1. We Get To See Success First-Hand
With small businesses, there’s just not a lot of red tape. I understand that you could work for a company of just about any size and develop good relationships, but with a small business, specifically, you really get to see their success first-hand. There’s such a feeling of satisfaction when we know that our work has made a difference in their bottom line.

2. We Have the Opportunity to Educate and Lead
About half of the small businesses we work with have little-to-no experience with branding. This provides a great opportunity for us to educate our clients and lead them through the process of defining, and building their brand. Then, we get to watch them experience the difference that good branding makes, not just for sales and marketing, but also for developing culture within their business, and often, sparking a new passion for their business. There’s just nothing like watching someone learn something new, and then apply it. We thing it’s pretty darn special.

3. The Feeling of Being a Valued Resource
When we help small businesses, nine times out of ten, we end up as their ultimate resource for marketing, branding and design. We help our clients with everything from strategy, to naming, logo design, website design and development, social media, SEO, and more. It’s a lot of fun to work on the big-picture level, and also work on the small details of a brand for a small business. We’re an important resource for our clients and that is extremely rewarding.

Sometimes we think it’s good to remind yourself why you got into business in the first place. Can you think of three reasons you love to do what you do? Feel free to comment on what you do, and why you love doing it! Maybe writing it out will help remind you of why you got started in business in the first place!

Once we got in, we were handed a program printed on newspaper, and yet again, was a completely different logo on the cover – this one was completely different than the other two I had seen on the street sign and the website. It was a lot more fun and festive looking, but it also looked kind of like clipart. Take a look at the two main differences of the festival logos:

Why use two logos for one event? It was pretty clear upon visiting the website, and then seeing the mis-matched signage and program that the festival not quite sure how to brand itself yet. There was no real message or tagline that informed me as to who they are or what they’re about that gave me any kind of emotional connection with the festival.

The logo that was used on the website had more of a modern and reserved look, but the one on the actual program, as you can see was completely different. The festive one was colorful, playful and fun, while the other logo was contemporary, and more business looking. Surely they could have stuck a balance between the two and just found one solution. I searched all across their site and found no use of the more festive logo, however, I did see that on the page about their 5K race, they were still using last year’s logo.

Developing a compelling message and consistently utilizing it across all mediums is critical to creating a memorable brand identity and building brand awareness. In this economy you have to utiize every dollar effectively. Not only does a consistent identity help to create awareness, but it also gives the impression that you are organized and have a clear vision. Are you using your brand identity consistently across all mediums and experiences? If not, you’re wasting time, money and brand equity.

So how do you use your identity consistently?
One way that has been used in many corporations for years is to develop a brand standards guide. This is typically a book, or .pdf file that contains your brand history, brand attributes, and logo in all acceptable uses, pantone colors, all acceptable fonts, a consistent grid in which your pages are structured with, among other things. These can be an investment up front to develop, as they do take some time, but the payoff is that you’ll have a guide in which to use across all vendors, mediums and experiences that will keep your brand consistent and build brand equity. When you develop a brand standards guide, you’ll not only create a unified look and feel, but you’ll create a consistent compelling message that people will recognize and remember.

This was the beautiful box of botticelli chocolates that stole my heart (for about 2 minutes).

The box was absolutely beautiful – everything from the logo, with it’s well, designed, whimsical, swirly B mark, to it’s uniquely shaped enclosure, to the fancy embossing and beautiful little shots of the “Dark Delectables” on the box. It just jumped right off the shelf (and into my hands!). I was even more excited to see a 2 for $12 (although that probably should have been my first clue).

Upon opening the box, I was surprised. The the chocolates themselves were far from “Delectable.” They were just your average chocolates and really nothing special, like the beautiful packaging had led me to believe. Now, if you’re wondering if I ate them…of course I did! It’s a box of chocolates man! Will I buy them again…nah.

My point is, excellent design can absolutely help you win an initial customer or client, but it cannot keep them. You must deliver on your brand’s promise, whether that’s serving up “Illuminated Chocolates” or telling people “When You’re Here, You’re Family.”  Are you finding that despite having good design at work in your business that things aren’t panning out? Maybe it’s time to take a survey about your products or services. Maybe it’s time for an introspective look at whether or not you’re really delivering on your promise. Do you even know what your promise is?

If you’ve got a great product or service, good design can help win new business and make a great first impression – actually delivering on your brand’s promise is up to you.

PS – Excellent job on the design and branding for botticelli by Struck.

I hope you’ll find it informative, entertaining, and useful!
To start off, I’m going to be doing a three-part series called “Shoestring Branding – How to Effectively Build Your Brand in a Down Economy.”

Here’s what we’ll cover:

Be sure to either subscribe to the RSS feed (look in your browser’s address window on the right-hand side for the orange icon), or check back in mid February for our first portion of “Shoestring Branding – How to Effectively Build Your Brand in a Down Economy.”