Jason Calacanis, founder of Silicon Alley Reporter, Engadget, TechCrunch 50, LAUNCH, This Week in Startups as well as his new venture, Inside.com, asked me ‘What are the most important things you’ve learned about launching?‘ Here is what I wrote him:
There are many processes to launching your tech startup. Choose one that works for your personality, budget and within the culture you are about to create.
Test and fail and test and fail. You should invest in creating your brand only once you really understand your target audience’s behavior and true needs.
Launch as a brand, not a startup that may develop into a brand. Launch by design. Design relates to the process you have to adhere to, but furthermore it truly is design that holds the key to early brand success. Graphic design, brand identity design, and web design will set your offering apart at the time of launch.
Naming is crucial. You can’t change the name of your kid once they are in puberty. The name you choose at launch will remain with the brand forever, so don’t settle for a placeholder name that just happened to make it into beta because the domain was available. It’s an art, science, and legal matter, so make sure it doesn’t get overlooked.
‘Opinions are like @**holes, everybody has one‘ – choose wisely whom you listen to, which opinions you implement, whom you exclude from certain conversations and why. Have a ‘stakeholder opinion plan‘ in place from the start to make it easy for you to adhere to and eliminate the unease of hurting people’s feelings or having to re-do certain phases of your project because you did not listen to the right people at the right time.
CATEGORIES: Startup Advice Your Brand Launch: Brand Atmosphere Your Brand Launch: Digital Your Brand Launch: Identity Your Brand Launch: Naming
Two punny names featuring a product mixed with a popular saying.
“Ship ahoy” (old nautical shout-out) plus “chips” (as in chocolate chips, no relation with guacamole, salsa and such) equals “Chips Ahoy.” We just realized this is a pun ourselves – one of those things you see around all the time and suddenly you become aware of the concept behind the name.
The term “Holy Guacamole!” is a slang term which basically means “OMG,” but you knew that. This brand of guacamole prides itself on not using preservatives and keeping the product 100% natural. There’s also a taco place here in sunny Santa Monica called ‘Holy Guacamole’ – but Wholly Guacamole is taking it up a notch on the pun barometer.
Our first Punny Brand Name Showdown is a tough one to judge as both are quite clever and memorable, but OMG!, Wholly Guacamole takes home the whole enchilada based on the double layer of pun mixed with a product attribute. Chips Ahoy makes us aware of chips coming our way, which is a great thing, no question. But, Wholly Guacamole tells us that it’s, well ‘Holy guacamole!’ (not too specific, it may be great, it may be spicy…it may be all those things) as well as a natural product.
CATEGORIES: Your Brand Launch: Naming
Did you know that your name can have an impact on everything from your day-to-day decisions like which candy bar you prefer to some of your most important life decisions like the career you choose?
“If a brand name shares our initials, we tend to like it more,” says Miguel Brendl, Professor of Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management, who has taken an interest in studying the complex relationship people have with their names and brands they purchase.
It is no coincidence that there are an unusual number of Dentists named Dennis. Women named Louise are likely to move to Louisiana, and Craigs like Coke while Peters prefer Pepsi. Is it any coincidence then that I am running FINIEN and my name is Fabian?
Read more about this interesting phenomenon here.
CATEGORIES: Your Brand Launch: Naming
I was asked the question, ‘What current trends in logo design do you truly hate?’ at a panel discussion at NYU back in December. I felt it was time to manifest my strong feelings towards trends in logo design. It’s an oxymoron. A logo shall never be trendy. Trends come and go, your brand identity is created to stick around for a mighty long time, hence ruling out even the remote possibility of making it trendy.
Your logo can still be modern, exciting and speak to a young audience – it just can not look like a trend. How would you know? Your idea might have been derived from something you saw, maybe you liked it because it looked hip – maybe you’ve seen similar logos before and you felt yours should follow the lead. Don’t. Lead rather than follow. First with your logo, then with the rest of your brand.
Hip logos? X that idea out.[Click to Tweet]
I hope the very painful overly retro compilation below will make the point even more convincing. If it’s a trend, others will follow and you will end up blending in, and there’s nothing hip about blending in. It’s tough because you thought you finally had the chance to jump on the hip bandwagon. Your logo is not the right channel for that, but you can always use a one-off campaign to do something trendy with your brand instead.
Hipster Logos
Creating a brand is only half the battle. Now you have to continuously keep building it. Over time, your brand requires carefully and well orchestrated crafting of one consumer message and marketing piece at a time. The truth is, this is where brands usually lose focus very early on. It’s time to KISS and make up. Our version of KISS (Keep it simple, stupid) is: Keep its soul, stupid!
