fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Building Brand Stories
By: Rik
Tags: Brand Marketing Strategy, Brand Marketing, Brand Story Telling, Branding, Brand Strategy

Photo by Florian Klauer

Today we are becoming more and more time poor, impatient and faced with a high volume of noise from different sources than ever before. Therefore, the importance of being able to stand out and grab the attention of the busy consumer is pivotal for survival in this highly competitive, ever changing, technology driven marketplace.

For survival we need to have a unique selling proposition sharing with our audience an authentic story which they can engage on a deeper level and connect with. To succeed brands, need to unfold their unique stories which will give the customer insight into the identity of your brand. The narrative of the story must not only create a deep emotional attachment but must also clearly define the value to the customer as to why they should invest their hard earned time and money into your brand’s product or service offering over another brand who is just as hungry for the time and financial investment of that same customer.

For centuries humans have been sharing stories to shape our identity and make sense of the world around us. Today the power of storytelling is much more powerful to engage audiences and create a movement with tools such as websites, social media, content creation we can better understand the narrative through the merging of the roles of listening and the storyteller. Unfolding our understanding of stories, will help us to become better storytellers for our customer regardless of the digital channel we choose. The author of ‘Building a Storybrand’, Donald Miller, breaks down the storytelling process for a brand into 7 elements:

A Character Has a Problem And Meets a Guide Who Gives Them a Plan And Calls Them to Action That Helps Them Avoid Failure And Ends in a Success

Good stories not only create a connection, they also create familiarity, trust and engage the listener to be open to learn as they are usually easy to remember. Storytelling should focus on solving internal problems that customers face. It is way to educate, share and connect and provides us the ability to continuously learn. Here at Rik and Ralph, we wanted to build a one stop platform to help small to medium owners with digital marketing needs. We are here to listen and help you unearth the unique story behind you. In this competitive marketplace unfortunately too many brands are being lost in the noise, ensure that this is not your story, contact us today and will provide you the support to stand out and have a purpose which reaches and engages your ideal customer.

For more information on Building a Story Brand by Donald Miller click here.

Rik and Ralph is a digital agency developing digital solutions for modern Australian brands. We are a 360 agency, providing eCommerce, website development, growth marketing and branding solutions for growing brands. Get in touch with us to modernise how you go to market. For more information about Rik and Ralph click here.
Brand Manager’s Career Path
By: Pragati Mehra
Tags: Careers, Brands, Branding, Brand Strategy

At the core, assuming the role of a brand manager means striving to create an instantly recognizable brand image.

As the ‘brand’s guardian’, brand managers maintain brand integrity across all company marketing initiatives and communications. A brand manager’s responsibilities are harder than ever in a world where audiences can hijack campaigns with YouTube parody videos, products sales are jeopardised by online reviews and a disgruntled tweet from an employee can expose years of brand building.

The role of a brand manager is a heady task that requires close attention to detail and a thorough knowledge of how customers think. Brand managers must possess exceptional insight into industry trends, consumer demands, and the broader world of marketing.

To say that there is a conventional career path to become a brand manager would be a stretch, but there is a rough outline of what one could expect when climbing the career ladder.

Of course, salary estimates depend on your work experience and the particular brand or agency (and size/industry) you are working for.

As you move along in your career as a brand manager, you may start taking on more responsibilities or notice that you’ve taken on a leadership role. Using our career map, a brand manager can determine their career goals throughout the career progression.
9 Most Common Brand Strategy Problems — and How To Respond To Them
By: Günter Soydanbay
Tags: Branding Design, Marketing Strategy Tips, Branding, Marketing, Brand Strategy

4. There is price pressure.

The pandemic forced people to change their buying behaviors regarding price sensitivity and perceived quality. Today, most of us are more price-sensitive. That puts tremendous pressure on the margins of your client. At this point, however, remember the famous saying:

“Price is what you pay; value is what you get.”

Price and perceived value are not the same. The former is one of the many components of the latter. So, if your clients are struggling under price pressure, help them unlock different types of value.
PHLOTE DAILY NOTES 12.18.20
By: Aj Washington
Tags: Music Business, Music, Blockchain, Music Nfts, Brand Strategy

Feels like experimentation is coming back to music.

Since the end of the jazz age, there hasn’t been an era that wasn’t watered down by commercialization. I’ve lived in a few different pop star eras, where the pop artists “pop” due to their originality, and then many others copy their style to become pop-star derivatives. Everything starts to blend together and one sound can perpetuate for a long time. We’re seeing that now.

The industry is no longer to blame, since their power to control the airwaves is less than it’s ever been. The barriers to entry to the music industry are almost non-existent. Anyone can conceptualize, make and release music into the ether with relative ease. There are now around 55,000 songs uploaded to Spotify daily. That equates to over one hundred years of music a day, many of them derivative Travises and Drakes. When a lot of artists huddle around the same style, finding something of interest becomes a difficult job, even though that’s what many of us are looking for…something different. It’s one reason, we believe curation matters.

