Tag: DIGG

Tapping the vast audience of the social Web is a low-cost way to catapult a small-business brand onto the global arena. Building your brand using social media allows you to develop new (and strengthen existing) relationships, which often leads to everything from brand awareness, loyalty and word-of-mouth marketing.

Whether it be the Haiti Presidential second round election (expected on Jan. 16); the Peruvian Parliamentary and Presidential ballots (in April); or the Argentinian presidential election (in October), the precise outcome of several key ballots in the Americas in 2011 is uncertain.

What is far more sure, however, is that foreign political consultants will be working behind the scenes in many (if not most) of these countries trying to steer candidates to success.

Indeed, it is estimated that U.S. political consultants, alone, have already worked in more than half of the countries in the world. In 2011, that tally will only grow as globe-trotting U.S. firms reach out to more and more uncharted international territory following their widespread employment in last November’s U.S. midterm congressional elections.

VietNamNet Bridge – A miss is as good as a mile. Sabeco made a mistake and now it has to pay a heavy price for the carelessness. How can such a big enterprise misunderstand simple branding? Experts are called on to reconsider processes in state asset management.

As VietNamNet has reported, SABECO, a big Vietnamese brewery brand is now facing the risk of losing its brand to the hands of a foreign partner. A lot of businesses and experts have voiced their opinions about the case.

Tran Anh Tuan, the founding member of The Pathfinder, a brand consultancy firm:

Currently, many big enterprises still do not have a brand management division. I don’t know if Sabeco had its brand valuated, set conditions for choosing partners or applied any policies on intellectual property. Or it only took care of possible turnover when it assigned a foreign partner to cover so many (20) markets. It should have been allowed to only distribute products in Singapore or some neighboring markets. After only one or two years, if Sabeco has good business results, it could have allowed the foreign partner to cover other markets as well.

It is a shame that Sabeco has not paid appropriate attention to protecting its main asset – the brand, especially when this is not a kind of franchise but just an exporting contract for distribution.

BC’s Matt Lauer did an extensive interview recently with former President George W. Bush, who was promoting both his new book and a perspective on his presidency.

During the interview, Lauer mentioned that despite the large number of deaths and injuries in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, former President Bush had enjoyed a special and very warm relationship with the military.

Bush agreed and said that he treasured that relationship. He then recounted a visit and talk with the widow of a soldier who had been killed in Iraq. He expressed his sorrow to her and they talked for a while. In parting, the soldier’s widow told the president, “He did his job. Now you do yours.”

It was an emotional story that obviously touched Bush deeply. It was also a remarkably effective, powerful moment on television, one that could touch viewers. If you’ve ever spent any time with politicians or CEOs, you could almost hear them saying, “I want that. I want that kind of special relationship.”

Web Design Company Brands Up have given their website http://www.brands-up.com a new look as part of their overall expansion of business services. The site now features a homepage flash presentation as well as incorporating additional Web 2 elements into the range of services offered by the branding and web design Company. CEO Vincent Octaviouz believes the face-lift was necessary ’not only because the Company has developed, but because the more engagement your site provides, the less likely it is that people visiting the site will click away.’

With the emergence of Facebook and Youtube, branding has of course altered radically in the last 5 years. It is now no longer the Media who have exclusive control over what is published, because anybody with an opinion or a digital camera can significantly affect how a brand is perceived. In a recent interview, Vincent explained the new dynamics: “If someone has a bad experience at Cafe ZYX, and they video their experience and upload it to Youtube, and if it then goes viral, that can devastate a company’s brand. So now you see all the big companies like Nike and Adidas with Facebook Fanpages, because they have to engage with their customers, to be totally accountable and as approachable in as many ways as possible.

