11 Sep 2012
Branding, Design, Marketing, Social Media No Comments Permalink

Think different – some thoughts on the Apple brand

September 11, 2012 No Comments

As Apple prepare to launch the new iPhone 5, it seems a good time to try to re-evaluate the Apple brand and look at some of the elements that make the brand so powerful and, whatever you views on the company and its products, ultimately very successful. And as we ask the question ‘just what is it that makes Apple, so different, so appealing’ it would be interesting to hear your views of one of the world’s most intriguing brands, for most people seems to have an opinion on Apple products and their brand and marketing approach.

Open you mind.

Imagine the computer marketplace in the days before Apple. Maybe imagine if Apple made cars, or designed buildings. Try to get an idea in your mind of how they might work and how they might look.

We know that Steve Jobs, (sadly it will soon be a year since he died), was influenced by the industrial designs of Braun’s Dieter Rams, for example, but a crucial part of the Apple brand is the quality and function of the products themselves. This is a key element of the brand and brand positioning.

The Apple brand doesn’t exist in a vacuum and has evolved over the years as the products themselves have developed.

Apple may now be ‘the biggest business the world has ever seen’ valued at some $628bn (£393bn), you can get more background here, but the early mythology of the company with drop out Zen-influenced Jobs and super nerd Wozniak working out of a garage, is as essential to the brand as even today as the world’s biggest business it still positions them as the underdogs, the challengers, an underground movement that has nevertheless grown to be the biggest and the best.

Apple in the early days really did try to ‘Think different’ as they were the start of a new breed of business, a new type of tech entrepreneurs, and especially with the attention to detail in terms of product design and software nuances, were genuinely trying to build something different, something that hadn’t existed before even if they were ‘inspired’ by other products and operating systems. They were always aiming high of course.

In the early days the Apple brand was more of a social movement, the 2003 book Brands and Desires describes Apple as a religion, ‘the global cult brand of the creative set.’ The famous 1984 commercial even explicitly positioned Apple as the Orwellian underdog up against Big Brother corporations like IBM.

It was when Jobs returned to the company in the late 90’s, bringing a lot of new software and technical skills he had developed at Next, that Apple really started to Think Big and to become a worldwide player in not just personal computing but in the evolution and development of many channels of consumer technology.

Apple got bigger, but that attention to detail and that essential technology and design quality always remained. Pick up any iPad, pick up an iPhone of any vintage, or start using a MacBook Pro for any creative or production task, and you can feel that power.

That’s the technology in your hands, it’s a curved, rational, yet tangible essence but that’s also the brand you can feel through your fingertips.  The company may continue to make huge profits, but the Apple brand promises quality in its products and rarely fails to deliver on its promise through every detail and through most user experiences.

This makes Apple a technology-driven, authentic brand. It’s a brand that helps you work, create, manage, understand and live you live just that little bit better. The Apple brand has, even today, more in common with Picasso than with IBM. A brand that delivers what it promises will always be successful and will always continue to evolve and become more than just another Silicon valley technology company.

Interested to hear your thoughts on this issue but I will be publishing more thoughts on how the Apple brand is playing a part to shape the social media landscape.

07 Sep 2012
Branding, Design, Social Media, Social to the core, Transparent technology, Work No Comments Permalink

More ideas give you more power

September 7, 2012 No Comments

So how do you really do something to get your business moving? What makes the difference between doing very well thank you, and doing so well that you want to run outside and embrace everyone in the street?

The great thing is that there are a lot of very useful tools and approaches that can really help build a successful strategy for you and your business and, thankfully for us too, we have some really good skills and insights that can help you develop some new ideas and approaches.

If you know anything about marketing, and even if you don’t, you know the importance of branding. It’s not so much about having a great name and a great logo, it’s more about having an idea, an attitude, or a product that means more to your customers than someone else’s does. It’s about positing, getting the right tone-of-voice that gets your closer to your customers.

You probably know too that good design is essential. Not merely product or service design, but the kind of design that uses the right words and imagery that not only makes an impact, but really helps with sales and business growth too. A smart functional yet practical approach to design and marketing will really give your sales more power. It’ll help you touch those you want to touch and reach those that you thought may be just out of reach.

The next element that will really bring some oomph to your business is to add the power of social media to the design and branding that you have in place. With these three elements working together you should find that you’re really starting to get somewhere.

Big companies are getting behind social media big time.

‘66% of digital marketers surveyed working for companies with an annual turnover of more than £100m agreed that social media is integral to business strategy, while 67% said that social media activity was ‘integral to their marketing mix’ (research from  Econsultancy and Adobe).