It’s always a great time to be different, but now is especially so since the music game has changed. The competition is now for consumer attention vs. label attention. A lower barrier to entry for the industry also lowers the bar on what’s commercially acceptable. Artist’s don’t need to generate billions of streams in order to justify an “investment” from a major label. Not even close. Artists can now survive off of 1000 true fans.

Now that consumers are in charge, perhaps more styles will emerge. Our bet is on that being the case.

Music has become a solo experience. Many of us are not gathered around the radio listening to the Top 8 @ 8 any longer. Instead, we’re consuming music on personal devices by ourselves more often than in group settings, which means we can indulge and explore personal preferences without anyone knowing.

Combined with the fact that we’re natural explorers, always in search of something new, it’s not hard to imagine a situation where “alternative artists” are the most likely to succeed. The fact is, it’s easier to be seen when you stick out. You stick out, you get discovered.

Against the tidal wave of content being uploaded to the web every day, standing out may be the only way to break out. That goes for any brand - personal, professional, or commercial. Everyone is a media business, meaning it’s imperative to grab people’s attention. And it’s imperative to communicate effectively.

Whether you’re considering a producer tag, a unique presentation for your work, or your energy is just different, it’s critical to have elements that establish your signature. Knowing what you represent and who you are, and being the best at that is the goal. That’s what made the jazz age so dope.

And we believe that’s where we’re headed back to.
Designers🎤alk #20 with Jacob Cass (Brand Designer/Strategist / Educator)| PHASE 2
By: Akash Upadhyay
Tags: Design, Branding, Logo Design, Design Thinking, Brand Strategy

Q6: What’re the stages for building a brand strategy?

The brand strategy helps define who are you, what do you do, and why it matters, as well as defines a plan to achieve the goals of the business and brand.

The stages often go in order of substance, positioning, character, and expression (see below) but it’s not always linear.
what’s in a name?
By: William Liao
Tags: Creativity, Business, Branding, Marketing, Brand Strategy

1 idea, 60 seconds, daily to spur action towards our best work, serving others, and living meaningfully and mindfully

A name is what you attribute the work to — it unifies the value that you create into a single, conveniently cite-able source.

A name enables you to say this is where the work came from. And if the work is good, it’s the answer to “where do I get more of it?”.

Before the work, a name’s meaning is limited to the sound it makes. It may be the kind with zero origin in the [insert language] dictionary, with misspellings, or with an -ily appendage that makes it just peculiar enough for someone to grant attention with the question “what else is in the name?”

But for the same reason we don’t bookmark broken links or order empty boxes with Amazon labeling (however clean and beautiful), if a name doesn’t get looked at again if it doesn’t contain or point to any work.

Google, Ikea and Kodak (formerly google, ikea and kodak) earned spaces in our mind after we learned about blazing-fast and comprehensive search, low-priced and modern furniture design, and cameras and beautiful film.

The value people come to know and trust you to deliver manifests from the work, not what you call it.

The name matters when the work matters.
5 breathtaking Brand Style Guide examples to inspire you
By: Raul Tiru
Tags: Brands, Brand Book, Branding, Style Guides, Brand Strategy

What do all great brands have in common? They are instantly recognizable. Recognizable brands don’t always need to incorporate their name in a logo. Here’s the proof:

However, a great logo isn’t enough to become instantly recognizable. Recognizability is achieved through continuous, consistent branding across all communication channels.

Consistent branding

Consistent branding leaves no room for confusion when it comes to brand communications. It means using the same logo, brand colors, fonts, imagery, and tone of voice, whether it’s a social media post or a PowerPoint presentation.

How to achieve consistency

In order to protect the brand, companies invest in a brand book. A brand book contains the correct logos, fonts, colors as well as the core values of the brand.

Brand consistency requires the entire company to fully understand and implement the brand guidelines in all internal and external communications.

The more detailed the brand book, the less room it leaves for inconsistency. You can go as far as describing the spacing between the lines of a written document.

A brand book should contain at least:

Brand mission and vision

The brand logo

Color palette

Typography

Here’s something that can help you determine other aspects of your brand personality:

How to get everyone on board

Enforcing brand guidelines isn’t easy. Make the brand book easily accessible to everyone. With easy access, people will be less likely to google your logo or use a random text font next time they are making a PowerPoint presentation.

You could also provide templates for presentations, proposals, business cards and other MarCom materials. With templates, people will be working within an approved, on-brand framework.

5 examples of awesome brand books

LinkedIn

LinkedIn has a clean and straight-forward web page that divides all components of the brand book into .zip files. You can download these files separately or you can download the complete brand book.

