What’s the most valuable brand in the world? Your own, of course. But since we live in a competitive world, every year Interbrand, a large brand consultancy firm, puts out a report of the world’s most valuable brands.

Can you guess the top three brands?

Here’s a hint. One’s a drink and two are computer companies.

OK, no more pondering. (I bet you guessed #1 by looking at the picture.) Here’s the answer: Coca-Cola, IBM, and Microsoft. Others in the top ten (in order from #3 to #10) are Google, GE, McDonald’s, Intel, Apple, Disney and Hewlett-Packard.

 What makes a top brand?

Why these brands? It’s all a matter of the criteria used by Interbrand.

Global. For Internbrand, the brand must be global (30% revenues outside of home country and a presence in three or more continents as well as emerging markets).

Public.The brand must be public (data must be publically available on the brand’s financial performance).

Profitable. The business must be a going concern.

Well-known. And it must be known to an audience beyond its own marketplace.

Then Interbrand looks at the financial performance of the company, the role brand plays in its financial gains, and the relative “strength” of that brand.

Key elements of a strong brand:

How does one determine the strength of a brand? According to Interbrand, here are the key elements.

Inside a company:

• Is the brand clear?
• Is there a commitment to the brand?
• Is the brand responsive to market challenges and opportunities?
• Is the brand secure: that is, is it legally protected in terms of design, scale, and geography?

External to a company:

• Is the brand relevant?
• Is the brand authentic?
• Is the brand unique?
• Is the brand consistent?
• Is there a strong brand presence?
• Is the brand recognized?

Think about those criteria for your organization’s brand. How well are you doing in those categories? If you feel your brand could be stronger, contact us at Zoyo Branding.

What are “user personas,” how do you make them, and how do they help your brand? User personas help marketers (and web developers and anyone else who’s trying to understand their audience) think about their offerings in real life situations.

Organizations are often stuck thinking about their offerings from their “production” perspective. User personas allow you to take a look at your offerings from the eyes of your customers.

User personals are made-up identities, based on composites of actual customers.

How to build a user persona

To create user personas, first you have to do research. Telephone interviews, focus groups, web surveys… any way you can get your customers’ thoughts, fears, goals, and judgments, get them!

Building a user persona means taking the insights you got from your research and coming up with “types” of people in our audience. Instead of thinking about the audience segments as impersonal data, with the user personas, you get creative and bring them to life.

Your user personas are imagined composites. But they are fleshed-out people. They represent a typical customer… what they look like, what their job is, what technologies they use, how they communicate. You make up the user persona’s names. You select for them a typical jobs, a typical family situation, a typical incomes, and most importantly their typical goals.

Address big questions: the goals of your audience

Then ask yourself—and answer—the bigger questions. What are these people trying to do, ultimately, with your products or services? What bigger issues or dreams are they fulfilling with your offerings? Imagine the person’s whole life perspective–then write it all down.

Look at your interviews and pull out choice quotes. This puts actual words in the mouths of your user personas. Be sure to base everything on actual insights from your interviews. You want to document the things a real person in your audience would actually be thinking and feeling.

Sure, the user personas are made up—you made up the names, found a picture that looks like you imagine them to look like—but the goals and thoughts of your personas are based on real responses to your research.

User personas give you a reality check

What do you do with a user persona? You use it to plan your products, services, and messages. As you work on developing a new project, think about your user personas. This gives you a clear framework for understanding the motivations and issues and “whole life experiences” that go into your audience’s buying decisions.

Is what you’re proposing going to meet your user personas’ bigger goals? Is there anything about your plans that will taste sour to them?

Once you know your personas, they really help with making decisions about that features to include, or not include, in your products and how to craft the marketing messages.

Can a burger be so good you go out of your way for it? Can a bite become an event? If so, how do you build all of that yumminess into a brand? That was the challenge with Li’l Woody’s.

To define the experience in this new, organic-yet-greasy burger joint in Seattle’s trendy Capitol Hill, we at Zoyo Branding studied the “emotional promise” of the brand. After researching the competition, the market, interviewing the founders, we came up with a guideline for the emotional promise.

By the way, we would have interviewed current, former, and aspiring customers but the work we did was before the restaurant opened, so we didn’t have that opportunity.

Here’s the emotional promise we defined. These are the feelings associated with the brand… what a client will feel during and after a trip to Li’l Woody’s.

