDEA and how are you implementing it into your logo design?

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Color Card Administrator is the parent company of PrintBusinessCards.com and several other innovative Real Estate Business Cards website, we’re eager to share with you what it is we do. Give us a call today at 858-522-9335 or email at Author@CardAdmin.com for Online Business Cards. We look forward to discussing your comments, suggestions, or hearing any ideas for future article topics you may be interested in regarding business cards design or business card management.

Four Ways SEO Consulting Helps With Online Brand Management

By Julie Ann Ross in Branding

Using SEO consulting to manage an online brand can mean the difference between success and failure for some companies. Whether and where a company is found online can often mean the loss or gains of thousands, if not millions of dollars, for the companies who are online.

These days, brand management is more than just making sure the logos have the right colors, and making sure the website is up to date. Now that search engine marketing has become a significant part of online marketing, companies are turning to outside SEO consulting agencies to help properly manage their brands, insuring their brands are found first on the search engines, and that their reputations are being protected by hiding negative search results.

Here are four ways SEO consulting can help businesses with online brand management.

1) An SEO consulting firm works closely with their clients to show them how the brand is referenced and accepted online. SEO consulting helps businesses keep up with the latest analytics, monitoring tools, and changes to search engine algorithms and can help clients see what pages are performing well in search, and which pages are failing.

By finding which keywords are being used most by customers, the SEO consulting pros can then optimize their clients’ pages so they out rank the competition and appear at the top of the search rankings.

2) An SEO consulting firm assists brands in improving rankings on the major search engines, which will help bring in more traffic to a website. More traffic means more interested customers, eventually resulting in more leads and profit to the company.

3) An SEO consulting firm provides proactive brand PR strategies to overcome negative search results. If people start bad mouthing a company online, and those negative comments begin showing up in the search engine results, this can have a detrimental impact on the company and its brands. But SEO consulting agencies can provide reverse SEO services to push those negative results off the front page and out of customers minds.

4) SEO consulting assists companies in building brand credibility, acceptance, and loyalty. This is important for the small to large organization. The businesses that are just starting out, or are expanding into new markets are able to build business quickly with the organic SEO strategies.

SEO consultants are not just masters of analytics and search engine optimization.

The best SEO consultants can also help with blog writing and social media promotion, both of which have become increasingly important in the last five years. Companies and individuals who can demonstrate their expertise are more likely to earn the business of wary customers. And these new experts are being found in any number of ways: search engines, social networking, or even article marketing. A good SEO consulting firm can guide its clients to properly use these new technologies in the best manner to reach their potential customers.

Advances in technology are allowing online brand management which includes best practices in SEO Consulting to rapidly deploy. Thanks to the new tools and continuing education on the part of the SEO consultants. Rather than a company trying to employ the staff, educate them on the different tools, and keep up with the latest technology, it is often easier to outsource to someone who already the
experience and technology needed to manage the company’s online brands.

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Rostin Ventures SEO Consulting restores reputations online, using Reverse SEO to provide proactive Online Brand Management. When an individual or company name is being searched in Google, Yahoo, Bing and an undesired page or website appears, they can push the negative page back in the search results where it will rarely, if ever be found. http://www.RostinVentures.com

Determining Brand Strategy in Online Reputation Management

By Julie Ann Ross in Branding

Online reputation management begins with proactive public relations strategy. Measurement of online brand acceptance and social media activity associated to a brand is a crucial component in determining success and value of campaign efforts. How can you monitor your efforts to know whether you’re making a difference?

Strategies for effective online brand management require a nimble structure. Online reputation management technologies evolve with the market, as emerging technologies are launched. Every day, new platforms are introducing themselves to the market, enabling deeper insight into trends associated with brand discussions and competitive strategies.

There are several social media monitoring tools that are useful in monitoring online reputation management efforts, both paid and free. To follow are three areas you should monitor, with tools for online brand measurement.

Benchmark Your Current Online Brand Position.

Monitoring of website, social media pages, and blog visits are a basic metric of every online reputation management campaign. The first steps of measurement should begin with a benchmark for number of visits, unique visitors, page views per visit, and time spent on the online brand site.

From there, you can graduate to measuring a visitor’s progress, activity associated with pages, the success of campaign components, then begin to calculate the ROI of your online marketing efforts.

Any basic, free analytics program – Google Analytics, StatCounter, even your web log files – can give you basic numbers of web visitors. However, to find deeper stats in online reputation management, you may want to consider a paid research and monitoring service that uses a full-service professional analytics package.

