What makes a name work? Think of your vendors, your competition, and even the brands that you buy in the store. What are the brand names that come to mind? Walgreens, Apple, Target, Colgate, Chevy, Nike.
Tagline – Doesn’t clarify industry or product.
A name should be short, descriptive, representative and memorable.
All transactions, in B-2-B or B-2-C arenas, begin with brand awareness. This can be as simple as a listing in the phonebook or a web search or as developed a personal referral from a current customer.
Descriptive Modifier decribes the brand's industry and product.
You can add a tagline to help describe the company or a descriptive modifier (or as we call it slogo) that works with your logo to clarify your company’s industry and/or purpose. It is important to remember that a tagline and descriptive modifier are not the same thing. The tagline is usually changed with different campaigns and is usually about the company’s service or vision while the descriptive modifier is integrated into the logo.
I heard this blaring from the radio on my way home the other day, “We know PRICE SELLS CARS!” This reminded me of a few things.
1) I hate commercials that scream at you. I turn down the volume or change the station. Either way, I tune the loud commercial out thus making that advertisement useless and a waste of money.
2) The car dealership doesn’t get it- relationships sell cars and if all you can sell is price than the only thing you can do is lower your price and be beat by price. This dealership can not afford to offer their customers nice benefits because they can’t afford it. Again, this is what we’ve been talking about a lot lately – do you want more money or more customers? You can’t take care of more customers the same way you take care of less customers for the same amount of money. If you want to be the premium brand and offer your customers nice benefits, cutting edge technology, superior customer service, vast expertise, etc. than you can not sell on price. You should be competition, but remember the cream rises to the top.
3) I hate this dealership because they don’t get it. My mother bought a car from this dealership in 1985 and it is engrained in me to never buy a car from them because the way they treat people. When my wife wanted a car from this manufacturer, we drove across town to a dealership 3 times farther away to even look at the car. Recently, my wife’s car needed to go into the shop and we were just minutes away from this dealership that yells on the radio and we debated not going to them because their lack of relationships.
Think about #2 & #3. Sometimes people doubt us or don’t get the importance of relationship selling and value pricing over transactional price selling. The example of my family not trusting this dealership after over 25 years is not a stretch. This happens everyday in business. What is worse for this dealership is that my mother alone has probably told over 100 people how bad that dealership was to her in the past 25 years and she is not the only upset previous customer of theirs. (Don’t fret business owners, she did tell the owner personally of her troubles before bad mouthing them, but he just blew her off making it even worse.) The flip side of this is that I enjoyed the experience of buying my truck and I have referred no less than 5 friends to my sales person, Vincent, in the past 3 years.
Can that dealership ever get my mother’s business again? Maybe, but they’d have to be the last car dealership on earth and they’d have to be giving away free cars.
I was reviewing some of my LinkedIn Construction Marketing group discussions and marketing blogs and one of them simply asked to share your construction marketing secrets. It got me thinking about what we discuss with our clients and even though each client is different with an unique set of challenges, audience, and strengths there is a common element. Read below for my response:
As a A/E/C marketing & design firm, we look at the company’s image & message. If a prospective client’s business is waning, I show them their website, business card & other marketing materials. Then I ask a simple question, “Would you work with this company?”
Brand image can build credibility when done right and reduce expectations if done wrong. Also, a strong brand reduces doubt on RFPs and positions an A/E/C firm as the expert thus charging more money for the same work.
I do understand that there is more to marketing than image, but the first thing that you need to do to get a prospect to stop and look is get their attention. That is Visual. If no one is interested in reading your grand marketing verbiage or incredible proposal because they haven’t stopped to look, than no one will know it exists. If you build it ugly, they may come, but they won’t look long enough to get the message.
This last line emanates with our marketing & design team, “If you build it ugly, they may come, but they won’t look long enough to get the message.”
The Construction Cone Monster has been a hit on our blog so we wanted to share more creations with you. We did some asking around and digging on the web and found some more creations. Being from Louisiana, I love this first one!
The office building here at The Brand Constructors’ HQ is getting a band-aid. Our building sprung a leak earlier this year and unfortunately it leaked over our 5-story atrium so repairs are not easily made. Here are a few pictures of life outside our office this morning.
In a recent episode of Build It Bigger (a Brand Constructor favorite), host Danny Forster introduces Signapore’s new Sky Park.
Although Singapore is one of the world’s smallest countries, it is looking at becoming the go to place for tourist and the Sky Park is the crowning jewel of the tourism movement. This project costs Marina Bay Sands Resort $5.5 Billion and construction delays could costs over $100 million a month. Talk about pressure.
The resorts signature landmark is the top, the Sky Park perched over three 55-story towers, complete with garden, pool, and one astronomical construction feet. Look how the ledge floats over the air sticking far out to one side.
Enjoy the pictures below that to some avid Google searches. Click the last image to see details on how they built the outcropping. It reminds me of the Huey P. Long Bridge big lift we discussed a few weeks ago.
I recently found a great article on USA Today’s app about the future of city life and it is thanks to visionaries and green construction practices. The article is about an exhibit of 10 major metropolitans in the year 2030 where you hardly see a car in the heart of New York City by creating green spaces and pedestrian malls similar to the recent move of turning Broadway into a pedestrian only area. I think the picture below is a move in the right direction. I know I enjoy the French Quarter here in New Orleans much more in the areas that are blocked off from traffic.
What are your thoughts for the future? Is green the way to go?
Toyota is trying to rebuild their image with their dedicated to safety. Their new TV commercials state they are spending over $1 million an hour to make their vehicles safer. Great!
What is irking me is their new STAR Safety System. The actual safety system is fine (as far as I know). What bothers me is the line in the commercial that says, “Every car comes with the STAR Safety System.” Why does this bother me you ask? What could be wrong with safety? Nothing is wrong with safety. My point is what in the world is the STAR safety system? Tell me about it. It really gets under my skin when XYZ company advertises that they are the only ones with the XYZ program. Really? I wouldn’t think your competitors would call their internal system after your company. Toyota hasn’t gone so far to say they are the only ones using the STAR system, but they do tiptoe around what the system actually is or how it helps us. We just know it comes on all of the cars, standard. For all we know, this miraculous safety system could be a pillow on the dashboard to protect your head in an accident.
What am I getting at? When you market your company, you should isolate the things that make you different, better, and more valuable. Saying, “We’re the best” does not cut it. Also, if the only thing making you different from your competition is a made up name of a system or program that everyone uses, then you have no reason to get new business. You’re just like the rest of them.
Our creative director, Adrienne Folse, wrote a great blog post on our parent company’s blog about how we save multi-location companies and companies with franchises a lot of money, time, and headaches. We develop a consistent and cohesive brand identity for the entire company instead of allowing each location to design their own marketing and communication pieces.
Besides the extra costs of developing separate brochures, trade show displays, and websites, a company with a disjointed brand also creates additional competition in the marketplace. Instead of having 10 competitors in a market, a company with 5 locations now has 14 competitors because the other 4 locations of their company look different and confuse prospective clients. Imagine if the McDonalds in your town had different colored arches like blue, green, orange, pink, and yellow. You would assume they are different companies.
We have one of the countries largest construction projects going on here in New Orleans. The Huey P. Long Bridge is in the midst of a major, 10-year widening project. This past weekend was the big lift of 2,650 tons of steel. View the time-lapsed video of the lift by click the photo below.