Red Cross

Red Cross keeps it short and sweet. Their brand poster tells you everything you need to know about Red Cross brand in a PDF.

*Santa*

Although Santa is technically not a brand, *Santa*’s brand book is a clever example of keeping things playful. This brand book is an initiative of the Quietroom.

Coca-Cola

Arguably the most recognizable brand in the world. From industrial design principles for equipment to overall proportions of the bottles, Coca-Cola’s brand book does not leave any room for misinterpretations.

MailChimp

Check out the section uniquely describing the tone of voice of the brand.

With Lytho, your brand book and templates are easily accessible on a smartphone, tablet or on a regular PC.

Secure brand consistency

Download our whitepaper and discover how a DAM safeguards your brand identity company-wide.

DOWNLOAD COMPARISON GUIDE

PREVIOUS STORY

← [Logo inspiration] Examples of Good, Bad, and Ugly Logos

NEXT STORY

Sabern Rebrands to Lytho →
Branding is inherently honest
By: Greg Salmela
Tags: Brand Equity, Branding, Brand Strategy

You have no control over what people say or think about you. But your actions, done consistently over time, can either shape or reinforce opinion.

This is similar to how one builds brand equity.

While brand strategy is the meaning you want people to associate with your brand, brand equity is how well that association is believed and retained by your market.

Building equity is no different than building a reputation. It is the outcome of action — demonstrating your values with consistency and frequency.

But in case you’re wondering, it’s hard for a brand to be dishonest. Those actions repeated consistently over time always reveal one’s true nature.

____

I founded Aegis, a relational design firm. Aegis helps create emotionally-intelligent brands and organisations.
Brand Asset Management vs. Digital Asset Management
By: Raul Tiru
Tags: Brand Management, Digital Asset, Digital Asset Management, Branding, Brand Strategy

What is the difference between BAM and DAM and how can one strengthen the other?

Digital Asset Management (DAM) and Brand Asset Management (BAM) are very similar, but there are some key differences. Find out more about the distinction and how one can be used to improve the other.

Brand Asset Management (BAM) consists of the organization, storage and retrieval of important branding information in order to communicate according to the brand guidelines and standards, therefore protecting the brand’s identity.

Digital Asset Management (DAM) is the organization, storage and retrieval of corporate digital media and marketing collateral along with their associated usage guidelines.

Sounds quite similar, doesn’t it? Although these management forms are often referred to as the same term, there is a distinction between the two.

A company’s brand is its most valuable asset. Brand value or customer based brand equity is built by continuous and consistent branding.

“Customer-based Brand Equity is defined as the differential effect of brand knowledge on consumer response to the marketing of the brand” — Keller

What are assets?

Digital or brand assets are valuable property of a company. They consist of, well, what else: digital files, digital media, images, logos, documents, videos, presentations, et cetera. The distinction between an asset and a regular file is — and there is that keyword again — value.

Digital files can be considered digital assets, but not all digital files are necessarily an asset to the company.

The assets of a brand, which are more or less tangible, play an important role for marketers who manage, control and maintain the corporate identity.

Digital Asset Management is a management form that carries the tools marketers need for consistent branding. DAM software contains the brand guidelines, a media library containing all the brand’s assets and a workflow module where all marketing publications can be monitored before they are published.

Digital Asset Management → Brand Asset Management → Brand Equity

In short: Digital Asset Management software contains, amongst others, brand assets. Therefore, Digital Asset Management complements and strengthens the Brand Asset Management. BAM adds value to a brand, which leads to high brand equity.

BAM or DAM software?

Luckily, you don’t have to choose between the two. Brand Asset Management is an integrated part of Digital Asset Management software. The main goal with DAM is the centralization and consistent use of assets, which includes brand assets.

DAM software is the librarian of your marketing department that never sleeps and never gets tired of your requests. Find out how your company can increase brand equity with Digital Asset Management:

Supercharge your marketing performance

Download the white paper and learn the impact of a DAM solution on your business.

DOWNLOAD
Rebranding an agency brand
Tags: Brand Design, Brand Development, Brand Process, Branding, Brand Strategy

Brand Design

After reflecting on the heart, mind, and soul of our business, we got started with the visual and verbal identity of &why. We focused on what would best represent our new positioning and came up with a concept that is bold, ambitious, experimental, quirky, friendly, and ready to grow with us into the future.

Trademark

While maintaining minimalism and clarity, the &why trademark has the quirky elements and hidden details that we strive to achieve in every single project. Its edges embody the progress we wish to achieve and make it feel just a little more dynamic than your usual geometric sans wordmark.

the &why trademark

Color palette

Our new brand colors are fresh and vibrant and represent the overall vibe of our company. While coral red and bright blue stand out for innovative and bold ideas, the beige, mint, and emerald serve as pauses — the serious moments where we need to tone it down a bit.