Consider Trends of Associated Brand Discussions.

Online brand management considers monitoring stats which answer these questions:What do people say about your brand? What is their mood, tone, and voice associated with brand discussions? Where are they talking about your brand? What demographic is listening and responding to brand discussions?

These questions are important in B2C and B2B marketing, because consumers are more likely to listen to each other than they are to react to brand advertising. They respond to family and friends first. Within social media platforms such as Linked In, Facebook and Twitter, social blog platforms of WordPress and Blogger, people are speaking about your products and services. They will tell their friends when they are happy or displeased with your brand.

Monitoring of this activity enables brand managers to pick up comments and activity associated with a brand, immediately, while activity is taking place, and respond before negative sentiment spins out of control.

Radian6 and ScoutLabs are two social media monitoring tools that monitor several different social networks, although they’re a little pricey for a small business.

Vocus is another paid tool that measures social media, as well as PR and news mentions. Working with an online brand management agency, which specializes in online reputation management within social media is beneficial. These companies handle online reputation management for several clients, therefore your company is not incurring the costs of social media monitoring tools.

Evaluate Your Competition.

Reputation management includes competitive brand monitoring. There are competitors, partners, vendors, and other people who can affect the reputation of your brand.

Monitoring their activity assists you in measuring the success of your online reputation management efforts. For example, is your biggest competitor ranked in search engine results within industry targeted categories? Are your vendors and partners talking about you in their online communication or within social media?

Determining the success in online reputation management enables brand managers and individuals to understand trends of discussions happening within social media, which are associated to the brand, and could be affecting brand value and acceptance. Evaluating competitive strategy and associated brand positions provide additional insight.

Online brand strategy today requires a fluid position, one that considers the newest technologies and emerging platforms for measurement. Brand success will be determined by current and future trends in technology of online and mobile brand management.

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Rostin Ventures restores reputations online, using Reverse SEO among other tactics to provide positive Online Reputation Management Services (ORM Services). When an individual or company name is being searched in Google, Yahoo, Bing and an undesired page or website appears, they can push the negative page back in the search results where it will rarely, if ever be found.
http://www.RostinVentures.com

Creating a Company Logo: What you Need to Know

By William Gabriel in Branding

You have decided to put up a company, good for you. You have almost everything in place – a business plan is already set up, capital and budget is set, employees are ready to work for you, and marketing strategies are already laid out. But there is only one thing lacking and that is the company logo. This is the small thing you have not really thought about until now, until you have realized how crucial it is for your business. Having the right logo will be a good representation of your business and what you are trying to sell. So how and where do you start? Here are some tips on how to create a company logo that will rock.

Do-it-yourself or Professional?

First, you have to decide if you are going to do the logo yourself or you are going to have a professional do it.
This is a relatively easy choice to make. If you have some artistic skills that you can put into good use, try doing the logo yourself. After all, there are so many computer design software that you can use. This route would enable you to save money and time. Now, if the best art you can come up with is a bunch of stick figures, then you do not have a choice but to entrust the welfare of your company logo to someone who is an expert in this field. See to it that you find a reputable and talented logo designer. To do this, you can browse online and look at the portfolios of different logo designers. It would be best to go for one with a portfolio that shows logos that you actually like.
See to it that you compare prices extensively and the package inclusions so you do not spend more than what you have to.

Search Internet for Inspiration

The online world is bustling with information. Here is where you can also get inspiration for your company logo.

Search logo websites such as Logopond.com where you can see a vast array of logo designs on different niches and business types. In the search engine, type the nature of your business, so you can see the logos of the other businesses in the same field. Remember, getting inspiration is a mile different with copying another person’s work. The latter is unacceptable and can get you in trouble. Whether you are designing the logo yourself or you have a designer to do it for you, see to it that all work to be done for your company is nothing but original.

Short and Simple

Simplicity is one key in making a professional logo. If you look at world famous logos like that of Nike, McDonalds, Apple, BMW, and so on, you would notice that they are all very simple. This is because complicated and flashy logos are more difficult to remember. Simple ones, on the other hand, stick more easily to a person’s mind. Slowly but surely, the logo will be associated with your business.

Once you’ve created the best logo for your company, you can now work on to print the HID proximity cards of the employees using Fargo or Evolis printer.