• Satisfaction: “I wanted a burger (fries, shake, what-have-you) and Li’l Woody’s hit the spot.”
• Authentic: Li’l Woody’s is “real” so everyone there can be their real selves, too
• Collective: Li’l Woody’s taps into a connection that we all share, our culture’s collective memory of classic burger joints, our collective love for burgers, our collective trend toward local choices. Li’l Woody’s brings out a feeling that everyone is in it together.
• The best possible bad: Food so good, it makes giving in to the craving worth it

Now that the restaurant’s been open month or so, does the emotional promise ring true? Surely they’ve got more than 500 excited fans on Facebook.

Brand control is one of the five biggest challenges of HR executives, according to a recent Wall Street Journal article. Managing the company’s image is key to attracting the right job candidates.

Why is brand important in HR?  The best job candidates choose companies for their corporate culture, industry leadership status, and commitment to improvement—all elements that can be strengthened by a brand.

They’re also elements that can spin out of control when the brand is not clearly defined and actively managed. That’s the source of HR professionals’ angst that was identified by the Wall Street Journal.

Job candidates can find out almost anything, from company financials to personnel gripes, on the internet. Your brand must strong enough to put these details into a larger perspective. Here’s an example: maybe financials are not so rosy right now, but that news, in the context of a brand that encourages innovation isn’t going to make a strong negative impact. A prospective job candidate will still have a positive impression of the organization if they believe in the brand.

If you want to encourage the sharpest talent, and keep your HR staff happy, your company needs a solid brand. The best people often choose the company with the best brand.

The workday was just about ending when the phone rang. It was Kathy Cox, the president of the Puget Sound chapter of the American Marketing Association. The PSAMA is Washington State’s largest professional marketing association. Kathy was calling to tell me that Zoyo Branding is a finalist in the 2011 PSAMA Pulse Awards.

Woo-hoo!

What’s special about the Pulse Awards is that they care about marketing effectiveness. Results. So does Zoyo. Here are some of the results from the work done for client Emerald BioSystems:

• New web site that allowed  gross sales of chemicals to nearly double

• Professional graphics and B&W images now reflect new “real discovery” brand and general increased awareness

• Email campaigns that cost only a few dollars to send directly influenced the purchase of major instruments

• Time on website reduced as customers find items more clearly, make purchases faster

• Streamlined back-end management integrates orders with laboratory, accounting, and shipping processes saves time, increases productivity

The Pulse Award application asked for a testimonial. Here’s the quote we submitted from our client:

“It’s been extremely helpful for us to think about ourselves and present ourselves in a new way on the heels of a new brand. Not only have the new materials been effective but the brand has helped us clarify the way we talk about ourselves as a company at meetings and on sales calls.” —Cory Gerdts, Senior Application Specialist, Emerald BioSystems

The Pulse Awards ceremony is coming up  on Wednesday, October 05, 2011 at 6:30 PM in the Bell Harbor International Conference Center in Seattle. A unique feature of this show is that attendees will vote for the award winners from the finalists that will be displayed at the event. Come by and see our display!

Would you rather be a brand that your customers “recognize” or a brand your customers “love”? What is the difference between being known and being adored? It could be the difference between “getting by” and making a profit. It’s the difference between a restaurant that has a few empty tables and one with the line out the door. For many, it could be the difference between success and failure.

Archetypal brands work because they don’t just give you an identity. They associate your brand with a deep-seeded longing that works at the instinctual level. By instinct.

Sounds heavy, and actually, it is. Still, why not associate your brand with something people long for? Something like victory, or independence, or even rebellion?

How do you get there? Zoyo branding can help you get this kind of archetypal brand. But first you must understand what it is. This slideshow, created by another branding firm, offers a graphic explanation. They call it Cult Branding. I’m not so crazy about that term, but this slideshow introduces the concept that we at Zoyo Branding deliver to our clients.

Print brochures are still a staple marketing tool. Even with the rapid rise that social media, brochures work. People want to take something in hand that allows them to consider an organization’s benefits at the time and place of their choice.

So how do you get a great brochure? Let’s look at a recent one written by Zoyo Branding. This brochure was a team effort between Zoyo, a wonderful independent graphic designer Tammy Fujihara and the attentive, cooperative client team at Bainbridge Pediatrics.

Step 1:  Know your brand

Clarify in your mind the key attributes of your organization. Are you a leader in your field, useing your resources to take your clients to the top? Are you the seeker, helping your customers find meaning? Are you a caregiver, nurturing your patrons with your products and services? If you don’t have clarity on your brand identity, the brochure will not be clear. It will be difficult for your team to know when it’s “right” or “good enough.” It will be equally difficult for your audience to really understand who you are.