Our color system. Ready for bold gradients and elegant unpretentiousness.

Font

Our typegame is brave, modern, and playful. It doesn’t hide that bit of nerdiness that’s in us and every now and then it’s even a bit quirky because you know, that is who we are. At its core though, it’s simple and strong.
From exutec to &why
Tags: Branding, Brand Strategy

But we pulled it off! And these are three things we became aware of:

We’re a new kind of agency.

We discovered that what sets us apart as a (relatively) young agency are the things we took for granted most. People love to work with us, both as clients and employees, because of our close collaboration, our flexibility, and our ambitious attitude. Some may call us young and raw, but we figure that’s our greatest asset: because sometimes you need someone raw enough to push for bold change and the ambition to go far beyond the official boundaries. And with &why, we’re honestly and authentically displaying what we already are.

“I always wanted to have two things: flexibility of working from different places, and something like a constant challenge, kinda like the drive of always doing something new, keeping it exciting, always learning, never falling into monotony… and that whole “thing” is what we have here, I’d say!”

(Sergio)

We want to do better and lead by example.

For us, work is more than work. Work is where we can live our beliefs and where our actions are in harmony with our values. We want to do better, both internally and externally. Internally, we are currently in the process of becoming a climate-neutral agency. We promote diversity and equality, donate our retail space to nonprofits and help out with our time in social projects. Externally, we work with our partners to become value-driven forces. Forces that people can believe in because they are aspiring to be contemporary leaders in their fields. In a nutshell: We aim to see a greater purpose in every project we do and push for positive change using the innovative technological tools we have.

We strive to understand all connections.

We think there are little things more interesting than holistically understanding why and how something feels great. We aim to be aware of all the connections involved in the complex challenges — from business to creativity to technology. Thinking across barriers and outside our perceived areas of expertise doesn’t make us uncomfortable, it makes us &why (and happy, of course). Honestly, though, we can only do a really good job if all units work together closely. Only then, we can fulfill what we strive for: To connect people worldwide by creating experiences to fall in love with.
May we introduce: The Motius Brand Refresh
By: Louis Mappes
Tags: Corporate Design, Culture, Brand Identity, Branding, Brand Strategy

Over the last seven years, Motius has been continuously growing and evolving. Not only the different technologies that we work with, but also the fact that Motius is established among the fastest-growing tech start-ups in Europe, the new headquarters in Parkstadt Schwabing or the additional offices in Dubai and Stuttgart. The key to that constant change is the unique company structure and the methods that are used to ensure that Motees continuously improve the skills and tech expertise while building knowledge in a diverse and ever-changing environment.

If you have been following Motius for a while, you might have seen that quite recently, we have updated the visual appearance as well.

The Motius Identity

Ever since Motius was founded, we have been working with cutting-edge technologies to develop innovative tech products for world-renowned customers. While working on groundbreaking new technologies, we created and fostered a culture with a growth mindset, the curiosity to always challenge the status quo and discover new things and actually act on it to create impactful solutions. But did our brand represent all of this?

Why we decided to update our brand

Despite all that change and growth within the company, there was one thing that did not change over the years: Our corporate design. Mainly, because there was nothing crucially wrong with it per se: and using the “Motius Blue’’ was always a very recognizable, unique brand element that people loved.

Nevertheless, over the last years, we realized that other elements of our visual appearance slowly became outdated and were simply not representing the young, innovative company that Motius is. As a matter of fact, with more and more people joining the company and project partners working with us, we received several comments stating that the website was an understatement to our brand.

When we started working on a new website this year, we realized all the limitations of the old design soon:

No matter how much we tried to tweak our typefaces, the former typography never felt as modern, young and dynamic as we wanted to.

Our color palette was very minimalistic and left little to no room for designing high quality illustrations and elements.

It was nearly impossible to create any visuals without adding new colors, (same goes for the design language and icons).

We wanted to leverage the potential of state-of-the-art digital design especially on the website and were simply not able to do so with the old design.

So, while we started working on the website relaunch, we decided to freshen up our brand on the go.
O poderio das marcas
By: Rodrigo Lopes
Tags: Estratégia De Marca, Estratégia, Marcas E Mercado, Branding, Brand Strategy

Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more

Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore
Brand Identity and Logo
By: Vowels Branding Agency
Tags: Brand Strategy, Brand Identity Vs Logo, Branding, Logo Design

Logo and brand identity are often used interchangeably when we talk about a brand. But Brand identity is a vast umbrella under which many terms are included not just logo. Both require a different designing mindset and tools. Let’s discuss in detail to understand the concepts better.

