Brave Brands Archives

Branding: Be Different, Be Brave!

Do you want to beat your competition? Do you really want to be the winner in your market?

Then you need to be clear on why people should choose you rather than the others.

Typical answers to the question “why should I choose you over your competitors?” are things such as:

“We are better”
“We have better customer service”
“We have better quality products”

These kinds of answers just aren’t going to cut it. Better according to who? According to what standards? Of course we should always aim to give our customer the best we can, within the confines of our positioning in the market. If we are going to be the cheapest, we are not going to provide luxury quality, but we can aim to provide the best quality within our affordable price range. But there is a fundamental flaw in choosing “better” as the main reason for choosing you over the competition. First of all, there are no universal standards as to what is considered good, better or best, it is all relative and it is all in the eye of the beholder. Secondly, these kinds of things can be imitated. If you are doing or providing something better than the competition, they can study you and copy what you are doing. They may not always succeed, but they will definitely try, and may very well succeed. So whilst I am not saying you should not aim to be the best at what you do (you should!) I am simply saying, that it is extremely unlikely that this is enough and you need more.

So why should people choose you over your competitors?

Simple. [Read more…]

Dare to Be PINK – a brave brand!

Have you seen my upcoming book, Marketing Untangled: The Small Business & Entrepreneur’s Map Through the Marketing Jungle? It’s undeniably pink.

Recently I was chatting to a friend on Facebook. Rather than retell the conversation, I’m going to write it as is (well, translated, as it was in Icelandic, so won’t make much sense to most people.) ;)

My friend: “New book looking really good, the cover is SOLID and really makes one curious. Just one thing that surprised me…

And I’m still trying to make sense of …”

Me: “Aha – what?”

My friend: “The cover is just so very PINK… Is it supposed to be like that?”

Me: “Ooooooooooooo yes!”

My friend: “Oh… Thought maybe the printers had made a mistake… Joking!” [Read more…]

I Love It When People Can’t Stand Me!

I met a friend and former colleague the other day. She asked me what reaction I had got to my last blog post and email I sent out to my followers. The reason she asked was that someone had come to her and expressed her dislike. That person did not know how to react to my email, whose subject was: “No one wants to be an ass, do they, …?” It was clear that this person was offended by this.

My friend did ask them whether they had actually read the email, and it turns out that they did not, so there was no way they were going to get the joke – oh well…

My reaction: Sheer joy! I thought it was great! OK – please don’t get me wrong. It was not my intention to make that person feel bad in any way and I am sorry for that. However, I am very very happy when someone really hates the stuff that I do. Why? Because if someone hates it, it is more likely than not that someone completely loves it! And that is what I want.

Eenie Meenie Miney Moe

I have said it before and I’ll say it again. Marketing is all about building relationships. The stronger a relationship you* can forge the more likely people are to buy from you, buy from you again and to create more business by telling others about you. You want some people to hate you and others to love you. Let’s be realistic – no everyone is going to love you – it’s just not possible! Those that love you will not want to do business with anyone else but you, and those that don’t, well, if they hate you enough, you will definitely be talked about ;)

If everyone thinks you’re just ok, you* won’t matter enough to people for them to choose you over anyone else. If you are ok, and that one is ok and the other one is ok as well, people may as well use eenie-meenie-miney-moe to choose who they do business with. Or even worse, make their choice solely based on price – and that is when business will start to get really tought!

* please note that when I say “you” that refers to your business, product or service – but can also refer to you yourself if you are what you are marketing.

Be Pink!

[Read more…]