Firebrand

When approaching a rebranding, it is important to maintain the value that you have already built into certain assets. Otherwise it is easy to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

You can just imagine it. Ad agency “X” brings you into their high ceiling board room for your first review and says “We’ve talked to a bunch of your customers and they all agree your logo is very masculine. We believe that your brand would do alot better with a more feminine energy. Oh, and on that note, we think you might be better off changing names; don’t worry, weve already thought of a few. How does Ashmari sound to you. Good right?”

Hold on! You have to consider the brand equity of the brand elements you have been using prior to the graphical rebranding. Anything that can impact future sales has a value. It is generally positive, ie. it helps sales; for example, everyone locally in your industry recognizes your logo and remembers the work you have done. But sometimes it’s negative, as in it inhibits future sales. If you just settled on a highly publicized lawsuit then your brand name may get doors slammed in your face. It is important to identify what has great value (the baby), and what has poor or negative value (the bathwater). The latter is the elements you want to replace. Remember that having things updated and coherent with one another has a value in and of itself. So the  newly rebranded elements don’t have a neutral value, they have a positive value.

Creatives are going to want a blank slate to work with, where nothing is off the table. That’s good; it means they want to be as creatively free as they can to give you the best solutions. But you have to identify what is on the table and what is off the table before going into a rebranding.

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By Colin Finkle. Colin Finkle is an award winning industrial designer who works with large brands everyday designing displays for FX Displays in Toronto, Canada. He is the principle designer at Firebrand Creative. He also writes for AMD’s FireUser.com blog.

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At it’s core, a brand is about leveraging positive experience for repeat business. So it boggles my mind when I see companies punish repeat business with fees or added hassle when a customer renews a membership or upgrading a product.

I personally experienced this recently. For a long time I have been saving to buy an iPhone, and I was able to buy it guilt free with money I received over the holidays. You’ll remember that I was harsh of Fido’s fall 2008 rebranding, but despite a few incidents I am still a customer of theirs. I had recently switched my number over when I moved to Toronto and was not eager to change my number.

I went to the electronics store to buy the 16 gb iPhone and mentioned I am an existing Fido customer. The salesperson said “Sure! Let me look up your account to see the price you are entitled to.” I thought I was going get a deal; I know Fido has reward dollars accumulated to buy new handsets with. I was floored when he said that it would cost an additional 50$ over the cost of the phone. Unbelievable. And because I was buy in a third party store, I could not redeem my “Fido dollars.” Unheard of. (*) And by the end of it I found out that I was going to pay an additional $25 administration fee to upgrade my services. Unconscionable. So I paid $75 more as a returning customer than if I had been a new customer in off the street. Unforgivable.

The sales person told me that this was not limited to Fido. These fees are charged by all other Canadian mobile companies: Rogers, Telus, Bell, Virgin and Koodo. Every thing I have ever known about brand building says that this is a bad idea. A red saber industry for sure.

* – On my first monthly bill, I saw that Fido had redeemed my Fido dollars effectively letting me put them towards the iPhone. Good move, but I would not have appreciated it if I hadn’t looked through the itemization of the bill.

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By Colin Finkle. Colin Finkle is an award winning industrial designer that works with large brands everyday designing displays for FX Displays in Toronto, Canada. He is the principle designer at Firebrand Creative. He also writes for AMD’s FireUser.com blog.

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Last post I talked about ‘red saber tactics.’ Red saber tactics is a Star Wars reference by the guys at Marketing Over Coffee. They are tactics that could be considered questionable. While they can create short term rises in numbers, they come at the cost of the brand’s future. Red saber tactics are on a wide spectrum between benign and pure evil, and where each tactic lies on the spectrum depends on many variables. For example, using a bikini model to sell insurance is a little different than using a model to sell lingerie. But people know the spectrum by feeling what is in their heart.

I listed some common red saber tactics in the last post. As you read through those I bet you thought of one or two industries. Do you like dealing with companies in those industries? Most people don’t.

If you are a marketer in one of these industries than you may feel that you need to lower yourself to the level of your competition compete. I believe the opposite.

Dirty industries are great opportunity to create great, trusting relationships with customers. Just as a stagnant product category is an opportunity for a game changing product; an untrustworthy industry is a golden opportunity to develop a trusted brand. There are come pretty good side effects of having a trust worthy brand relative to other brands in the industry. Side effects like extreme customer loyalty, high word of mouth, endorsement, testimonials, consistent revenue, and higher ROI from advertising. Some of the side effects of being a Brand on Fire.

It only stands to reason that if you are holding a green lightsaber in a sea of red lightsabers, your going to get noticed. But you have a lot of Sith to fight through. But trust in the light side you must!

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By Colin Finkle. Colin Finkle is an award winning  industrial designer that works with large brands everyday designing displays for FX Displays in Toronto, Canada. He is the principle designer at Firebrand Creative. He also writes for AMD’s FireUser.com blog.

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Sometimes in marketing tactics that could be considered ethically questionable that create return on investment. Some marketers slowly grow their brands the right way: serving customers, filling needs and informing and not annoying. But there is no doubt that this is a long process, and some marketers get… impatient. Yoda might say “impatience leads to anger, anger leads to temptation, and temptation leads to… the dark side.” Some marketers hand over their blue or green lightsaber for a red lightsaber and join the dark side.

‘Red saber tactics’ is a term from the guys at Marketing Over Coffee podcast. It is a good term for those ethically questionable tactics. There are a lot of them:

- email spam

- junk mail

- sex in advertising

- booth babes

- give aways

- fine print

- extra fine print

- selling contact information

- pop up internet adds

- spyware

- hiring attractive sales people

- gifts to make customers feel obligated

- adware

- fake testimonials

- locked down hardware

- withholding key information

- exaggerated demonstrations

- false promises

- addictive products

- advertising sale prices as regular prices

- drug dealer model (first taste is free)

- extravagant overage charges

- lock in contracts

- pressure sales tactics

- lying by omission

- preying on vulnerable customers

- unadvertised fees and charges

- monopoly

- oligopoly

- playing up fears

And on and on and on. These can give you a jump in sales, leads, hits, or whatever your primary metric is. But it comes at the expense of the robustness of your brand. As fast as the numbers rise, they can fall. I equate it to using a credit card; you are spending future money in exchange for a steep rate. You and I both know companies built on red saber tactics are in trouble in these “tough economic times.”

A brand built on blue or green saber tactics may grow slow, but can survive adversity.

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By Colin Finkle. Colin Finkle is an award winning  industrial designer that works with large brands everyday designing displays for FX Displays in Toronto, Canada. He is the principle designer at Firebrand Creative. He also writes for AMD’s FireUser.com blog.

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