Step 2: Clarify your key messages

A brochure can say a lot. But it can’t say everything. And it needs to argue your points in a way that makes sense to your audience. In Step 2,  you get close to thinking about the text of the brochure, but you don’t think about the actual brochure. In this step, the client and branding partners (such the friendly folks at Zoyo) sit down and list all of the things you want to say. Then you list three “proof points” for each message. Then you look at the lists and narrow them down, consolidating any overlaps and combining like messages. If you don’t have three real proof points for each message, you have to remove it because it’s an overpromise or it’s not “big” enough to be its own message.

Step 3: Write and design the brochure

Here a professional writer (like those at Zoyo) takes the key message lists and crafts it into a compelling message. The brochure will include all of the issues in the Key Messages doc you created in Step 2, but it won’t look the same. A list is very different from an effective argument. At the same time, a professional designer (such as those Zoyo partners with) will begin to use the branding information as well as the key messages to gather up images and create some layouts. The designer will also line up a printer.

Step 4: Edit, review, edit

A brochure is a costly marketing tool. In the end, each one can cost between $1-$5, or even more. So you  want to make sure the brochures work hard for you. You want everyone in your organization to wave it around with pride. The final step is to edit, review it with your entire team, and edit some more. When you’re happy with it, the graphic deisnger will user it through the printing process. A week or so later, you’ll have a stack of great brochures that your team will happily pass out and your audience will eagerly read.

A lot of organizations do marketing without doing branding. For those companies, every marketing effort is like lifting a heavy weight over their heads unassisted. Each time they do outreach, the organization stretches, sweats, heaves, and sometimes puts its back out.

If a company does branding first, it’s like lifting that weight using a fulcrum and a lever. Raising  that weighty marketing project becomes a whole lot easier. When you have  a brand—that, is: documented key messages, know your brand personality, and understand your relationship with your customers and community—your marketing efforts can all pivot on that powerful base.

The effort you need to raise that project into the air is exponentially less. And you can reach a much greater  height.

A brand is like a fulcrum-and-lever device. With a solid brand base, you can do big things with less effort. Contact Zoyo branding today and see how we can make marketing easier for your organization.

What was the influence of Steve Jobs? All of us who spent the 80′s and 90′s working on Apple projects know he was the vision behind so many great technologies we use today (whether or not they’re Apple products… so many of Apple’s competitors simply followed the tracks he made in the snow). One of our colleagues, Mickeleh, created this thoughtful video as we ponder his recent resignation from Apple.

What Mickeleh doesn’t mention in this video is Steve’s huge influence on marketing and advertising. Just as he simplified and smartened technology, he simplified and smartened business communication. Here’s what I learned in my years of working on Apple marketing:

1. Know your brand

First and foremost, every company must spend time thinking about and defining their brand. Everyone on the marketing team–and even in the whole company–must really understand this brand. What is the voice: is is serious or humorous or casual or formal? What are the brand values: are they speed or convenience or ease or rebelliousness?  Know all of this, write it down, codify it. This is the foundation of all marketing.

2. Always speak in the voice of your brand

Once you’ve defined the brand, live within it. If your brand, like Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream, is humorous and natural, always be humorous and natural. If your brand, like Apple’s is simple, smart, and clean, make all your communications simple, smart, and clean.

3. Be creative–within the boundaries of your brand

Creativity captures people’s attention. A message or “look” that is different, new, or wild stands out. Be innovative in your messages… but be innovative within the confines of the brand that has been carefully thought out in step 1.

These three simple steps are very rarely carried out in business communications. But Steve Jobs took the time and effort to always see they were obeyed. This taught me worlds about communication and branding. The least I can do is share it with my current clients.

Oh, and Steve Jobs, we’ll miss you. Thanks, Steve, for everything.

I just got off the phone with a representative from a large US corporation who told me she was “more than happy to take care of that” for me.

The phrase, “more than happy” stuck in my mind. More than happy? What does it mean? Does it mean “happier” ? Or “ecstatic”? Is it some other state of mind that we haven’t defined? Why would she be more than happy to do the menial task I was asking her to do? Do other tasks make her less than happy? And what does all this have to do with branding?

It has a lot to do with branding because branding is all about the impressions your employees give to your customers. “More than happy” is a positive statement and maybe should be encouraged for employees of organizations that strive for a syrupy-sweet persona (think Disney).

On the other hand, “more than happy” also is about an 8.0 on the Richter Scale of phoniness. If you have an earnest, honest brand, you may want to encourage your employees to lay off the fake phrasing and get real. Be nice, but be yourself.

The more clear your brand is, the more you can guide your team into a relationship with your customer that’s satisfying on both ends. You’ll gain loyalty and your customers will gain a sense of connection with your organization.

Brands are organic things, they change with the times. The best way to keep your brand fresh—and more important, relevant—is to keep abreast of the cultural trends that affect our world.