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For more tips and information about HID proximity card or Evolis printer, please visit www.safecardid.com

Brand Management – 5 Opt-in Methods

By Enzo F. Cesario in Branding

A big aid to the success of any online business is those customers paying attention to the site and its messages, including e-mail and newsletters. People who are following your progress on a regular basis are receiving more exposure to your product, and are more likely in the end to purchase the services or item you’re selling than someone who just chances across your site. Thus, one of the many metrics set by businesses is a high number of followers they can reach via such contact methods.

As is often the case however, the numbers alone don’t tell the whole story. Simply buying a list of e-mail contacts and sending them a message every three days does not count as having a large audience. That’s just spam, and the opinion of spam on the web is rather well known.

Thus there is an increasing focus on the opt-in method of list building. By means of enticements, the distributor gets interested parties to voluntarily sign up for the service. Once this has been accomplished, it can be reasonably assumed that the party is interested in continuing the service over the long term.

This means the message is more likely to be put in front of people that want to see it and are most likely to respond to it.

Of course, different strategies produce different results, and not everyone responds to the same methods. Here is a handful of opt-in methods that can be employed to begin building that list.

Method #1 – The Pop Up

This is one of the more controversial options, because it’s one of the catch phrases of the anti-advertising mentality that grows on the web. People hate pop ups, the perception says. However, research suggests that pop ups still are some of the most profitable ways to generate clicks on sites.

There are several ways to approach the pop up option that will minimize the intrusion. Some mimic a toolbar that slides in from one side of the page, for example. Others will appear for a brief period, then recede if not used. The trick is to make it interesting enough to catch the eye, but not so obtrusive as to appear irritating or forced. Do avoid bright, flashing primary colors and strings of exclamation points.

Method #2 – User-activated Pop Up

This is a different take on the pop up methodology. The idea behind a pop up is that when it appears, it catches the eye and is hard to ignore. On the other hand, they’re irritating when they interrupt something a user is reading or watching. However, if a video or article has an embedded link that asks if the visitor would like to know more, that link can be tied to a pop up. This script can then show up and since it’s tied to one of their actions, it’s less likely to get an irritated or rejecting response.

Method #3 – The Free Gift

People feel better about giving out their information for a mailing list if they feel they’ve been rewarded for it. Therefore, entice them into opting in by offering them a gift related to your service. If, for example, your brand is a publisher of ebooks, offer them one of your older titles as an incentive. If your brand specializes in small, casual web games, consider offering one such game for free, or at least a free trial. The visitor perceives an immediate benefit, and is likely to sign up as a result.

As a side note, some free gifts can take the form of contests for prizes. If you are going to go this route, make sure that the prize genuinely is winnable, is worth the winning and that you announce the winner, provided, of course, that you have their consent. Contests are increasingly seen as false options by many viewers, and the only way to circumvent this perception is to make it a genuine item that people can win, rather than a crass deception.

Method #4 – The Squeeze Page

This is a page, based on text or video, that stops the process of giving information and lets the visitor know that they should sign up in order to get the full degree of information. This makes the preceding pages they have viewed a sort of ‘teaser’ that gets them interested in the material you have to offer, followed by an invitation to continue reading in exchange for some brief contact information.

Video is an increasingly popular option for squeeze pages, because it’s so easy to engage with. You can create a short video presentation explaining the value of the e-mail list, and it will stick in the mind much more than a highlighted checklist made of text.

Method #5 – The Basic Form

The simplest methods often become classics, and why? Because they work. Many sites still use the old standby of an unobtrusive simple web form at the end of an article, with spaces for a person’s contact info provided. This has the advantage of being very simple to produce, very easy for the user to fill out, and presents a minimum of interruption compared to pop ups or squeeze pages.

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Enzo F. Cesario is an online branding specialist and co-founder of Brandsplat, a digital content agency. Brandsplat creates blogs, articles, videos and social media in the “voice” of our client’s brand. It makes sites more findable and brands more recognizable. For the free Brandcasting Report go to www.BrandSplat.com or visit our blog at wwwiBrandCasting.com.

Is There a Brand in Your Stand?

By George Torok in Branding

Watch out for the branding gurus. Beware of the branding police who focus only on images of brand. Fire the branding consultants who feel qualified to tell you what your brand should be. Ignore the branding zealots who proclaim “brand or die.”

Good, now that we have frightened off the undesirables let’s address some fundamental questions about branding and offer you some probing questions to consider. That first paragraph demonstrates the three rules of creative positioning as explained below.