Logo- is a part of brand identity that is a face of a brand and a tool through which the audiences connect to the brand. It is in one word, a photo of the brand or the company or the product it wants to market. The target audiences recall value comes from the logo that they see and if it catches their fancy. They don’t easily forget and the logo helps to remind them of the brand even when the TVC (Television Commercial) has failed to impress upon their memory. A Logo designing captures the icon, badge, design, the shape, size, colour, font and a tagline in some cases. For instance, one of the types of logo is using a Lettermark- like a short form for a longer brand name- HP, CNN, HBO, IBM. Second type is — Wordmark- for example, VISA, Coca-cola, Google etc that have crisp and succinct names that need not be shortened. A seemingly tiny Logo has a bigger responsibility to create first impression and pull the customers to it. Therefore, logos are best made attractive, alluring and enticing for the customers to give a lasting impact in the minds of the target audience; some logos are well etched in the memories of people forever. Such is the power and potential of a Logo.

Brand Identity- It’s a bigger and a vast term that has various components under its umbrella. Apart from the usual Logo Designing, it includes Website design, brochure design, collaterals designing, business cards designing, identity card designing so on and so forth. All these aspects put together form brand identity. A team of professionals are hired to delve into designing of all these aspects beautifully. The aim is to create a memorable and attractive whole package of brand identity that stays with the clients’ viewing experience.

Coming to a question of what is better of the two — A Logo or a Brand Identity.

Having explained both in detail, now lies a question what to pick.

It can be answered by assessing what the company wants, what goes with the company’s vision and mission. The scrutiny of these parameters will yield the answer as to what is more in alignment with the brand. Hence, this assessing process will make the decision for the brand.
Why + was a smart naming move in streaming
By: Barry W. Enderwick
Tags: OTT, Naming, Streaming, Branding, Brand Strategy

Over the last couple decades I’ve worked on a numnber of naming projects. From companies to divisions to even an open source code project for Intel. So when Apple announced the name of their streaming service as AppleTV+ I was amused at what I considered a “meh” name. Then came Disney+, EPSN+, and the announcement of Discovery+. I was sneering at the seeming laziness exhibited in naming these new services.

Except I was wrong. Like, way wrong. Here’s why.

Brand equity has real value

To see why, we need to start with the concept of brand equity. You can think of brand equity like a bank. Some efforts deposit into it, others take out of it. When a company has a solid brand position and applies it consistently over time it deposit into brand equity. In equation for it might looks something like this:

The more consistent a company is over time, the bigger the deposit into the brand bank becomes. And the amount accelerates over time.

By the time upstart mobile phone network Cingular bought AT&T Wireless in 2004, AT&T Wireless, which started life as McCaw Cellular, had been around for seventeen years. The AT&T name had been around since the late 1800s.

Cingular, with it’s catchy name and bouncy logo “Jack”, decided that they wanted to fold the AT&T Wireless brand into Cingular.

I’ve written before about when a company should change its logo before and the same holds true for names. Why? Brand equity. Take Cingular Wireless for example.

AT&T and Cingular logos

On his way out the door to become the Brand Manager for Netflix, then AT&T Wireless Brand Wrangler, Gary McMath ran the numbers for Cingular on how much it would cost to replace the brand value of AT&T Wireless — $5 billion. Yes, that is five “with a b” billion. Undaunted Cingular moved forward with the plan anyway.

Then, in 2006, just $2 billion into their rebrand, they decided to just go ahead and stick with AT&T Wireless saving $3 billion more.

Why + adds so much to a name

Which brings me to why I was wrong to think the “+” naming scheme was anything but smart. Unlike Netflix, none of the streaming services launched by content creators are actually standalone businesses. They’re all tied to other, established entities. Entities that have built up, you guessed it, brand equity.

But the reason Disney+, AppleTV+, ESPN+, and Discovery+ are so powerful is five-fold:

1/ They leverage the brand equity of the established brands

2/ They indicate “new, different, and more”

3/ Visually, it is an open-ended equation which signals that they will add even more content as time goes on.

4/ Now that enough streaming services are using that naming structure, they are a shortcut for consumers to instantly know they are streaming offerings.

5/ The + symbol is universal which means they can have their service be available anywhere in the world and not have to worry about translation or trasliteration

Imagine getting that much benefit from just slapping a plus onto an existing name. Yet that is exactly what happened and why I was absolutely wrong.
Rebranding Geo Risorse
By: Giordano Designer
Tags: Branding Strategy, Logo, Branding, Logo Design, Brand Strategy

- Restyling Logo + sviluppo del nuovo brand per Geo Risorse (dal 1984) … Sito web in costruzione.

- Logo restyling + development of the new brand for Geo Risorse (since 1984) … Website under construction.