For the past six years, the marketing company JWTIntelligence has put together a list of the top trends for 2011. Check out the list and ask yourself if you could incorporate some of them into your marketing plans in 2011.

Trend 1

1) Sense of play: brands will add gaming mechanics such as “points” and “power-ups” to loyal customers

Trend 2

2) Time sensitive deals: brands will prompt customers to “act now”

Trend 3

3) Temporary use: more people will be renting, not buying

Trend 4

4) Technology becomes vital: Technology and the skills to use it will become as vital and integral as food and shelter in 2011

Trend 5

5) De-teching: because of the above trend, people will “de-tech” to relax, making an effort to get off the grid temporarily

Trend 6

6) Retail as the 3rd space: Retail stores will do more than just sell stuff, trendy retail spaces are places that make people want to just hang out

Trend 7

7) Urban renewal: Brands will sponsor events and elements that make urban spaces nicer: help plant trees, sponsor an event

Trend 8

8 Digital connection to our devices: we’ll be communicating with our fridges and garage doors

Trend 9

9) Hyper personalization: technology allows consumers to personalize branded items… pick fabrics for a handbag, combine different products in a single package

Trend 10

Outsource self-control: people will rely on technology and brands themselves to cut them off when they’ve had too much

Now go ahead and think about your brand and your offerings. Which of the above trends would work for you? What changes could you make in your business plan, your offerings, your messages that could tap into these trends? Sure, a lot of these trends require a technology investment. But can you afford not to get involved in where our culture is going?

Watch the video below to hear the trend list in the words of the folks from JWTIntelligence themselves:

According to JWTIntelligence’s web site, the organization calls itself “a center for provocative thinking that is a part of JWT, the world’s best-known marketing communications brand. We make sense of the chaos in a world of hyper-abundant information and constant innovation—finding quality amid the quantity. We focus on identifying changes in the global zeitgeist so as to convert shifts into compelling opportunities for brands. We have done this on behalf of multinational clients across several categories including pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, food, and home and personal care.”

Zoyo works with its clients to create usable web sites. Not just pretty web sites or informative web sites, but web sites that are acutally useful to the audience.

We are lucky to work with some great web developers, including Michiko Swiggs, who not only offers precise technical expertise but a great sense for design and information management.

But before we even get to the development stage, Zoyo helps clients do the critical thinking about the user experience. Here are three steps we help you through:

Step 1: Clarify your goals

The first step is to clarify your information. You need to understand clearly exactly what your goals are. o you want people to give you their email address, purchase a product, or generally come to the conclusion that your company offers expertise? After they had their web site for three or four months, one client asked, “Why aren’t I capturing many leads on my site?” I had to answer, “Because that was not one of your goals when we build the site.” A web site that generates leads looks and functions very differently than a web site that simply states company capabilities. Set out your goals, and we will build the site accordingly.

Step 2: Think through the user experience

This is actually way more difficult to do than it seems. You have to put yourself in the shoes of your audience. This takes a lot of discipline to get out of the “business manager” way of thinking and become humble enough to imagine yourself as a (clueless) member of your audience.

They don’t know your brand names. They don’t know your lingo. They use regular wrods and are trying to solve real world problems. They are trying to get through the day and maybe, just maybe, your products or services will answer their needs. They’ll come to that conclusion faster if you consider their needs before building the site.

List the  tasks your audience might want to do. Think about the ways they’ll assume to go about achieving those goals. Now, make it easy for them to do that.

How? Use regular words  (‘buy tickets’, ‘our ingredients,’ etc.) and make sure every word on your site is accessed by the search box.

Step 3: Think about search engines from the start

You need to make your web site attractive to the people in your audience. But you also need to make your site attractive to search engines. They are really your main audience, because your customers go to search engines to find you… so you better be there. How do you make your site attractive to search engines? It’sa compliated dance but here’s a start:

• Know your key words and seed your site with them

• Make sure you use the metatags and SEO tools built into your content managemnet system

•Make sure all of your URLs are clearly mappable phrases and  keywords

• Submit your sitemap to the search engines and have a sitemap page

• Get influential sites to write articles about you, thereby creating links back to your site

• Set up Google Analytics and start using it… and change your site constantly depending on the feedback you get

It’s simple, but takes a bit of guidance

Your web site is your most important marketing tool and you should treat it as such. Build it properly, watch the way your customers use it, and constantly make adjustments according to what’s popular among your users. It’s not so much a big job as a job that must be maintained regularly. For more help, contact Zoyo Branding.

Give-aways. Companies all across the land slap their logos on coffee mugs, water bottles, t-shirts, buttons, letter openers… items useful and whimsical, ugly and beautiful. Why do they do it? Because it works. Here are some reasons why.