Should you have a brand?

Maybe. It depends on the goals of your business. You need to ask yourself some questions. Will the brand give you the return on your investment? Will you invest the resources to claim and sustain the brand?

What is a brand?

A brand is the emotional bond that your clients have with you. Ask your best clients how they would describe you to others. Look for the common message in what they say – especially the emotion. That might be your brand.

Brand is the feeling others experience when they think about you and your product. Brand can help them think of you first – or better yet – only you. Brand can justify higher prices – or even better – make price a non-issue.

Not Branding

Branding is not about creative logos, pretty fonts and pantone colors. Fire anyone who attempts to sell you that pabulum. Those things are only images. Have you noticed that the successful brands change these images every few years?

Branding is a marketing strategy. It is only one of many marketing strategies from which you might choose.

Is branding an accident or on purpose?

Because branding is about creating emotional messages you are always branding. However, are you aware of your messages, are you consistent and are you effectively branding yourself?

You could create or claim your brand. Domino’s Pizza created their brand – “Pizza in 30 minutes or its free.” They own that brand. It’s simple, memorable and unique. Some companies look for an opening and build their business to create that brand. Some companies discover their brand by accident. Feedback from clients, remarks from the media or a competitor’s comment reveals the brand that was hidden in plain sight. In that case it is up to you to claim the brand and run with it.

Avis claimed their brand by turning a disadvantage into their brand when they launched their marketing campaign with “Avis is only Number 2 in rent-a-cars, so why go with us? We try harder.” And with cheekiness they leverage further on their “disadvantage” by adding, “The lines at our counters are shorter.” That brand has been successful for over 40 years.

How do you create your brand?

There are two ways. Like Coke, Nike and McDonald you could throw gazillions of dollars at it. Or you could use creative positioning. Look for the holes in the marketplace. Go to where your competition is not and claim that position. Take a stand like Harley Davidson, Buckley’s Cough Mixture and Nova Scotian Crystal.

Each of these companies claimed positions in the market the competition was unwilling to take. Folks either love or hate Harley Davidson. Buckley’s proudly claimed that “it tastes awful but it works” along with a money back guarantee. Nova Scotian Crystal is proudly the only Canadian crystal manufacturer and they offer an incredible one year breakage warranty. Drop your whiskey glass and they will replace it; no questions asked.

You can read the interview with Rod McCulloch, President and CEO of Nova Scotian Crystal on my “Business in Motion” blog.

Each of these companies was willing to take a position that would drive some folks away while attracting a loyal crowd of fans.

The three principles of creative positioning are best explained by UK entrepreneur BJ Cunningham, who as CEO of The Enlightened Tobacco Company sold a cigarette called “Death Cigarettes”. It was presented in a black package emblazoned with a white skull-and-crossbones logo. Just imagine how this might appeal to the rebels. Everyone except the tobacco companies knew that cigarette smoking was bad for your health. BJ did what none of the other tobacco companies were willing to do. He took a stand.

Cunningham’s three principles of creative positioning:
1. Take a polarized position.
2. Make enemies.
3. Create tension.

Branding starts with market review and self-examination. Standing alone can be scary, exhilarating and hugely profitable. It you are going to claim a powerful brand take a position away from the crowd. Stand where no one else is standing.

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George Torok is co-author of the national bestseller, “Secrets of Power Marketing: Promote Brand You!” He helps entrepreneurs gain an unfair advantage over the competition. Get your free copy of “50 Power Marketing Ideas” at www.PowerMarketing.ca. To arrange for a keynote speech or executive briefing visit www.Torok.com. To arrange a media interview call 905-335-1997.

Online Brand Management – 5 Benefits of Viral Videos

By Enzo F. Cesario in Branding

Viral video is simultaneously the most entertaining and the most infuriating element of online marketing. Let’s clear the air quickly: No one can promise you a viral video success. Ever.

Viral videos succeed because the audience likes them and spreads them on to other people. If the audience doesn’t get it, the video doesn’t go viral, and there is nothing that can guarantee the response you want.

That said, there is every reason to continue developing video content with the aim of going viral. In terms of investment-to-value ratio, viral videos remain some of the most economical efforts a brand can put out for itself. If even one video you produce hits the entertainment nerve and goes viral, you’ve done your brand a world of good. Let us consider the success of one particular viral series to see some of the benefits available from this branding tactic.