Not meaningless strategy talking but figures that show there are real business benefits from social media, and that using social media as an important part of your business sales channel rather than for brand awareness is set to grow too. You can read more on this here.

At the end of the day it’s all about having great ideas that grow you business. It’s about using the power of branding, design and some effective social media tools to generate business and help you grow. It’s all about engagement.

Have the encourage and good sense to find good ideas for your own business and don’t be afraid to find good ideas and even more good sense from the partners and agencies that work with you. You’ll find it’s a very powerful way to grow.

29 Aug 2012
Branding, Design, Marketing, News, Photography, Print, Social Media, Social to the core, Work No Comments Permalink

A new approach to new products

August 29, 2012 No Comments

There’s nothing a creative designer loves more than to be asked to launch a new product. There’s never really a blank sheet of paper in design, of course, as the product itself normally predates any brief the designer gets. Yet it has been one of the pleasures in my design career to have worked with Dale Sklar, owner of Wine and Spirit International, who has often spoken to me about new products in his portfolio of niche brands even before he’s started to produce them.

The design and marketing campaigns for a new product must also flow from the brand positioning and tone-of-voice that will resonate with the end user, or consumer. The colours, the visual language you create for the new product, grow out of the benefits and unique character of the product itself, its form and function and, in the case of lifestyle drinks products, its taste and flavour.

But then of course you don’t design simply to please yourself, or even to please your client or the brand manager. Your real master is the end user and the customer who will try, test and then hopefully buy the product. Design after all has a function. If a design is beautiful but doesn’t sell then, ultimately, it’s an unsuccessful design.

Colour, typography, photography, style all play a part in the launch of a new product, and then there are the various media channels that you choose to deliver the visual styling, the design that you’ve created. And thankfully I’ve usually been closely involved in choosing and developing the means of delivery for several new brands.

For many Wine and Spirit International products we used trade advertising and promotions, film tie-in and co-branded campaigns, direct mail, viral email campaigns, sponsorship of media events such as the Popbitch summer party, concert and event sponsorship and many more approaches even further outside the more traditional routes to market. These were chosen for their extended reach, and for their value to the individual products and decided by their fit with the positioning of the brand.

However, today it’s an even more exciting time for launching and evolving products into new markets of all kinds. Social and digital media and the web give the creative designer and the brand professional another palette to work with. The opportunity is there to add more depth, meaning and dimension to a brand – to more accurately target users and consumers, on and off-line.

This means new challenges too, but like many designers I see that as another chance to show my creative and design skills and approach new projects with social media delivery at the forefront of my thoughts. And to think the Web 2.0 and social media age is only just beginning. These are exciting times.

 

 

 

28 Aug 2012
Branding, Design, News, Social Media, Work No Comments Permalink

A social business is a more profitable business

August 28, 2012 No Comments

So a friend of mine (on Twitter of course) posted this very timely and interesting link from Econsultancy:

UK retail sales directly through social media are forecast to grow to £290m by 2014 from £210m. The study, commissioned by eBay, also predicts that £3bn of retail sales will be influenced by social media by 2014. You can read the story here.

It’s the kind of story that makes you think, isn’t it? It’s interesting too that the study was commissioned by eBay, which although a worldwide online brand that everyone has heard of, yet eBay itself is not a brand that’s well known for its own social media presence, as this further piece from Econsultancy on brands making use, or otherwise, of Instagram makes clear. You can read that story too here.

The figures mentioned on the growing value of social media influenced sales, may be out of your league, and mine too come to think of it, but they do tell us quite a lot about the power of social media and just how powerful a tool it is set to become in sales and sales growth.

It’s clear too that the potential is clearly there for SMEs and smaller organizations to get on board with social media marketing, to start planning to become a more social business part of your overall business and growth strategy.

A social business is a profitable business. A business that is social to the core makes best use of limited resources and turns listening into actions, marketing into sales. Social businesses have the potential to grow because, for relatively small investment of time and capital, they are able to talk to, listen to and better understand their customers and use that socially-gained knowledge to best effect.

Start making your business social to the core and you can use the power of design and social media to get to where your business needs to be, while remaining flexible and have the ability to think and move fast in your maket.

‘Nearly half (46%) of social media users are already using social platforms while thinking about making a purchase, and 40% of users are actively deciding what to buy based on what they have seen on social media platforms, including reviews and recommendations, and this is only set to grow.’

Maybe it’s time to find out what people are saying about your brand, your business and your competitors on social media. Better still, maybe it’s time to find out what they are not saying and start saying it for yourself. With a little bit of help from us, of course.

