Translator/Li (Li MBA, currently working in the marketing department of a well-known large software company. He has published personal works such as translations of international economics and has rich experience in brand management and marketing. )
The core of all business problems is how to attract customers' attention, no matter how good your product or service is. If no one knows your value, no one will buy your product. So, make some extra efforts to convey your company's brand image to the wider world and say loudly to your potential customers, "I am like this." For many companies, this means positioning their brands with a new image.
Black Dog is a hotel located in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. Its two generations of owners attach great importance to brand investment, and few peers are as successful as them. More than 20 years ago, they printed the portrait of their pet dog on the T-shirts of local residents for publicity.
Shipes Barber & Shop is a company specializing in the production of men's cosmetics, but there is no opportunistic component. "Before the product was officially launched, they specially invited an excellent visual expert to provide consultation to ensure that their brand image can be closer to the feelings of young men.
Iceberg is an office furniture manufacturer located in Glendale, Arizona. It has achieved great commercial success by changing its brand name and logo.
All the above-mentioned companies have adopted a very clever way-without much capital investment-to summon future customers through excellent visual design, and then constantly strengthen their brand impression through various ways to ensure that the brand image is unified in all aspects, from media tools to business cards to websites, without resorting to expensive advertising companies or brand consulting companies.
Brand start
Long before Oliver sweetman, Larry Paul and Mark Gilbert founded Shipes, they realized that the correct brand image was the key to success. The three partners jointly developed all-natural shower gel and soap, and also envisaged a specific customer image: a fashionable and personable young man, aged between 2/kloc-0 and 35 years old, who cares about his image very much, but does not dress too fashionably.
The first thing for three people to do is to give the company a nice name. Sweetman thinks that the company name should be "popular, short in spelling and easy to remember". After several brainstorming sessions, they quickly found the answer "Sharps". This word is easily associated with shaving, and it also means "looking sharp". Then they quickly decided on the logo of the shaving blade. In terms of packaging, they chose brown, which is a color rarely seen in consumer brands. "Brown is more masculine, warmer and more relaxed than black." Sweetman explained. Finally, they attached a real slogan "for men" to this sign. This can be seen everywhere in the company's publicity.
Shipes also needs some intangible "coolness", which will make those young people more interested. They hope that the design of product packaging will be more attractive visually and make buyers respond. Therefore, they designed a goat image for goatskin shaving cream, an astronaut image for "Mission: Control Ice Hockey" hair gel series and a Japanese geisha image for "Happy Me" series. Admittedly, the design of these images has nothing to do with shaving, but as customers keep asking for "products with goat logo", sweetman knows that his strategy has worked.
brand reengineering
Richard Gilbert and W. Howard Greene bought the office furniture department of newell Rubbermaid, but did not buy the brand itself. They all realized that their chance had come.
In the first step, they need a new brand name and logo, so that the plastic molded furniture and series of office products produced by the company can stand out in a wide variety of sales stores. Finally, their intuition tells them that the iceberg is the final choice.
Next, they need to determine what this iceberg really looks like. "We don't want it to really look like an iceberg, that would be a mistake." Gilbert said. They turned to a small design company called Design Design in Chicago. After several repetitions, Gilbert and Green chose this scheme: the black background seems to be moving forward against the blue and white icebergs. Then they asked Graphic Shop, another design company in Chicago, to plan more iceberg applications, from business cards to sales brochures and, of course, product catalogs. They also made their own brand manuals, introducing the application skills of logo in various scenarios, such as PPT proposed by the company. Above, a company spent $25,000, which is not cheap, but "compared with other companies, the money is not much." Gilbert said.
After completing the company's brand name and visual design, Gilbert and Green began to re-examine the company's promotion strategy. For example, they found that in their product brochures, office furniture is placed in the business meeting room, while the selling point of the company's products is simple and three-dimensional, which is more suitable for the factory contractor's office. "Lawyers won't buy plastic furniture!" Gilbert said. So Iceberg Company re-filmed the products and put the furniture on a heavy black background, which was closer to the taste of the target customers.
Brand stretching
Taihexin Abbas and Niels Ogos founded their own "Quality Courier" on 1995. However, with the continuous growth of the company's performance and changes in the customer industry, Abbas and Ogo have to rethink their own brand issues.
Founded five years ago, the company's annual turnover is close to $6.5438+0 million, and the local economic situation has also changed. The local medical service company is the main customer of "quality courier". At that time, the industry was constantly carrying out mergers and acquisitions. Abbas believes that "only three or four companies will remain in the end".
Abbas and Ogos realized that the initial envelope logo was not good for business development. Even this logo is not suitable for the industry where the company's existing business is located-most of the company's business is to transport blood samples and experimental samples, and some of its business is to transport test tubes and disinfection cabinets. The company's next target market is small manufacturers, and the image of envelopes is not conducive to expanding this market.
Abbas found "Dobbs Ferry" company specializing in brand planning and space design in new york. In their view, the new brand image should highlight the distribution ability of "QualityCouriers", especially its ability to cover new york, New Jersey and Connecticut in a few hours. Finally, they decided on a simplified compass image with the slogan "Fast and reliable service". Although the words are not gorgeous, the positioning is accurate.
As before, this time Abbas and Ogos made many posters with the image of compass, with the company's slogan on them, and decorated them on the company's 25 trucks. In this way, when transporting, the team looks as neat as the team, and the advertising effect is self-evident.
For a small company like "quality courier", a little investment in the brand has indeed brought huge commercial benefits.