Benefit 1 – Funny and Factual

Blendtech is a company with a fairly simple business model: Sell blenders so powerful and reliable that they will destroy just about anything you put in them. The company’s big success story came with the “Will it Blend?” series for its new high-powered blender. The videos are simple – a charming man with an amiable manner puts something unexpected and expensive into the blender and turns it into its constituent elements.

In very brief, powerful videos, Blendtech ended up demonstrating both that destroying expensive electronics in a blender is entertaining and that its blenders were incredibly powerful. People’s immediate reactions were, in order, “He just blended an iPhone!” and “I want one of those blenders.”

So a good video can get the information about your product out there in a compelling, dramatic way that can’t be argued with.

Benefit 2 – Cheap, Cheap, Cheap

Viral video is incredibly cost effective. The costs of many videos are incredibly high, especially for television advertising during prime marketing hours. Just consider the sheer volume of investment that goes into Super Bowl halftime commercial extravaganzas.

On the other hand, the Blendtech commercials apparently were shot on an utterly shoestring budget: perhaps $500 for a reasonable-quality video camera, the wages for a decent cameraman, the blender the company is selling and however much the gadget of the week cost. In the case of the iPhone Blendtech demolished, say $600 depending on where they got it. Either way, the production costs of the video probably didn’t exceed a few thousand dollars, and that’s at the outside.

Benefit 3 – Free Transmission

Once you have the video up and going, and people find it entertaining, you don’t have to devote much effort to keeping it going places. If it hits that funny bone like the Blendtech video did, people will show it off repeatedly to just about everyone they can, because they want to see other people laugh and enjoy it too. Just make sure the video has a dedicated YouTube or video link that people can reference.

Benefit 4 – Specialization

Have you ever looked at most commercials? They’re rather generic, and seem to cast their nets fairly wide. This is particularly true of infomercials, which try to make the whole of humanity into bumbling incompetents unable to pack their drawers, cut their food or clean their homes without the aid of some wundergadget. The result is bland pointlessness. On the other hand, a good viral video allows you to ignore all that and focus your efforts specifically on reaching a certain audience. Take Blendtech – they wanted to go after people who wanted a good, strong blender. They built an advertisement that therefore does nothing BUT promote the strength and efficacy of their blender, and does so in a shocking, eye-catching manner.

Benefit 5 – Entertainment

As we’ve discussed, the most important element in the Blendtech campaign’s success is its entertaining quality. People tuned into the videos because they wanted to see some guy demolish technology that hundreds of others were probably still waiting in the rain for. The commercials were short, exciting, funny and evocative.

Now, there’s an associated effect. Consider the reality of a blender: Is it really that entertaining? Are you actually going to use it to demolish your priciest electronics or devour your leftover garden rake? However, even if Blendtech’s customers aren’t going to do any of these things, they’ll still think of them fondly when they use their blender to crush up some stubborn ice for a daiquiri.

By putting out a good, entertaining video that goes viral, you’re creating the implication that your brand is itself entertaining and creative. Your audience will want to see what comes next, will want to share their favorite moments with friends. Most of all, they’ll want the thing that you’re selling because it was so funny.

So, while once again we must reiterate that nothing in the world can guarantee you viral video success, there is every reason to devote part of your marketing efforts to developing entertaining, informative videos that can capture the imaginations of your target audience. All it takes is one success to get your brand out there in proper fashion.

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Enzo F. Cesario is an online branding specialist and co-founder of Brandsplat, a digital content agency. Brandsplat creates blogs, articles, videos and social media in the “voice” of our client’s brand. It makes sites more findable and brands more recognizable. For the free Brandcasting Report go to www.brandSplat.com or visit our blog at www.iBrandCasting.com.

Building Brand Identity: How Wikipedia Defines Branding Success

By Enzo F. Cesario in Branding

It is instructive and inspiring to take a look at the people who have succeeded in your field. Whether it’s an attempt to learn from their mistakes and victories or just a pause to reflect on the admirable accomplishments of another, studying the work of those who’ve set the benchmark can inspire reflection and spur us on to greater heights.

The world of branding success stories is one of the most fickle, given the rise of the web. Every day, there is more new information generated and discarded than has existed for most of human history. Trends and fads come and go with ever-increasing speed, and things considered hilarious and exciting baffle people just a few months later. Then there are successes that fundamentally change the way the world sees things. They become so ingrained that everyone wonders where they’d been the whole time.

