Brands like Apple, Oprah, Harley-Davidson, Ikea and Southwest Airlines have made their competition irrelevant through brand communities they have helped nurture over the years. But why do brand communities form? And what can we learn about them?

Psychologist Jenny Lee, a brand consultant at The Cult Branding Company, explores the social and psychological motivators that fuel the development of brand communities in a compelling new white paper.

The white paper titled, “Why We Join: A Sociological and Psychological Analysis of Brand Communities,” along with an illustrative presentation can be downloaded freely here.

Here are seven steps to take in order to create a cult brand:

1. Determine how customers are emotionally connected with your brand
2. Determine what your brand symbolizes in the minds of your best customers
3. Support the community so that it reinforces psyhological attraction customers have towards your brand
4. Whenever possible create a space where your customers can meet and interact with one another – either in person or online
5. Sponsor social events that reflect your brand’s mission
6. Set up conditions for a fun, playful environment where friendships can be made
7. Don’t control community. Instead participate as a co-creator

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So the question arises here how much you should pay for a logo? Answer of this question is difficult, because there are several factors behind it. Now, let’s see what are the major factors which influence the cost of your logo?

Price should not be the first consideration

Price is often considered first while going for a custom logo design. It is fine if you go for a cheap logo design. But think before how much importance a logo can have for your business. Your logo is going to be placed on the mediums like stationary, website, promotional material and so on. These marketing collaterals make your customer comes into contact with you and builds an image about your company. Therefore, spending very low amount may not be reasonable, but spending thousands of dollars also doesn’t make sense. The better option is to spend in between $100 to $500. You will possibly use your logo for at least 10 years, and if you divide cost with the number of months, it only comes out to a few dollars a month. By having these thoughts in mind it is clear that price should not be considered as the major factor among other important aspects.

Must check the Level of Service

Service level should be considered on top while selecting a logo design service. It’s usually depends on the package you select. The more you pay the more service options you will get. The service level of a company can be determine by the number of designers who will design your logo, the number of round of revisions (requests for changes), and the number of initial concepts provided at first round. In addition, money back guarantee is also an important element that should be considered if you don’t like the design or if they don’t deliver your work on time.

Design quality is one important factor

Design quality is one other major factor that determines the worth of your logo. If you are agreed on paying $1000, it means you also make sure to get the value of your money back in shape of a great design. To assure the quality of design, you should check out the design portfolio of the company, the testimonials written by the customers, and the experience and knowledge they have about logo designing.

Location of a company saves you from future consequences

Company’s location provides great deal of advantages to the business owners. If you hire any designer who is located outside your country, for example, China or India, it would nearly impossible for you to take legal action against him if you unluckily come under the case of trademark infringement. Moreover, a design company which is located in the country same as yours, it is an advantage for you because they can understand the need of the local market, and at the end you will get a logo according to your local marketplace.

Remember

considering price, hiring a logo designer, and getting the final formats – for all this you pay some amount that may be higher or lower, but besides designing, your logo is that element which give your company an identity, therefore no matter how much you pay but if you don’t get your logo according to your business and target market, all the money you spend will be wasted. Hence, spend considerable amount of time on searching a suitable logo design company before hiring one.

This is guest post from Ben Johnson of Logoinn, custom logo design service provider based in UK.

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One thing that both these natures of brand have in common: ultimately they depend on the values, integrity and effectiveness of the organization that creates the brand. If the brand is a promise of a level of quality, you can’t break the promise with immunity, especially in a digitally amplified world of blogs, forums and buzz. Each of the “promise” brands I used as examples, GM, United and Microsoft, stand in danger of their promises losing all meaning with customers. A promise is only as good as the level of trust you’ve built with the recipient.

But if the brand is a religion, the culture of the organization becomes even more important. Irrational decision factors run amok: the perceived culture of the organization, how the brand label connects with who we are, the social circles it places us it, or the circles we wish it would place us in, the values the company stands for, the exclusivity of the brand. The brand relationship becomes a complex stew of beliefs and emotions. We only make this investment for brands that hold a unique position in our mindscape. We feel we have to get as much from the brand as we’re willing to give it in terms of our emotional loyalty. And if a brand doesn’t reciprocate, it is quickly downscaled from a religion to a passing fancy.

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The HTC brand was already there among its users. A few years ago we started to put the HTC logo on the phones. We basically formalized the brand recognition on the physical product.