More Info: Giordano Designer
How to optimize and position your company to fit reality
By: Daniel Diosi
Tags: Entrepreneurship, Startup, Branding, Brand Strategy

Entrepreneurial life is a journey of creation and optimization. What we create and how we optimize will determine our probability and level of success.

Having spent over 5 years in the startup world, I can confidently say that 90% of entrepreneurs who fail, they do fail because of committing very similar fundamental mistakes. The most common mistake is to keep polishing an idea that was never meant to work, because it did not fit reality.

Wishful thinking vs. reality

As Elon Musk said, wishful thinking is a human tendency. so it is a challenge for entrepreneurs to distinguish between following ideas and pursuing dreams where the probability of success is nearly zero.

You want to make reality on your side. If you refuse to listen to feedback and fail to realize the necessity of changes then reality will work against you - and you do not want that.

As an entrepreneur, you need to know what people think of your company, broken down to details.

Do you know what your target audience thinks about the benefits of your products?

Have you ever received real feedback regarding what your potential customers think about your marketing communication?

Did you ever look into if your endorsements are strong enough to influence a purchase decision?

If the answer is "no" to the above critical branding and marketing questions then you belong to the 90% of failure entrepreneurs who rely on their own judgements instead of optimizing their company to fit reality.

Do regular brand audits as reality checks - and to discover insights you did not know about

Mainstream marketing tools are pretty good in providing insights based on the easily available data, such as clicks, views, engagements and conversions.

Everyone with basic digital marketing knowledge can access and read their basic statistics and make conclusions so relying solely on these metrics will not help you to succeed. In order to get ahead of your competition, and beat nearly 90% of those who are destined to lose, is to know what they do not know.

Brand audit companies like Brand Auditor provide invaluable external audit insights based on diverse data acquired from various sources, including:

global market research companies

targeted surveys

expert auditors

External brand audit reports answer mission critical questions such as:

How your target customers see your company?

How your target customers perceive your product or service benefits?

How people experience your brand?

And many more questions that traffic and engagement reports cannot answer accurately.

Knowing the opinion of your potential customers is a major advantage, and taking regular brand audits, based on diverse information sources is probably the best way to get reliable insights.
STARTING A NEW BUSINESS? Follow These Steps!
Tags: Digital Marketing, Business Strategy, Branding, Brand Strategy

When you are trying to build a brand from scratch the first step that you need to take is to define the purpose of the same. The purpose of your brand is the very reason why your brand exists in the first place. Remember that there is more to this than the traditional business reasons.

Defining the brand vision

Your brand vision is the future that you envisage for your business. Here you would need to protect your brand into the future and paint a picture of where you see it a few years later. Also need to consider some practical dimensions like the number of offices, customers, and employees that you would have in the future.

Defining the mission of the brand

Your brand’s mission statement is one that includes both your business vision and purpose. It is a commitment that your products and services would make a positive impact on the lives of those that are connected to you.

Creating the values of the brand

Your brand values include the moral compass and the rules of engagement. It would reflect the way that you would do business. They are the behavioral commitments that you would adhere to in your daily business activities.

Positioning your brand

This depends on the people that you are serving through your products and services. A lot in this case also depends on your business differentiators as well as the competitors. When you know the finer details of your preferred clientele such as their problems it becomes easier for you to serve them.

Building a brand personality

Your brand personality needs to reflect your business audience. It should reflect the parts of your business that are appealing to them. It should also reflect the position that you are looking to gain in the market with your brand.

Setting the tone and language of the brand

The voice tone and language of your brand should be an extension of who you — the business owner — are as a person. It should also be invested heavily in your audience. These factors have always been important but in the present era, driven by content, they have become even more important.

Determining the core message

The core message of your brand would depend on your audience, personality, and position of your brand. It is by focusing on these factors that you can make it effective. However, the foundation of this core message needs to be the unique aspects of your business.

Creating a brand identity system

One of the biggest mistakes that small business owners make these days is that they think once they have created a logo they have branded their business. It is common knowledge in the business circles that branding involves more than making a logo.

Creating a brand expression

Your brand is essentially the reputation you enjoy. This is why you need to focus on interacting properly with your audience so that you can build a proper reputation for your brand. Your brand needs a consistent expression irrespective of the mode you convey it.
The Brand Book 2021
By: Danny Denhard
Tags: Marketing Strategies, 2021, Branding, Marketing, Brand Strategy

The Brand Book 2021

2020 has been a once in a lifetime experience for everyone.

2020 was a forcing function for change.

2020 impacted hundreds of thousands of businesses, some have scrapped, some have just about survived and others have thrived.

The 2020 Challenge

Companies have had to reevaluate who they are, what they offer and how they make their customers happy while working with less staff and more constraints.

Many smart brands pivoted quickly and went directly to consumer, a number of brands struggle to shift online and really hit their bottom line.

Unfortunately, some industries will feel the impacts for years to come.