Reason 1: Keep your brand top-of-mind

Customers visit to companies they remember. Your name has to be in their minds in order for them to choose you. Think of the restaurants in your neighborhood. Your list may be five to ten restaurants long. But in actuality, unless you live in a remote area, there are probably double or triple that many eating options in your area. Those restaurants haven’t gotten their brand out to you.

One way to keep your establishment on that “top-of-mind list” is to keep your name around… on a magnet, a pen, even a doormat. (Yes, my favorite give-away from the San Diego Padres baseball team was a Padres doormat. Fitting for a team that’s never won the World Series.)

Reason 2: Humans are naturally honor-bound to reciprocate

The small business blog run by the New York Times ran an article pondering the question of why businesses give out freebies. They conclude that offering something somehow obligates the recipient  The article states:

“Promotional products are, some say, the oldest form of advertising. American businesses spend $20 billion a year giving away stuff with logos, according to Jerry McLaughlin, president of Branders, one of the largest sellers of promotional products online. Which is pretty good evidence that it works. Mr. McLaughlin credits the effectiveness of promotional products to centuries old cultural norms around the rule of reciprocity. “If you give something, the recipient is honor bound to give something back,” he said. “In every language and culture, research has found there are really pejorative words for people who get and don’t give back. We humans are hard wired to respond if we get something.”

I’d like to see the science that proves we’re hard wired to respond if we get something, but the point is, when you give something to someone, it makes them feel good. If they like the thing you’ve given them, you have a positive feeling toward that organization. Positive feelings are always a good thing when it comes to growing a business. It’s all about relationships.

Reason 3: Vanity

Some businesses, large and small, are run by self-important people who just want to see their logos all over the place. But these same people also usually work their tails off making sure the business really is as great as they imagine it to be.

What do you think?

Let us know your experiences creating and giving out branded merchandise.

Corianton Hale, is a featured partner at Zoyo Branding. His talents have brightened many graphic design projects for Zoyo clients. He’s also great at designing posters and album covers and his work will be honored in a Seattle display July 16 – 20. The exhibit will be at Company Bar, 9608 16th Ave SW in White Center.

We are told his artwork has a theme of daddies and beards and masculinity. Seattle indie rock bloggers Three Imaginary Girls summarize Corianton’s work in their recent post.

Want to know Cori’s brand? It’s delightfully edgy.

How is Cori’s work delightful?

The word “delight” describes the magical elements of his process well as the pleasing elements of the work itself.

• Magical: clients hire Cori to “work his magic” and create a unique outcome
• Wonder: Hire Cori and you will get something magical
• The design elements are so strong the experience overall becomes satisfactory and almost familiar
• Always easy on the eye
• Mid-century
• Can be cute
• Like Seattle: friendly
• Energy: Cori’s work is stimulating.

How is Cori’s work edgy?

The word “edgy” describes the bold, stand-out elements of his work.

• Audacity: Hire Cori and your message will be communicated with a strong voice
• The content may be surprising
• Sometimes complex
• Hip
• Grunge
• Can rough
• Bold
• Eye catching, stands out
• Like Seattle: raw
• Energy: Cori’s work is stimulating.

Why not judge for yourself?

Head on over to Company Bar and check out his work yourself. He’s an artist, that’s for sure!

Email marketing is a vital link between organizations and their audiences. With email marketing, it’s all about building a relationship with your customer–and maybe even making some quick sales.

Constant Contact is a leading email marketing services company, and Zoyo is a Constant Contact Solutions provider. Yesterday, with Dana Pethia, Constant Contact’s Pacific Northwest Regional Development Director, invited me to give a talk to small businesses and nonprofitss to teach them the basics of social media marketing.

So what should you do or not do in email marketing? Here’s a quick list of do’s and don’ts.

DO
Make sure your list is accurate, so you don’t send email to those who have opted out.

DO
Keep your mailing limited to one single point. Your readers don’t want to spend time figuring out what it’s about. If you have more than one thing to say, say them each in a different email message.

DO
Make it interactive. Put links in the email for people to respond to. Then you can track the people who clicked as “interested” prospects.

DON’T
Send emails too often. Usually once a month is about the most people can handle before they feel they’re being harassed.

DON’T
Send an email unless it’s relevant to your audience. They don’t care if your company just signed a new deal with a big client. So don’t announce that. Find out what about that deal is relevant to them… are you trying out a new technology or method? Are you rolling back your prices ? Responding to a new trend?

DON’T
Don’t be sloppy. Make it look good–Quality graphics and neatness reflect your professionalism and quality.