A Logo Without Your Name... Can Be A Big Branding Pain!

I often get asked to develop a small business's logo as a symbol-only logo. But for many small businesses, this isn't the right choice for a couple of reasons.

Designing a symbol-only logo is a much more complicated (and often more expensive) process, because the symbol has to:

- Carry a lot more meaning - there's no text to help explain the business. It's important that your logo has some meaning and a role in explaining your business - and that's a lot for a little symbol to do all by itself.

- Be entirely unique all on its' own. I don't need to tell you that there are a whole lot of logos out there. A lot of the basic shapes - and even some of the more complicated ones - are already "owned" by big corporations. But you can still use variations or combinations of those shapes when they're designed into a logo with your company name.

- Communicate to your audience. The more obscure the symbol design that you create, the less likely that your customers will understand its meaning. Or they may interpret it incorrectly. Either way your clients will feel alienated - and that's never good.

If you do create a symbol-only logo, you'll have a couple of challenges with your brand identity:

- It will take a lot more time and effort to educate your target audience about your business. Think of all the symbol-only logos that are really memorable, like Nike or Apple. The reason that those are so memorable and well-known is that each of those companies has a very large advertising budget. They can afford to dedicate people and time to getting the word out. Their deep pockets build visibility and encourage recognition. Small businesses just don't have those kinds of resources.

- Trademark infringement can be more of a problem - from both sides of the fence. It can be very difficult for your designer to design a logo that won't look like any other trademarked logo out there, regardless how hard they try.

1. First of all, it's hard for a designer to comprehensively research all of the other trademarked logos just to see what you're up against. However, the Trademark Office has more thorough tools and methods of researching the other existing logos out there and they might find one that you overlooked.

2. Secondly, logos and trademarks can be a bit subjective. Just because you and your designer think that the design that you've created doesn't infringe on other logos, the Trademark Office might reject your application based on their interpretation of "similarity"

3. And you're not just worrying about what the Trademark Office thinks. Any other business with an existing trademark could also challenge your application. They can even ask you to cease-and-desist using your logo after it has been trademarked if they held their trademark to a similar logo first. While surrendering might not seem like such a bad thing, remember that you'd also have to destroy any existing printed collateral, forfeit your trademark (and the trademarking process isn't cheap!) and redesign all of your materials. You'll also lose the equity and memorability that you will have built up in your logo if you do have to redesign.

If you do finally manage to design and trademark a symbol-only logo, you'll have to be extra-vigilant about making sure that other companies don't design a mark that's similar to yours. You are ultimately responsible for "policing" your own trademark and will have to stay up-to-date on trademark applications.

Alternately, you could hire someone to keep an eye on new trademarks for you but that can be expensive.

You can easily avoid all of these complications by designing a combination logo that includes both a symbol and your company name. Once you've designed your combination logo, you should always use the components together. This helps avoid potential legal issues like those mentioned above.


About The Author
Erin Ferree is a brand identity and marketing design strategist who creates big visibility for small businesses. Through her customized marketing and brand identity packages, Erin helps her clients design effective websites that help them extend their brands, bring in new clients and make sales. http://www.elf-design.com/

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September 27th, 2007

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Great Logos – Make Your Stand Out From the Crowd

Great logo, innovative logo, creative logos are what all companies are searching for. How many are successful in the quest of such exemplary logo design.

How do you get a logo that makes your company stand out from the crowd? We see lots of examples of great logos. Pepsi, Coca Cola, City Bank, American Express, Starbucks, BMW, Harley Davidson etc. are very good examples of world famous and most recognized logos.

History of logos tells us that these world famous logos have gone through minor changes from time to time. But the main theme has however remained unchanged.

The changes that have occurred are mostly due to the change in customer behavior and shifts in standard of living or expansion of the target market.

A great logo is not only attractive but also descriptive enough to tell the purpose or nature of the company. A great logo makes a company memorable and serves as a symbol for it.

Elements that help in creating great logo design are:

• Your logo should be simple
• Fonts and size of fonts should be balanced
• Graphic design or image should be balanced with the fonts
• Color choice should be appropriate and consistent
• It should have the quality of been easily remembered
• Target Market preferences should always be kept in mind
• Standard of living and buying habits also play an important role
• Great creative logos deliver product image.
• It has to be unique

Hiring a professional logo designing company is always the right choice. Initially you might feel that the cost of designing a logo is high. Comparatively your investment in your great logo design is minimal than your investment in business, office, and products. You great creative logo can help you build your company’s image and stay with you for all time to come and make you stand out from the crowd.

Article Source: http://www.articlesnatch.com

About the Author:Jessica Field is a Professional Graphic Designer working to help small business entrepreneur for there design needs.

Importance of Branding: What's in a Name?