FOLLOWING THE RECENT rebranding of PricewaterhouseCoopers to ‘pwc’, I suspect, like me, many former employees of Price Waterhouse and Coopers & Lybrand will be mourning the loss of these illustrious names from the world of accountancy. From now on, the firm will be known by the moniker ‘PwC’, although strangely its logo will consist of the initials ‘pwc’ in lower-case type.
At the time of the merger in 1998, many, including myself, saw the adoption of the cumbersome PricewaterhouseCoopers name as a compromise to appease both sides – a fairly common occurrence when professional services firms merge. So, more than a decade later it comes as no surprise that the firm has finally decided to ditch its legacy names and go for the shorter PwC – which, to be honest, was the name that most of us were already using. PricewaterhouseCoopers will, however, remain the name of the global organisation for legal purposes and it will still be the name used to sign company audits.

The expansion of a small cookie factory on this city’s outskirts offers a glimpse of how Obamamania in Africa is developing from a fad into a lasting brand for local companies across the continent, even as the U.S. president’s popularity takes a hit at home.
Marc Skaf, a portly man of Lebanese-French stock, is the managing [...]

During Question Period in the Alberta Legislature yesterday afternoon, Wildrose Alliance MLA Heather Forsyth mocked the government’s propensity for pouring money into dubious projects. Among her examples, “your provincial branding … which no one can remember.”

She wasn’t kidding.

Do you remember that effort to re-brand Alberta as an environmentally friendly, happy and creative kind of place? You know, the one that got off to such a bumpy start in the spring of 2009 with outrage over its price tag and that goofy story about how the geniuses behind the advertising campaign used pictures of an English beach to boost Canada’s second most western province?

No? Well, as Ms. Forsyth pointed out, neither can anyone else!

In fact, according to the government of Alberta, 57 per cent of Albertans say they have “some level of recall of the brand.” Apparently the government thinks this is pretty good. They commissioned a public opinion survey, you see, and then they announced they were very pleased with this level of recall, thank you very much.

Whether you like it or not, and whether you intend to or not, you build a brand online with your first public post. Given the ubiquity of information available about people from a very young age today, I’d even argue that *not* posting anything about yourself suggests characteristics for your personal brand (i.e. you’re a technophobe or maybe just highly protective of your privacy).

Don’t allow inaction to define your brand. If you want to maximize your audience, your social impact and your economic value online, you should build your brand actively, and with intent.

So here’s your first question:

What is my brand name online?

What’s the name that you use (or will use) online, the one by which the most people are most likely to know you? (See Robert’s piece, linked above, for some great backstories on how a few online journalists came to their online brands.)

Your given name is an obvious choice, but it’s likely not unique. (I remain thankful to this day that I registered my daughter’s name as a dot-com domain before a bikini model of the same name could get to it.) Nor are given names always short and easy-to-recall. Which are you more likely to remember? “Markos Moulitsas”… or “Kos”?

Don’t worry too much about this question, though. If Internet users can come to regard “Amazon” as an online store instead of a river in South America, almost any word can be branded to almost any purpose.

Branding is imperative to running a successful business. There are countless companies in existence whose foothold in the market derives not from the quality of their products, but from an ingenious branding strategy. There are also just as many unsuccessful businesses who offer superior products but fail to differentiate themselves from their competitors due to lacklustre branding. While the most prosperous companies spend millions or even billions on branding, there are some simple and creative solutions you can try to strengthen or expand your brand image.

Give Away Free Stuff

Print up t-shirts to give away free to customers with the purchase of your product or service. While this may seem very basic, its simplicity is what makes it so effective. People love free stuff and shirts are inexpensive when bought in bulk. By cladding your customers in apparel bearing your company name, you are turning them into walking advertisers. Everyone who walks past them will see your logo. If you give the shirt an interesting design, their friends, family, and possibly even strangers will ask them about the shirt, and find out about your business that way. Make sure to include your company’s main logo so as to familiarize people with the image. You may also want to think of more unique items to give away to customers. Consider alternating between t-shirts and lapel pins or custom coins with your company name or logo.