Brand's should be treated like Gold

What’s in a name?

For many new entrepreneurs, your business brand is your name. You might want to change it. That won’t work for any successor to your business and the hope is that one day you will pass this business onto another investor, and they may not like your name to be associated with the business. In today’s times, there is less value in associating yourself with the name of your business (except in very rare cases when you might be from a very famous family). It works if you are a sole trader and the business is ‘all about you’, but this is rare, and often not an ideal structure for a business. Consider creating a unique brand. There are lots of options, but you will need to be creative. As a startup and entrepreneur, I spent hours, days and many late night searching for good names, domain names, and brands that we can build as businesses or as product names. It should be a continual login to auction sites and premium website domain names sellers to look for great names popping up.

Establishing your brand.

Some companies might spend many millions on a branding campaign. I wouldn’t. Spend a weekend somewhere and think. Think about the business, your values, your goals, your products and your markets, then build a shortlist. These days, with the limited availability of names, trade marks and domain names you will be hard pressed to get one of them ‘available’, so don’t stress too much about the name. Just be careful about paying a lot of money and getting back pretty much what you instructed. Once you have a shortlist, it probably does pay to engage an agency to help you build out the profile of that brand, the messaging elements, the key words and phrases that you should use and a brand guideline. Agencies are very good at messaging and thinking a lot more about how your message is heard by people. Building a relationship with a trusted agency is money very well spent. It won’t cost massive amounts of money, but some budget applied to this is a good thing.

What is covered as part of your brand?

Your brand is your logo, your style, your colors, your font, and even your attitude. Establish your brand parameters and what it means to you. If your brand is going to be high end, then only use it in high end places and with high end people. Your brand is your color, your style and your approach. If your value includes being green, then your whole brand needs to reflect that. Try not to confuse your brand with too many new initiatives. The best investment you can make is to approach a brand agency and get some help on the new designs, styles, and approaches to your brand. The second best thing you can do is to stick to it like glue.

Protect it like Gold.

There are some key things that you should do with your brands. Trade Mark them in as many countries as you can afford. That is priority No 1. Once you have that underway, then my advice is not to play with them, change them, tweak them, or re-establish them unless absolutely necessary. They are lovely pieces of gold that should be protected. Like Gold, they scratch easily, so I would caution about how you use them. Don’t license them to anyone that could abuse them. Don’t freely allow them to be used on supplier web sites. Don’t splash it everywhere. Be protective of your logo and your brand. protect it like gold. Always be consistent and keep the messaging very simple.

Resist.

There will be many people who will suggest that you change your logo and brand identify. They will pitch you senseless about the need to do so and the benefits. I would resist those requests. They are typically coming from a marketing firm whose first suggestion is always to throw out everything and allow them to start from scratch. It is a very common proposal and we would encourage people to resist until absolutely necessary. Ask yourself, ‘What is the problem you are trying to fix’? There might be a need at some stage for a brand refresh, but that is generally when you have been wildly successful or perhaps wildly unsuccessful. Keep pushing ahead with developing your brand, your presence and your messaging.