Challenge For Consumers

The customer has also been forced into a series of difficult situations, reliance on online shopping, forcing generations to rely on online shopping and mobile ordering, higher wait times for deliveries and stores shut for long periods of time causing a habitual shift from even the most loyal fans.

Brands have had to step up, become more flexible, more original, more experimental, this has seen a decade of change in under a year and that led to a huge change and in many markets more competition with more aggressive pricing, with large competitors going D2C.

Brands in 2021

Brands have a difficult 2021 ahead, however, brands and companies have a great opportunity to refresh, re-energise and create deeper relationships with existing customers and mean more to potential new customers.

The Brand Book 2021

All these are important factors in why I interviewed six brand leads, I wanted to ask a series of questions to help CMO’s, brand leads, start-up execs and founders to build better brands, leading to better products and better customer experiences.

Read as a magazine on Issuu below:

The seven brand book questions posed were:

What does Brand mean to you? Why do you think Brand and Marketing is often misaligned?

Or are the two misunderstood? Which brand do you think just gets it and delivers their brand every time? What is the best piece of (brand) marketing you have seen over the last twelve months? Brand Marketing is going to get harder with more brands fighting for our hard-earned money for the much desired short term results, what are two brand tactics that will get the best cut through? What is the best piece of advice you would give to struggling brand managers getting cut through currently? What are the three actions for brands looking to gain cut-through right now?

Helping You In 2021 & Beyond

In the Brand Book 2021, you will find seven questions answered and a number of new questions to pose internally and develop out your offering, including:

Do you have Brand respect?

Do you own the cognitive brand space?

Do you regularly make it onto customers lists?

Is your brand part of your flywheel?

Is your brand high or low frequency?

Download the full list of questions as a worksheet

If you would like a PDF copy of the Brand Book 2021, happily reach out on LinkedIn.
This may be rumor or urban legend, but some have said that the New Coke debacle was a ploy to move…
By: Roxanne Henkle
Tags: Soda, History, Brand Strategy, Branding, Writing

This may be rumor or urban legend, but some have said that the New Coke debacle was a ploy to move from cane sugar to high fructose corn syrup. The high fructose corn syrup was a cheaper sweetener than cane sugar. So when the dust cleared over the change and customers demanded original Coke with was the same formula except sweetened with high fructose corn syrup. No one noticed, at the time.

An interesting article from Mother Jones

https://www.motherjones.com/food/2019/07/the-secret-history-of-why-soda-companies-switched-from-sugar-to-high-fructose-corn-syrup/
How Spanish changed my perspective on learning
By: Aidan Payan
Tags: Learning, Quarantine, Language Learning

Spanish has always been a language that fascinated me. I felt it was a bridge that could connect me to my Mexican relatives and our culture. For as long as I can remember I begged my dad to teach me but any Spanish he taught me never stuck. In middle school I took a semester of Spanish and was able to learn the basics like Hola, como estás, estoy bien, donde está el baño but I was still far from fluency. I took another 3 years of Spanish in high school where they drilled grammar structures in vocabulary into our brains. I had an overwhelming sense of defeat, I will never learn Spanish I told myself.

I suppressed my desire to learn Spanish, writing it off to be just a wild dream like becoming a millionaire or a famous actor. I told myself that only extremely smart individuals or people who live in a country for many years can learn a foreign language. Quarantine left me bored, I craved knowledge and something interesting to stimulate my brain. I started using Duolingo and Memrise to refresh my Spanish. They didn’t teach me much but they did lead me down a rabit hole of language learning videos. I remember one video in particular mentioned a key concept that I have used to throughout my journey with Spanish. Language learning is all input, babies learn languages by being completely immersed in the language for years. I decided to test this theory myself.

I began by watching kid’s shows in Spanish with Spanish subtitles and a translator on hand to translate words that were common I couldn’t figure out with context clues. This worked as a began to notice I was understanding more and more Spanish within a week but, watching kid’s shows was boring. I started watching adult shows like Paquita Salas, and Élite on Netflix. Watching shows that were actually interesting made learning easy, I didn’t have to think about learning I was just enjoying the show and letting my subconscious learn. A couple months and many Spanish TV shows, Movies, and News channels later and I can say I am much more comfortable speaking Spanish. I now watch YouTube, read books, watch movies and TV shows in Spanish and have almost complete comprehension of any content I consume.

My journey with Spanish taught me that learning anything it’s important to find a method that is enjoyable. I also discovered that you don’t have to be a Harvard graduate to learn languages, you just have to have a passion for learning and the rest will come naturally.
Lizard Squad and PoodleCorp Hacker Pleads Guilty to DDoS Attacks
By: Brian Krebs
Tags: Quarantine, Hack, Hacker, Lizard Squad, Writing

A member of the infamous Lizard Squad and PoodleCorp hacking groups pleaded guilty this week to charges of running a DDoS-for-hire platform that he and others used to launch DDoS attacks on targets across the globe.