Wikipedia

There is not enough good in the world to say about the Wiki project. Those who would criticize it for lacking accuracy and scholarly rigor have totally missed the point. Wikipedia is the spirit of what the web is meant to be. It is cooperative, self-correcting, open to interpretation, controversial and dynamic. Ever changing and yet extremely distinct, it represents the purest expression of what the web can and is meant to do. People are talking about Web 2.0, but it’s honestly already here in the form of the Wiki.

Wikipedia is a simple idea, one so straightforward that it could be imagined it shouldn’t work – an encyclopedia free of charge, open for anyone in the world to edit. It shouldn’t continue to exist, by all logic. The internet is full of trolls who will eagerly fax sheets of black paper to people they’re displeased with, over and over until the receiving machine runs out of ink and seizes up. What in the world is to stop them from vandalizing the heck out of every Wiki page they come across, a fate that many other Wikis indeed have succumbed to?

The answer is that Wiki has taken its audience seriously, appealing to its sense of pride and self-interest.

For every troll who hops onto a Wikipedia or Wikiquote article and scrawls quotes calling the moral and social behaviors of the editors into question, there is someone else who is incredibly well-informed about that page, backed up by both a number of authoritative sources and a deep pride in their work. Vandalism is steadily defeated through pride and reversion, and the sheer scale of people who want a good, quality resource.

In allowing anyone to edit, and treating those edits as matters worth discussing on cooperative terms, the Wiki project has ignited a sense of pride in people. Now they want the articles to succeed; they want to see their hard work displayed on the front page as a featured article.

Additionally, the Wiki project chose an iconic visual aesthetic for itself: White background, clean lines, plain text and simple images. Yes, anyone can edit a page as they like, but the project rewards pages that comply with its style guides and presentational standards. So whenever someone says “Wiki,” people imagine that little puzzle-globe logo, the way a page is set up and the little blue edit tabs in the corner.

Of course, one of the best ways to judge the success of a project is to judge that of its emulators. So for comparison’s sake, let us consider a relative newcomer even to the open-source editing style: TV Tropes.

TV Tropes

A trope is a rhetorical device. The damsel in distress is a trope, as is the idea of having just one bullet left in the final sequence of an action film. They aren’t exactly clichés, though they can become so. Rather, they are patterns that people have learned to recognize in conversation, argument and entertainment that form the basis of all communication.

TV Tropes is a website based on two ideas: First, tropes are awesome things that deserve discussion, admiration and study, and second, everyone has something to contribute. The site does not use the Wiki format, but does have an open policy on allowing people to comment and post about the tropes they find interesting.

Pages on the TV Tropes site range from those discussing a specific trope to those showing a film or book and listing the tropes present in it. All are freely editable.

The success of the TV Tropes project may not be measurable monetarily like Wikipedia’s or other more commercial ventures. However, the project has become intensely popular all the same. It has the same “well, I’ll click one more link” popularity that Wikipedia had cornered for itself, and the same “I can talk about what I like here and be taken seriously” appeal as all open source projects. People reference tropes in casual conversation on message boards, and it’s creating a communal language.

That really is the key behind these two projects – brain extension. They’ve taken a good idea and brought it into the common discourse, allowing people to communicate with each other. People can discuss differing myths from literature, and realize they’re talking about the same trope, even if it’s not the same story. People automatically click to Wiki for information if they need some quick discussion material. For those who want to take a lesson from the Wiki style of success, remember that it emphasizes not the product, but the way the audience is using and sharing words, language and information.

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Enzo F. Cesario is an online branding specialist and co-founder of Brandsplat, a digital content agency. Brandsplat creates blogs, articles, videos and social media in the “voice” of our client’s brand. It makes sites more findable and brands more recognizable. For the free Brandcasting Report go to www.BrandSplat.com or visit our blog at www.iBrandCasting.com.

In Their Own Way: Stories of Online Branding Success

By Enzo F. Cesario in Branding

One of the most important elements of any venture is inspiration.

Humans like to have heroes or idols to look up to, people to examine and hold up as the best examples of success. It is reassuring on a very basic level to be able to point to someone and say; “They did it, so I know it can be done.”

With that in mind, consider the following web branding success stories. These are not the names that are usually thrown about, like YouTube or Facebook. Rather, these are people who have developed a niche success in their own field, and have become world-famous brands in their own way, and their own time.

