Corporate Eye

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Branded Domain Name Extensions are Coming with a Big Price Tag

Branded Domain Name Extensions are Coming with a Big Price Tag

Branded domain names could be available as early as 2009 through ICANN.  There will be financial and technical requirements that must be met by anyone applying for their own top-level domain.  In fact, it’s being speculated that these new domains could cost at least $100,000.  Instead of .com or .org and so on, you might start seeing websites with branded domains such as .McDonalds or .Microsoft by 2010.

When you think about it, a $100,000 price tag is nothing in comparison to the brand value that a branded domain offers.  It seems like a simple decision for companies to make – invest in your branded domain ASAP! [Read more…] about Branded Domain Name Extensions are Coming with a Big Price Tag

Is Your Brand Ready for Mobile Advertising?

“Mobile Ad Spending Set to Soar”

That’s the headline from an article from eMarketer last week.  According to a study by Strategy Analytics, brands across the globe are prepared to invest more than double what they spent in 2008 on mobile advertising in 2009 – from $1.0 billion in 2008 to $2.4 billion in 2009.  Is your brand ready for the ad spending shift?

The vast majority of that money is expected to be invested in mobile message advertising with much smaller sums invested in mobile search advertising and mobile display advertising. [Read more…] about Is Your Brand Ready for Mobile Advertising?

Branding and Disaster Planning

Most companies have a disaster plan in place that gives step-by-step instructions for all employees to follow in case something terrible happens, such as a flood at the headquarters location, loss of power for several days, and more.  Whatever the disaster may be (and let’s hope one never occurs), all employees are given a copy of the disaster plan instructions and told to bring it home and keep it in a safe place.

Business disaster plans are one thing, but what about brand disaster plans?  I’m thinking of disasters that can affect brands in all industries.  For example, consider the poisoned Tylenol incident in the United States in the 1980s.  More recently, toys manufactured with lead paint and foods that carry e-coli and other bacteria have made it to consumers’ hands bringing far more than negative publicity to the companies behind those brands.  While some of these brand disasters are bigger than others, they can all still be called disasters of some sort. 

That leads me to my question.  Do you have a disaster plan for your brand?  You never know what might happen in today’s world.  There are so many external forces at work in a global economy that developing a brand disaster plan isn’t that unusual of an idea.  What would you do if something terrible happened to your brand?  Could your company survive a branding disaster?  Make sure it can by planning for the worst now.

Image: Flickr

The New Corporate Brand Strategy

I read an article on Brandweek today about Unilever’s decision to sell its laundry care division in North America, which includes popular brands such as All, Snuggle, Wisk, Surf and Sunlight.  According to Unilever’s spokesperson, Anita Larsen, the sale will allow Unilever to focus its efforts on growing its core brands.  I can understand that much, but what concerned me as I read this article was the suggestion that Unilever’s decision is in line with a current trend of large corporations ditching brands that aren’t market leaders. 

Apparently, the new strategy is this: if a brand leads the market, keep it.  If a brand is second or lower in market share, get rid of it. [Read more…] about The New Corporate Brand Strategy

Turn Brand Negatives into Brand Positives

Is there an aspect of your brand that is viewed negatively by consumers?  If so, it’s quite possible that your brand negative could be repositioned or recommunicated to become a brand positive.  Remember, much of branding and marketing is about consumer perception.  How do consumers perceive your brand, and what is its position in the marketplace relative to other brands?  By massaging consumer perception, you can turn threats into opportunities.

Take a brand like Listerine for example.  Listerine has battled a negative brand image as a mouthwash with a terrible taste since the day it arrived on the market.  In fact, the taste is so awful and the mouthwash is so strong that people have difficulty rinsing for the required 30 seconds recommended on the Listerine label. [Read more…] about Turn Brand Negatives into Brand Positives

Communicating Your Brand to Your Customers

I invited Rachel to write a post for us today about ensuring that your employees are successfully communicating your brand to your customers.

4 Ways to Improve Your Employees’ Communications with Customers

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In corporate communications or marketing departments, employees are trained to communicate professionally. However, most company employees won’t have this same training. To boost your company’s communications, image and relationships with outside customers, clients, vendors and suppliers use the following tips.

Make Branding Accessible

Create a branding guide or “brand bible” to send out to company employees. This guide should show employees examples of how to present information to those outside the company (and inside as well). Will they be showing PowerPoint presentations to potential clients? Show them what a main screen should look like with logo placement, appropriate fonts, etc. Also include several examples of what internal slides could look like. Having a template to follow eliminates mistakes and consistently presents your company brand to the outside world. Create templates for email shout-outs, email signatures, presentations, company branded products (like pens, t-shirts, etc.) and more and give plenty of examples of how these pieces should look.

In addition to the branding guide, place the example templates referenced above in a shared space easily accessible to company employees. Whether that be a drop box location or company internal drive, make sure employees know where to find these files so they can easily create their communications pieces using the right branding.

Hold a Communications Crash Course

Eliminate communication faux-pas by hosting an internal communications crash course. This course should be short (think lunch-hour brown bag seminar) but give helpful, easy to implement advice to employees. To help the principles stick, give the employees a takeaway. This can be a worksheet with helpful links to websites that review grammar, examples of “the good, the bad and the ugly” as far as emails go, etc. Make the course fun and engaging to inspire employees to reread or review their communications and see what they can do to make them better.

Set the Right Example

Is there an internal company newsletter? Or email blasts going out to all employees? Make sure these pieces adhere to the company branding and practice good communications skills. Making sure all communications employees receive from the company executives, human resources and communications departments helps establish the status quo and will give employees another example to look to when crafting their communications to those outside the company.

Provide Correction when Appropriate

Maybe you’ve had a client or customer complain about inappropriate or informal communications. Or perhaps you were copied on an email that wasn’t professional. Either way, when a glaring mistake occurs, take the opportunity to provide feedback on how to improve. While these situations can be tricky to handle, it’s better to set the right tone for your company’s communications.

Speak with the employee and consider involving the employee’s manager (if escalation is necessary). Provide some one on one instruction to ensure the mistake doesn’t happen again.

Following these guidelines can set your company on the right track to having consistent, professional communication with those you do business with—something that can help establish your brand and image.

Rachel works for Built For Teams; intuitive HR software which helps businesses to succeed by encouraging employee growth.