Let me share with you how we think about brand. There is a very important difference between brand value and brand recognition. Brand value means something to the end user. Brand recognition, all it means is a bunch of advertising to make people recognize the brand name. At HTC we care about brand value, not brand recognition. Building brand value is like earning respect; you have to earn respect, you cannot buy respect.

The brand value vs. brand recognition point is generally true. But in certain markets (either geo or in terms of products) you might not have the time, the patience and the resources to wait for the recognition to come from the market in an “organic” way. Without a push on the recongnition pedal, you might not have the chance to put the brand value in customers hands. Definitely what a brand is looking for mainly is value. Value for the customer, for the brand itself or for the company that owns it. But I don’t think you should leave aside, by all means, the recognition effort. 

via

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I mentioned here the much discussed Pepsi Rebranding.

Fast Company revealed a leaked pdf that outlines the thinking behind the controversial new Pepsi logo.

If with this the designer team is trying to get excuses for their results and 5 months of working or the million dollar invoice, then they should listen to what everybody comment on this: it is a lame excuse.

Mixing gravitation in the Pepsi galaxy, energy fields, relativity of space and time, some mythical perfect proportions, some da Vinci Code and some smiley faces the document is trying, without a final conclusion, to make us stand up in ovation by the end of the reading.

Well, we will stand up…. And leave.

Download the document here.

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In an era of slow growth, tight margins, and fckle consumers, the key to success is to differentiate. One critical element in successfully differentiating is communicating that difference to consumers. Hence, branding will require special attention from retailers who want to stand out from the crowd. 

Aside from specialty apparel and luxury retailers, branding has not always been seen as important for retailers—especially those that sell food and other mass products. Yet for these retailers, branding has never been more important. 

Today’s most successful retailers typically have one of two attributes. First, there are those with the most effcient supply chains, which translates into lowest costs and prices. However, there are those retailers that do not attempt to match low-price leaders and have succeeded by managing their brands and demonstrating to consumers why they are different.

Read all Deloitte reports on retail in 2009 here

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Fast Magazine published in an article their choice of best and worst brand extensions of last year:

Top best extensions:

• Coppertone sunglasses
• Mr. Clean Performance Car Washes
• Juicy Crittoure (a pampered pet line of doggie duds)
• Zagat physician ratings

Worst extensions:

• Burger King men’s apparel
• Kellogg’s hip-hop streetwear
• Kanye West trip-booking web site
• La-Z-Boy spas

Full article here.

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I honestly consider it one of the ugliest rebrands, redesigns of a logo, I have ever seen.  The letters which take on different weights, colors and textures are sending me the message of a unfinished draft logo on a designer table that still has long way to go until done.

Animal Planet Logo Change

All these even though the new logo was designed by Dunning Eley Jones, a London-based design firm with plenty of experience in TV branding.  I am just curious if any of my readers here, see any of the message in this logo.

The lucky thing is that the Discovery Channel logo change wasn’t such a failure, on the opposite.

Discovery Channel Logo Change

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Think of your brand as a promise … a promise you make to your clients, prospects, employees, and even your vendors. But before you make that promise, be sure you never forget this fact. It is imperative that you are able to back it up. You cannot build a successful, long-term brand on unsupported claims and wishful thinking. History is littered with companies — big and small — that have promoted themselves or their products as something they would like to have lived up to but could not.

To separate you from your competition, your brand — your promise — has to differentiate you from others in the minds of your prospects. This is the reason you cannot use quality, integrity, or price when positioning yourself in your marketplace. So many companies claim to offer these particular characteristics that none of them stand out from the others. BMW has taken note of this. Although it is thought by many to be the best car made, the company has built its brand as “a driving machine.” It sells the experience. BMW knows that there are other high quality cars on the market, so a brand built on quality would be diluted and therefore, less profitable.

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The most important elements of a brand should be:

Brand Position

• Who is addressed by company’s branded products or services. What the company does and for whom
• The company’s unique value and how customers benefit from products and/or services
• Key competitive differentiators, what makes the brand be chosen, be different from its competitors

Brand Promise

• The ONE most important thing that the brand promises to deliver to its customers — Every time!
• What customers and partners should expect from every interaction, how should they feel as brand’s customers

Brand Personality

• What the brand is to be known for
• Personality traits that customers, partners, and employees use to describe the company. What comes to the (potential) customer’s mind when addressed about the brand

Brand Story

• The company’s history and how the history adds value and credibility to the brand
• A summary of products/services/solutions

Brand Associations

• Physical artifacts: name, logo, colors, taglines, fonts, imagery
• Ideally, it must reflect the all the above statements about the brand and the company

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