Thomas Smith, 23, of Los Angeles, California pleaded guilty in a case he was charged last year, together with a Dutch national named Bradley van Willem Van Rooy, 20, of Leiden, the Netherlands.

US authorities identified the two as members of the Lizard Squad and PoodleCorp hacking crews. Buchta operated under nicknames such as “@leetzool,” “zool,” “xozool,” and “1337z001,” while van Rooy used monikers such as “Uchiha,” “UchihaLS,” “dragon,” and “fox.”

Smith was a member of both Lizard Squad and PoodleCorp

According to a plea agreement obtained by Bleeping Computer, Buchta admitted to operating the shenron.lizardsquad.org, lizardsquad.org, stresser.poodlecorp.org, and poodlecorp.org websites, where he advertised DDoS-for-hire services.

While other users had utilized these DDoS-for-hire platforms to carry out their own DDoS attacks, Buchta was famous because of the attacks he carried out himself, while part of the Lizard Squad DDoS crew.

He often launched DDoS attacks on gaming services, with the most famous being the now notorious DDoS attacks on the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live during Christmas 2014.

Security breach & the arrest of Vinnie Omari led to Smith’s arrest

The Lizard Squad service was built on the LizardStresser malware. This malware later leaked online and contributed to a jump in DDoS-for-hire services. In June 2016, Arbor Networks said it discovered over 100 DDoS botnets built on variations of Lizard Squad’s LizardStresser.

Later, while part of the PoodleCorp group, Buchta built the PoodleCorp DDoS-for-hire service —named PoodleStresser – using the API of a competing service called vDOS.

Hackers breached the PoodleStresser service in July 2016 and leaked its database online. The data also made it into the hands of security researchers and law enforcement officials.

The PoodleStresser data helped unmask both vDOS and PoodleCorp operations, famous being an exposé on vDOS by infosec journalist Brian Krebs.

In October 2016, a few months after the breach, US and Dutch authorities arrested Buchta and van Rooy. Israeli authorities also started investigating the two vDOS owners soon after and filed official charges in August 2017. A UK teen who was a vDOS staffer was also charged in the winter of 2016–2017 and was sentenced this week to 16 months detention, suspended for two years.

Smith will receive his sentence on March 27, 2018. He faces a maximum prison time of 5 years, but prosecutors said they wouldn’t ask for more than 30 months following the guilty plea.
Хорионы үеийн тэмдэглэл 4: Хайрцаг, хайрцаг ахиад л хайрцаг
By: Saikhnaa Dk
Tags: Quarantine, Life Lessons, Mankind, Personal Development, Self-awareness

in Beyond Pen and Paper
Finally Finding Motivation in the Last 5 Days of 2020
By: Margo Haas
Tags: 2020, Quarantine, Lifestyle, Coronavirus, College

This year has been a whirlwind, to say the least. Honestly, if you haven’t had a breakdown after a day of doing absolutely nothing in 2020, did you completely miss this last year? As there are only five days left of this year, I figured why not start a new project on the side. If that does not explain my motivation in the last year, I’m not sure what does.

For a small introduction, I am currently a college student… not in college. I attend Temple University, but have spent almost the entirety of this past semester in my bedroom at home. For years in the past, my life goals and dreams seemed to come together at a single point: college. My fifth-grade-self pictured me in my cool NYC dorm room with a fabulous roommate, ready to take on the world. But, my first semester of college was definitely the epitome of an expectations vs reality tik tok that my friends tend to send me.

A picture of one of the only possible COVID-19 summer activities: waking up way too early and buying overpriced coffee.

Moving from a Pennsylvania suburb to the middle of North Philly in itself is a crazy transition. Nothing prepares you for walking across Broad Street to get your medium iced coffee with almond milk when you’ve never had to before (please don’t judge me for my basic order). I was used to my very typical suburban lifestyle, where the only possible hobbies are driving or buying food with the last $8 in your bank account.

Let’s just say, the three-month quarantine in PA drove me a little insane. I was so bored that figuring out how to make my own sweet potato fries made me happy for a week straight. You could either find me sleeping, eating, or texting in my infamous friend’s group chat about every little thing we were doing.
My life part 2
By: Trick Shot Builder
Tags: Travel, Life, Quarantine, Get Out, Miami

My life part 2

Just woke up and ready for travel. I still have to pack my bag 🤫. I little procrastination never hurt anyone. We are on our way to Miami. We are all ready to finally get out of the cold 🥶. I’ve been been begging to leave since November. Let’s just say it’s been a boring quarantine. I will let you know about my travel experience later. Follow for more