28 Aug 2012
Branding, Design, Marketing, News, Web, Work No Comments Permalink

China still wide open for business

August 28, 2012 No Comments

Take it from me, there may be a bit of a blip in the Chinese economy – as there is in most economies around the world at the moment – but there’s still a vibrancy and a huge rush of creative business ideas in China, particularly in Shanghai and other urban growth areas.

You really need to go to China – to step off a plane at Shanghai’s Pudong airport and travel towards the centre of the city – to get a feel for what’s still happening and what’s possible in China. It’s a feeling you don’t experience in London or Paris, although the latter city has more sedate cultured, less business-driven charms.

Exciting things are still happening in China and happening fast. Business growth may be slowing but it’s slowing from a previous breakneck speed that was vertiginous and ultimately dangerous in the long run.

Now that the business climate is calmer, steadier if you will, it could prove be the best time for a long-term business investment, or to make long-lasting business connections that will take you business to the next level – and way beyond.

Crucially developments and trends in China and South East Asia are reshaping culture and trends in the West. See this from the World Future Trends Summit 2012:

‘Asian values and culture are rapidly shaping the ways of the west. Connectivity, new information media, mobility, shopping behavior and culinary habits are just a few of the trends.’

I don’t recommend even thinking about doing business in China without doing lots of research, talking to experts who are in the know and have excellent connections, and more importantly perhaps, going there in person to understand the opportunities and the challenges that you face. And when you do go you’ll also discover one of the world’s most vibrant and inspiring cultures and a people who are warm, welcoming and interested in what you have to say, as long as you have the ability to communicate with them.

Catherine Yu Gu is from Shanghai and knows the financial and consumer sectors extremely well and has many close contacts across a range of sectors. Eugene Burns has visited China several times, and worked with companies there on brand development and marketing projects and knows how much help a westerner needs to be successful and thrive in such a bustling, yet potentially extremely rewarding, environment.

It’s also good that we understand not just design and communication but Chinese design and communication too. And then of course there are the Chinese social media platforms – the equivalent of Twitter and Facebook – to investigate and explore.

So talk to us before you make any decisions and, if you’re really interested in doing business in China, get in touch soon.

14 May 2012
Design, News, Social Media, Web, Work No Comments Permalink

It’s social media so why not make it personal?

May 14, 2012 No Comments

If you’re turning your business into a social media business, or simply revamping your Twitter or other social media presence, there are plenty of tools to help you generate content.

Your ‘social media listening’ and ‘landscape analysis’ can be helped by using Google Reader, Topsy, Social Mention or lots of other tools and there are apps of all kinds to help you generate and post content from your searches.

I can’t help thinking though that if every other business in your sector is using a similar approach then lots of similar content gets generated, and even some social media experts seem to share a lot of similar types of content in their posts and have familiar sounding blogs.

It’s social media after all so why not make it a personal media too?

I recently built a sports related blog and Twitter account with many thousands of followers in a relatively short space of time by using some simple Google, NewsNow and Twitter based searches to find interesting content and media that really seemed different from other sites with a similar focus.

I found links and ideas that excited me and was quickly able to generate some social and often passionate interaction around the range of subjects covered. Things that interested me in the subject I presented in a personal way and shared them with my followers. I accentuated the human element while spending no more time as analysing lots of content searches would have done.

You could say I developed a tone of voice for my tweets and my blogs posts. A recognisable voice that stood out from the crowd.

Isn’t that what all good social businesses and successful brands aim for – a unique and recognisable tone of voice that sets your business apart from other brands and from your competition?

Of course if you get too close to your own business and your own brand you can sometimes find it hard to find the right tone. Sometimes it’s easier to talk to someone else before you discover what you really need to say and how really need to say it.

Making social media personal is one of the things Brandlogik excels at. We have our own unique tone of voice that’s part of our brand.

What’s yours?

07 May 2012
Branding, Design, Marketing, News, Social Media, Web No Comments Permalink

Welcome to our social world

May 7, 2012 No Comments

Brand engagement at every level is key for growing your business, helping to make your product or service meaningful to your users and your clients, to become part of the fabric of their business and their lives.

Brandlogik can help you achieve better brand engagement though creative thinking and great creative ideas. We’re highly experienced and creative people with a wide range of design expertise combined with a down-to-earth approach. We deliver brilliant thinking and offer value for money with a customized delivery that fits with your business and how you like to work.

We’re intuitive with a wide range of technical abilities across many sectors and channels. Our expertise is in print, advertising, social media, web and digital development and integrated marketing of all kinds, with the sole aim of improving the value and engagement of your business and your brand.