Zero Punctuation: The Saga of Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw

Few stories are as appealing as those of overnight success, and the story of Yahtzee seems to fit the bill. Around late 2007, he posted a pair of video animations to YouTube. In these videos little paper-cutout-style characters enacted humorous scenes against a yellow backdrop while Yahtzee reviewed video games in a slightly frantic tone of voice. Yahtzee tore into the games’ flaws with a vigor and incisive sense of humor that spoke directly to the irony-conscious gamers of today. Shortly thereafter, an online gaming magazine called The Escapist hired Yahtzee to produce the videos on a weekly basis for its site.

The result was an explosion of interest. The Escapist’s traffic jumped nearly 400 percent following the addition of Yahtzee’s series, dubbed “Zero Punctuation” because of his increasingly trademark style of rapid-fire speech with few pauses for breath. The white avatars on yellow background have become icons of the gaming world, recognizable at a glance. Major game designers such as Fable’s Peter Myoleneaux have responded directly to Yahtzee’s criticism and sent him their newest game to review as well, even knowing that he is likely to treat this second effort even more brutally than the first.

Of course, Yahtzee actually isn’t an example of overnight success at all. He’s been a gamer for more than 20 years, having played others’ games and designed his own as well. He’s developed his signature style with dedicated hard work, and the hard work ultimately was rewarded when the right audience was found. The lesson here is both that brands must be ready to jump on the opportunities of the moment, but also be prepared to put in a great deal of work and effort for their brand to succeed.

Yahtzee currently writes for the Escapist, as well as his own website, Fully Ramblomatic, and the Australian magazine Hyper. He resides in Australia, and still produces the weekly ZP show.

Nostalgia Critic: Remembering It So You Don’t Have To

Continuing the theme of YouTube branding success, another tale is that of Doug Walker, popularly known as That Guy With the Glasses. A few years ago, Doug began uploading a series of short videos to YouTube touching on things he found entertaining. His 5-second-movies feature was a deconstructionist look at popular films by editing them down to brief impressions, while the Nostalgia Critic was a persona he used to examine popular films and series his generation grew up with. From there, everything exploded into a story of epic web success.

He left YouTube to found his own site with several friends who had lost their retail day jobs. They expanded on the content of the site, adding new characters, additional writers and performers. A team of fellow critics and reviewers became Team TGWTG, video gamers come to the site under the title of Blistered Thumbs, and the site has gradually prospered (if by gradually of course one means that from 2008 to 2009 the site began making $10,000 per month).

Perhaps the biggest element of this brand’s success is Walker’s rivalry with fellow nostalgic reviewer, the Angry Video Game Nerd. AVGN is a series reviewing nostalgic cartridge video games, and the similarities between the two series sparked comments among the series’ fans that one or the other might be stealing the concept. Taking this idea to a perhaps bizarre new level, the Critic and the Nerd launched a series of videos detailing their epic battles and struggles to claim the title of “winner,” and both their viewership’s prospered from it.

Walker’s story is an inspiring one because of the sheer scale of his success. In less than a decade he has gone to making sums of money one would normally associate with a major business venture. Yet at the core of it, he and his friends make short videos about old movies from the 1980s, in their homes, with software and equipment you can pick up at any computer store. Yet now there are people going to comic and movie conventions costumed as the Critic or his cronies, and the various pop culture lines he references have become a new canon of online in jokes.

Closing Thoughts

These two stories are not the rule. There are many reviewers out there who haven’t achieved the level of success these people have. However, the fact that they have achieved it at all shows that it can be done, and both stories share the same important lesson for anyone interested in branding: Do what you love.

Neither of these two Internet heroes has branding as his first priority. Instead, the priority is on doing something they love, and always doing it well. Walker’s first Nostalgia Critic video is of noticeably poorer quality than his newest videos, and Zero Punctuation has grown more eclectic and daring in its animations as time has gone on. These two have a passion for what they want to see done, and the brand has grown as a result of the effort and love they have put into it. If you take no other lesson from their story, take this one: do something you love, and do it well.

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Enzo F. Cesario is an online branding specialist and co-founder of Brandsplat, a digital content agency. Brandsplat creates blogs, articles, videos and social media in the “voice” of our client’s brand. It makes sites more findable and brands more recognizable. For the free Brandcasting Report go to www.BrandSplat.com or visit our blog at www.iBrandCasting.com.

© Copyright 2012 All rights reserved. Jayde Online, Inc.

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