I had the pleasure this afternoon to interview Kye Grace, a local Vancouver Realtor……
truth be told Kye was gracious enough to be my guinea pig as I delved into the dimension of podcasting!

I hadn’t yet met Kye in person, as we’d established a two dimensional relationship through the filter of TWITTER, so as you can imagine I was curious to see how his effective online brand and personality translated in person…….is it aligned and is it authentic? By the completion of our interview I can tell you a confident YES.

The reason I asked him to join me as our first guest was because online he is a standout, a relevant voice, backed up with real action and dimension in an industry, I consider to be, filled with cardboard cutouts cut from the same old traditional marketing mold and methodology. At first glance Kye is the guy next door, with an unsuspecting, warm smile, but then you get him talking about his industry and the passion that drives him and he gets this bright, keen glint in his eyes. It’s very quickly clear that he has created his brand very deliberately, and has plans to continue be on the bleeding edge of brand marketing in this tired industry.

If you want to learn a few things about standing out with your marketing and developing a “remarkable” brand have a listen to what this local Vancouver Realtor, who is generating recognition world wide in just his first year in the business, has to say……

Podcast : Karley Cunningham, 3 Degrees West Podcast with Kye Grace a Vancouver Realtor >>

In an effort to provide images for an upcoming “Brilliant (sub) Branding - Starbucks” post I encountered an interesting situation in brand protection.

I popped into a Starbucks that I don’t frequent often, with camera in hand and asked an employee if it would be okay if I took a few shots of their Christmas campaign so I could write a blog article on the greatness of this year’s campaign. I was quite startled by the response that I received, “Um………..” long pause, “You’ll have to talk to our store manager.”

Over he came after the employee explained why I was there. I knew this was going to be more difficult than I ever thought, as he walked towards me with the puffed chest of command and ownership……..

I again explained that I was a local branding expert and I wanted to promote what a great job they had done with their campaign this year. From my perspective, it would be a no brainer to allow someone a few photos so they could offer you FREE publicity, and I’d already stated that it was a positive spin. But apparently I had crossed an invisible line that alarmed the troops and was threatening a security breach of their brand!

The manager’s response, “Oh, well, I can’t allow you take any photos. You have to call our marketing department, AND our PR department and get permission.” I just stared back at him in surprise, my brain thinking, “But I’m offering you FREE advertising…….FREE.” The manager proceeded, “Wait here, I will get the numbers for you.” Into the back of the store he ran, and out with a binder twice the size of the Oxford dictionary. It took him what seemed like forever to find the number of the new PR agency, and he wrote all the numbers I had to call if I wanted to write my blog post. And my only response was a silent, “Are you kidding me?!”

Now I completely support developing a policy on how your brand is presented, how it is managed, who is allowed to manage it, etc. However when someone offers you FREE advertising, especially when they tell you they’re a fan of your brand, product, etc, you’ll want to seriously consider just how tight the reins are on your brand!! If you make it too hard for someone to promote you or your brand, if the red tape is too thick then they may just offer up the opportunity to your competition.

So you’ve invested in your brand. Maybe you’re a new start up and you’ve just worked with a design team to complete your corporate identity and your brand platform. Perhaps you are a marketing manager and you’ve just refreshed the strategy and modernized the legacy brand that you represent. Or maybe your company has experienced a merger and it was imperative for your company to completely rebrand to achieve a new face for your company and solidify the merging cultures of your team. Regardless of your situation, you’ve now got a brand platform, an investment, that you want to protect; and like any investment you make you want the value of that investment to grow.? So now begs the question, who’s managing your brand?

Without a brand manager, or better, managers, even the best strategized and designed brand will fail. The fact is that brands are organic in nature, they are living things that need to , and will, evolve; whether or not you manage them. So, it only makes sense to assign someone on your team to be your brand champion; someone who is in charge of overseeing and directing your investment.

Here are 11 tips for your brand manager to consider in helping you make the most of your new brand:

1. Upon completion of your revised brand strategy and design make sure you have a Brand Manual
2. As painful as it is, read through the Brand Manual, even if you only do it once, you will become familiar with the important details, the small nuances that make your brand unique (these are the small, but noticeable, distinctions? that will make you stand out from your competition)
3. If your brand manual could double as a barbel in your morning weight workout, ask for a condensed “Coles Notes” version to be created at the same time the full version is developed, for quick reference. Make sure it includes a copy of your company’s culture statement
4. Provide a copy of your condensed Brand Manual to all new team members, and highlight your culture statement
5. Make sure there are multiple copies (both printed and electronic) or your Brand Manual readily available for team members and suppliers to refer to
6. Review ALL collateral for Brand Identity consistency before it gets printed or launched on your website.
7. When you switch to a new external design team provide them a copy of your Brand Manual
8. To prevent your brand from going stale be open to evolution - take small steps and document them so others know what’s happening and why
9. When selecting an external design team consider one that has expertise in multiple areas (print, web, p.o.p, etc) so that fewer hands touch your brand - creative types have a tendency to be independent want to go their own way with things, the fewer of them, the fewer you have to herd!
10. Don’t be afraid to take ownership of the brand you have been asked to manage, your boss with thank-you
11. At the end of a set term (each quarter, every 6 months, or yearly) sit down with a team, a collection all of your marketing/advertising collateral and review it? to evaluate the health of your brand