As I have declared the death of the style guide in an earlier post, now that the brand is on its own two feet, there needs to be a constant reminder of why your brand came into existence in the first place. It’s about your brand’s soul and with all the talk about metrics, ROI and the latest shiny marketing gadgets being rolled out in front of your eyes, one tends to forget the why and instead focuses on the what. The what can feel like the sexier, easier and, often times, safer choice.
In a recent client meeting discussing creative round 1 of a website launch, the Marketing Team proudly shared our work for the first time with the CEO. She was delighted with the strategy and visuals, but having users go through a pop-over opt-in form prior to entering the site made her pause. ‘Whose decision was it to make the user go through this step prior to seeing our landing page?’, she asked, ‘Who was involved in that decision outside of our Marketing Team?’ The room fell into complete silence. For the duration of the project, the Marketing Team had been pushing for the form to take over the site prior to entering the site’s full content, in the hopes of receiving immediate ROI on the project upon launch. After a long pause, the CEO said ‘The only people who will like this idea is Marketing.’ It was an awkward, yet powerful moment as everyone in the room realized their error. If your project’s success is primarily measured by conversion rates, it may seem like a logical conclusion to push for the opt-in screen. However, this is the moment you lose sight of your brand’s soul. You no longer have your customer in mind first and foremost, instead your focus drifts towards your own success. That’s the time to take a step back and look at the brand’s broader success metrics, instead of the project brief.
In your next creative marketing project, we suggest you schedule 3 milestones labeled as “KISS” (Keep its soul, stupid) for the purpose of ensuring that your project stays in line with the brand’s soul. It is important to consider how a short-term campaign fulfills the brands’ values while also serving its long-term goals. Labeling them as “KISS” milestones will serve as a reminder of the true goal of the task. When it comes to brands, let’s keep its soul, stupid.
Benchmarks of a great name can be broken down into four distinct categories: 1) the name has significance and tells a story, 2) it has linguistic clarity and can be easily pronounced and spelled by the target audience, 3) the name is distinct and stands out amongst the competitors of your brand, and last but not least 4) it is marketable and has an available domain name. Refer to the below graphic where we explore the foundation of the Finien name.
CATEGORIES: Your Brand Launch: Naming
I proclaim the death of the style guide. For decades new brands have been equipped by their branding agencies with expensive and thorough style guides explaining how design elements, such as the logo, typography and brand colors shall and shall not be used. Most are obvious and none will be followed, so why continue with the tradition?
Style guides are an important part of keeping your newly formed visual identity in check, one may argue, but does anyone care about using, or more importantly, reinforcing them? Over the past 11 years of running my branding agency I learned that it is more of a pricey exercise of ‘feel good’ and ‘make believe’ than an actionable tool. It will be presented to your employees in a big setting and over a period of 6 months it will be completely neglected. There is employee turnover mixed with new media adaptations and suddenly the lengthy and hard to navigate PDF is lost in some complex folder infrastructure and only gets found – and referenced – in order to point fingers, not to creatively implement.
Looking at a very traditional brand manual from 1970 for the New York Transit Authority (of the great design legend Massimo Vignelli), one can appreciate the ideology and craftsmanship, and one might even buy into the need for it. It seems logical, after all you just spent a good chunk of your marketing budget on establishing the brand, or re-establishing an organization, but this is not 1970, this is 2013 and your employees are spreading your brand through tens, often hundreds of channels. Channels change daily and new company cultures have changed from top down to hands-on employee empowered brands.
We stopped creating style guides at Finien, instead we create Brand Atmosphere© books for our clients. We highlight the language of the brand and focus on the flexibility of the just established identity rather than restricting it from the get-go. Different chapters provide actionable insights to jump-start the thinking process for usage in specific media types, the ones that are important to your specific brand based on your positioning and target audience. We show examples, in lose sketch form, that provide your staff an idea of what makes the brand strong within certain applications, but allows them to think and implement the brand’s voice in their own ways. I believe that leading by inspiring examples and providing the right tools and empowerment over the new brand will result in a better culture and a better, consistently evolving brand for your new company. You need simple, actionable tools that not only ensure a consistent brand, but more so, tools that ensure the brand can grow and adapt to new media channels.
It’s time to kill the style guide and provide new brands with actionable tools.[Click to Tweet]
Will your logo have the correct amount of white space around it and not get stretched beyond belief without the style guide? Yes, I think it will. Times have changed and style guide books get thicker and pricier without addressing your needs.
Spend your budget wisely – if your agency places a style guide as a budget line item, ask them why you will need it, how you will implement it during employee turnover and media outlet changes, and more importantly how they ensure the guide will fit your company’s specific needs and culture? Let me know what they say.
Fabian Geyrhalter is the Principal of FINIEN, creating clarity for brand transformations.
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