It’s 2017: Position Your Brand With Emotional Equity

Today, Cheryl Hosmer gets emotional about your brand. Read on …

Update your brand by investing in its emotional equity. You’ve got tons of equity prebuilt into it already. Sweat equity. Financial equity. Social equity. Level up. It’s a brave new world out there and The Mad House has got the strategies and design know-how to help you explore it, conquer the monsters and keep your brand integrated and a consistent voice in the marketplace.

Position yourself deeply.

You’ve got your logo, your tagline, your go-to standards and your customer promises. But so does your competition. You don’t set yourself up to compete. You position your brand so it doesn’t have to compete. It’s the Karate Kid method–learn to fight so you don’t have to fight. Attach yourself emotionally to your customers by getting them in the place they care: what your brand adds to their lives. Get them to think about you. Think community service, memorable graphics and consumer lifestyle.

Who are you to your customers?

When they need your brand, can they smell it, taste it, feel it, desire it? It all builds emotional equity. It’s like attachment parenting. Keep your customers close and socially accessible so they will always look for you first.

Keep it simple.

Emotions are complex. Keep your message on point, clear, without ambiguity. Remember human nature. When you want something you figure out the easiest road to get it. We do that work for you so you can concentrate on getting your message, your brand, embedded into the hearts and minds of your customers.

Don’t keep your instincts in check. Let us help you explore your brand’s emotional equity. Level up. Dare to be provocative, mindful and excited about your brand’s future.

Did Your Brand Suck in 2016? You Could Be Due for an Update

Maureen McLaughlin wants to know: Did Your Brand Suck in 2016?  Read on…

While you’re busy running your company, digital trends, internet memes, 24-hour news cycles, politics, and random local and national events are constantly changing the landscape in which you do business.

It’s all too easy for your brand to become stale in the blink of an eye – often without you noticing. The new year is the perfect time to check in with your branding efforts and see if they need any tweaking to stay fresh going into 2017.

Here are a few quick questions to ask yourself to see where you stand. 

How Are Your Visuals?

Do your logo, website design, and print materials still reflect what your business does and the image you want to portray? Have you been using and reusing the same photos and graphics on your website and social media for years? Periodically updating your image library is important for keeping your brand fresh and interesting.

Is Your Website Dated?

Find a trusted friend or colleague who is not very familiar with your company’s website and ask them to check it out. Getting honest feedback about the design and user experience can reveal if your website has become dated – which doesn’t take long to happen.

What Do Your Customers Think?

If you can, ask some customers personally if they think that your branding is an accurate reflection of your company, and whether they think it could improve. Be sure to check out reviews of your company on social media sites; reviewers might not speak about your branding efforts specifically, but will likely be more candid when reviewing your business in general. These reviews can be extremely valuable in alerting you to areas where you need to improve.

Have You Outgrown Your Branding?

Maybe you had an amazing 2016 – congratulations! But if you quickly scaled up from a local operation to a regional or national one, your branding might need to catch up. Make sure your company looks and feels like the success that it is!

If you find you need an update or want a second opinion, contact us at The MAD House!

Why Branding is Important for Start-Ups

Kris Kelley writes this week on the importance of branding for start-ups. Read on…

Branding is the process of creating a symbol, a name, a website or a design that identifies a company in consumers’ minds. It creates an impression and evokes an emotional response.  Every company needs to develop a brand.  This is particularly true for start-ups.

Getting a new company off the ground takes an incredible amount of energy, determination, money and time.  The urge is to start generating revenue as soon as possible, so the idea of creating a brand often gets pushed down the to-do list. It shouldn’t.  Here is why branding is important for start-ups:

Branding Builds Credibility and Trust

Getting customers to trust a new company is not easy, particularly if the competition is well established.  Strong branding in the form of a professional, sleek website and a powerful logo give a start-up a better chance of success when going head to head with a reputable competitor.  The more polished a start-up appears, the more credibility it has.

Branding Improves Recognition

A well branded business is easy to remember.  This recognition often starts with a company’s logo.  Think of the Nike swoosh, the Facebook “f” or the Disney magic castle.  Consumers immediately recognize these symbols and connect them with their company.  Strong logo or other design branding helps start-ups break through the noise and clutter from day one.