The oddest example I can give you on how a client chose the colour(s) for their brand identity was,
“Our kitchen is purple, it is a great colour, I really like it and my wife picked it.” Still to this day when I think about that conversation, my brain responds with only, “huh?”.

Choosing a colour (or colours) for a brand can be tricky, mainly because colour choice relies on the personal preference of the stakeholders. More it relies on the stakeholder’s ability to check their personal preferences at the door. It isn’t uncommon to run smack into the obstacle of colour as we work through a corporate identity design or redesign, especially when multiple stakeholders are involved in the selection. There are always differing opinions on colours and what they mean (to an individual).

Add to personal bias, there are various books on the market on colour theory; there are many studies on what shade of what colour elicits the best reaction in a certain situation (we’ve all heard that salesmen in blue pinstripped suits sell more); in certain industries certain colours mean specific things; in different cultures colours can be taboo (ie. in China a man wearing a green cap signifies that his wife has cheated on him); different shades of a colour can feel completely different.

This is all enough to make your head spin! Here is my advice on how to simplify the process.

If you are rebranding and you are at the point of colour selection for the new corporate identity/logo, then you should’ve already completed a series of fact finding and brain storming exercises with your agency that reveal the following:

• what the current perception of your company is internally
• what your clients think of your company
• what the personality of your company is currently
• what the desired perception of your company both externally and internally is moving forward
• the goals of your company moving forward
• the (revised) company vision
• the (revised) company mission
• a statement about the culture of your company

Going back to this information will give you an overall message as to the personality of who your company is aspiring to be and your brand and it’s colour pallette should support this. These are some very strong clues at to which colours are appropriate for your new corporate identity.

For example if words like “fun”, “playful”, “engaging” and “free spirited”, were to describe your company’s personality, it would be appropriate to consider bright, energetic colours.
i.e.

If on the other hand words like “responsible”, “reliable”, “trust worthy”, “traditional”, “grounded” were to come up, you have a completely different personality described, which requires a completely different feel.
ie.

Now whether or not you like these colours or not is not up for debate, nor should it be when you set out to select the colours for your brand. (And for the record, I am not suggesting you use colours that you can’t bare to live with either.) The required task is to choose colours that match/express how your brand personality (and overall messaging of your brand strategy) is articulated in your documentation in order to be effective moving forward.

So, in essence, yes, when picking colours I am asking you to check your personal preferences at the door, and look deeper into what your brand requires so that it can deliver everything you desire it to.

We should be celebrating people, this slumped economy is very positive for the advertising industry!

I am tired of hearing the media hype and doom and gloom of the current and impending financial economic crisis. Being a natural optimist, I have had to work hard to not get sucked into the drama. I am actually shocked at how little content is available online detailing the upside of this current economy, seems everyone is shuffling along to the duldrum beat of the norms.

Not me! I prefer to examine the merits of the situation we all find ourselves in and it is easy for me to stay positive, because my industry is needed and in particular, our business.

With the retail sector preparing for the holiday shopping season (their best sales quarter) and expecting light foot traffic - the store owners are needing a shift in their efforts to lure the skeptical shopper from their competitor neighbours to their establishment. Undoubtedly, the owners start looking for the marketing double punch: The “Spark” and “Spot”. Also known as advertising and sale strategies, the “Spark” is strategic placement of information to ignite a consumer reaction and the “Spot” is the chosen positioning of an item. The hot location, the must have deal, the only here benefit to the shoppers, also referred to as a great sale.

So why do I sit in my office happy that there is added pressure on the business owners with the current marketplace? Simple. Companies are now looking for experts to help them create the “Spark” and “Spot” and they are selecting companies who have proven performance results. It is not about the cost to do the work, it is about getting results, which is why they go for the pros and come to us. Think about this, now is the time for focused strategies, metric setting standards and flawless innovative creative - really, does it get much better than this?

I love the fact we are getting qualified, eager, serious and fun people referred to us to do exciting and challenging Brand reVitalizations, Creative Campaigns and Brand strategies all of which we are completely accountable for the results.

As far as I am concerned, the forecast is all sunny days from here…(even in vancouver).