Branding is perhaps the most important facet of any business--beyond product, distribution, pricing, or location. A company's brand is its definition in the world, the name that identifies it to itself and the marketplace. A model may be beautiful, but without a name, she's just "that girl in that picture." Where would Norma Jean be without Marilyn Monroe, or who would imagine Coca-Cola as just a soft-drink manufacturer? A brand provides a concrete descriptor to customers and competitors alike, a name for a product or service to distinguish it from anything else. Bob may run a hobby shop, but trying to advertise as "The hobby shop a guy named Bob runs down the street a ways" is financial suicide. Each customer will have to describe the shop, who Bob is, and what the shop does every time someone asks about it. This makes the process of recommending a good hobby shop too much work for the average customer, and far too much work for a user looking for hobby shops on the Internet. A customer looking up Bob's hobby shop will have an easier time of it if he or she knows to refer to it as "Bob's House of Hobbies," and the customer can then refer others to Bob's hobby shop by name, increasing the potential advertising exponentially.

Developing a brand involves more than just picking a catchy name and placing an ad in the newspaper--a brand is more than a unique string of letters denoting a particular product; a successful brand is a mnemonic trigger that makes a consumer feel a certain way when the brand is thought of. For those who drink cola-flavored soft drinks, which is more appealing on a hot day: a cold cola soda, or an ice-cold Coke? Coca-Cola has spent 100 years developing their particular brand of cola-flavored soda as a refreshing beverage and a seminal representation of a market segment. Coca-Cola has used a combination of direct marketing, give-away techniques, and multi-product cross-branding to achieve maximum brand recognition and visibility in not only its immediately competitive market, but in markets as diverse as Coca-Cola branded race cars and house wares.

Brand loyalty is an integral part of building a brand, as consumers usually have a choice of products in the same market segment, and so a successful company will come up with a way to keep consumers re-buying their product or coming back to their location rather than going to a competitor. These brand loyalty-building efforts may come in the form of coupons, incentives such as many grocery chains' technique of "grocery discount cards" or "loss leaders," meant to draw consumers into the store, where they will hopefully buy products along with the discounted fare at a higher profit ratio. In exchange for these discounts and grocery cards, many companies collect information about buying habits and average spending amounts, the better to tailor advertisements and better-focus future promotional efforts. Once a consumer is hooked, brand loyalty tends to result in higher sales volume, as well as loyal customers being less sensitive to price changes of their favorite brands (within reason, of course), as well as less sensitive to competitors' incentives. Studies have shown that it takes 5 times as much money to gain a customer as it does to retain one. That's 5 times as much money as could have been spent on other things.

A brand is who your company is, and what it is selling--it is as important as naming a baby, and should require the same amount of effort to develop it, but if done well, can mature into a successful and profitable adult.

© 2005, Wholesale Pages UK. All rights reserved.

Article Source: http://www.articlesnatch.com

About the Author:William King is the director of UK Wholesale Suppliers, Wholesale Suppliers , Dropshipping Directory, and www.zameen.com Pakistan Property Portal. He has 18 years of experience in the marketing and trading industries and has been helping retailers and startups with their product sourcing, promotion, marketing and supply chain requirements.

How does branding help in retaining and getting repeat customers?

A great branding campaign is an asset to your business and is sure to pull in repeat business. Here are the reasons why:

Inspires trust: –
A branded product or service tends to inspire confidence in people because there is the perception that the quality of service will be higher. This is usually because the branding makes the product or service easily identifiable and it becomes more important to the business to maintain a good reputation. People tend to view unbranded products with a little bit of suspicion due to the pervasiveness of branding in every sector of business. Retaining customers is a factor of trust, a brand is able to create in their minds.

Builds brand identity: –
Customers associate a certain image with a brand name product or service so in one sense, a business without branding is a business with no identity. Once a customer has purchased a product or service from a business and is satisfied with it, branding allows the customer to locate the business easily again and get repeat business. For instance, if you were to eat the best ice cream in the world at a little drive by ice cream place, you’re not likely to remember its name, or anything beyond the taste of the product. But with branding, it is likely that you will remember some other little detail that will help you find the place again or locate it in your own town.

Know what to expect: –
Along with identity, a major portion of repeat customer business comes from satisfying and living up to a set standard each time. Branding suggests to the customer’s mind that you have established certain standards and will deliver on these every time you sell a product or service. This means that the customer has an idea what to expect and comes back for the same experience again. One of the functions of retaining a customer is to provide the same level of service and branding carries the connotation that you will do that.

Growth with branding: –
Branding can be an essential part of the growth of a business. It is the backbone of expansion simply due to the fact that it provides you the opportunity to use the good image that you already have in place and replicate your success. For instance, going back to the earlier example, if you were to eat this great non-branded ice cream, you’d probably rave about it and then forget it after a while. If you were to eat one that was branded, you’d probably notice the next time you passed another ice cream place with the same branding and then become a repeat customer. You’d know that you could get this product at different places and would look for it closest to your own home.

Aspirational brands: –
In case of lifestyle brands, the repeat sale is about the experience and branding makes all the difference in retaining customers in this section of the market. If you are able to sell a great experience to the customer along with a great product or service, the customer is sure to come back and give you repeat business.

Article Source: http://www.articlesnatch.com

About the Author:William King is the director of UK Wholesalers & Dropshipping Supplies Directory, Dropshippers supplies and dropshipping trade directory, Pakistan Properties & Real Estate Property Portal, and www.australiawholesalers.com Australian Wholesalers & Australia Dropshipping Wholesale Directory. He has 18 years of experience in the marketing and trading.