Branding Brings in New Customers

If a start-up has no branding or dull, boring branding, then how will customers remember where they bought their new jacket or got their hair cut?  If they can not remember the name of the merchant, how can they refer their family or friends?  How can they talk about their experience in a Facebook post?  Start-ups need all the customers that they can get.  Strong branding ensures that current customers will refer future customers.

Branding is key to any company’s success. If you are ready to take your business to the next level, then contact us. We are here to help you reach your goals.

Understanding Differentiation – How is your company/brand/product truly different from the competition?

Justin Williams wants you to understand differentiation. Read on …

Digging into your brand can be a scary thing. As a business, the last thing you want to do is focus on your flaws, and with good reason. But understanding what you can improve upon often helps you see the greatness that is already there. That’s why it is important that you involve your most valuable asset in the equation of differentiation: YOUR CLIENTS.

Your brand IS DIFFERENT

Your valuable customer base should always be a part of what drives your businesses growth and improvements. It’s no secret that they are the lifeblood of your business. Your brand IS DIFFERENT, and that’s why your tribe sticks with you. But where can you improve, and WHAT makes you different?

You might have a million ideas of why you THINK you are different, but you could be missing some important stuff. Sometimes, an outside opinion can offer you insight into your brand that you didn’t even know existed. So, ask other people. It’s a simple process that has helped thousands of businesses grow and stay competitive.

Send out some customer satisfaction surveys via snail mail. Include one in your purchasing process. Post a survey on your website. Ask face-to-face. Whatever it takes, find out what others LOVE and dislike about you. It’s going to help differentiate you from the pack.

Differentiation – How is your company/brand/product truly different from the competition?

Try it and learn

Involving your customers not only helps you understand how your brand is different, it actually makes you different! You keep your tribe engaged and show them you care, and you take the necessary steps to better serve them. Try it and learn. And when you are ready to find out what makes us different, and how WE CAN HELP you, go ahead and contact us.

How Branding and Advertising Form Your First Relationships

David Gusaas talks about how branding and advertising  form your first relationships.

“Friendship is so weird, you just pick a human you’ve met and you’re like ‘yep I like this one’ and then you just do stuff with them” – Step Brothers

Though they of course have their differences, businesses as a whole are not that different from people that we form certain types of relationships with. If we’re lucky enough, they are just as weird as we are, and we come together like a Catalina Wine Mixer. Though, maybe not like the one in the movie..

In starting a business, everyone wants to get to that sweet spot where instead of going out and knocking on doors, people are coming and knocking on yours. The easiest way to do this is through branding and advertising.

Not just understanding this, but taking action on this, requires a strategy that includes branding and advertising as part of your start-up company’s budget, with someone who understands the dynamics of how this works most effectively, while retaining and conveying your company’s unique quirks and personality.

“There are millions of people walking around, there are millions of businesses to choose from – however both of them must earn the right to have a relationship with you.”

This quote from former Ogilvy & Mathers CEO Charlotte Beers, emphasizes this idea that businesses function on a relationship basis, and in a way similar to how our relationships with people in our day-to-day life may become friendships.

Strategies like cold calling and other traditional transactional outreach are at times necessary and even effective to a degree. But without a cohesive human element, and a personality so to speak to attach to the company, a brand to form a relationship with, the transaction remains just that, and is easily replaceable by a newer or cheaper competitor.

The relationship formed by connecting in a human way with a brand that speaks to something in someone else’s own personality, whether it be a certain sense of humor, world view, or other similar sensibilities, leads to identifying with this brand and developing a loyalty to them.

Within this equation, advertising plays a dual role. First, it introduces the brand to people who would otherwise be unaware of it, and it reminds them of the brand afterwards. Additionally, through the type, style, and way you advertise, you further the brand narrative, and connect with potential customers and clients who you will then form a relationship with.

This touches only briefly on how branding and advertising are a vital investment and a necessary part of your company’s successful future, and there is much more to it, so please contact us today to continue the conversation!