When BrightBox begins a project, we begin to craft not only an image but a story to go with it. A brand is much better at creating an emotional connection if it has the elements of a story. BrightBox is headed up by its founders Jason Arcemont and Patrick McDonough (protagonists). We constantly seek to establish ourselves as the best branding firm in the world (goal and motivation). Sometimes issues arise from the business environment (conflict), but we work to proactively prevent them and deal with them as they come (plot development).

McDonald’s has characters, complete with a protagonist (Ronald McDonald), sidekick (Grimace), minor characters (such as occasional talking fries) and even a villain (the Hamburglar). They have a theme (“Lovin’ It”), a scene (complete with large pictures of food and a playground for the kiddies) and props (Happy Meal toys).

McDonald’s isn’t just business. It’s theater.

Disney is a never-ending story. The spokesman for the company is psychologically layered mouse with a cute girlfriend, a dog that walks on two legs as a best friend and an 83-year-history full of some of the most famous plots of all time. The franchise runs out pirates, ghosts, adventurers, aliens, princesses, talking animals and robots every day to please the masses that crowd its high-price theme parks.

Not all companies have quite the need to lay it on as thick as either of these two companies. H&R Block hardly needs Puppet Staff Member Arthur the Accountant to do its bidding on primetime TV.

Yet H&R Block has its own narrative. Originally, the organization was named after the Bloch Family.

Right there, you have characters in the history of the company.

You may have noticed that the Bloch family did not spell its name the same way H&R spells the second half of its name. This was done on purpose; the Bloch family used Block as an early marketing decision, showing business savvy and practicality (character traits) to secure a long history (plot) in the tax market.

In fact, there are plenty of companies using narrative to their advantage.

The Houston Dynamo are a Professional sport team who plays a game where you can only use your feet (soccer) but are owned by a man (Oscar De La Hoya) who made his career in a sport where you can only use your hands (boxing). Like their owner, they have a championship under their belts.

Michael Dell started Dell Computers at the University of Texas and stuffed his dorm room full of computers (scene). He wanted to go independent and start Dell Computers rather than finish school (goal). Dell’s parents told him if he could make $100,000 in his first year, he could drop out (conflict and plot point). The rest is history (resolution).

Facebook actually had a freaking movie made about it. If that’s not using a narrative, then nobody is.

No matter what your company does, there is something interesting about you.

Consider these five ways of using the narrative to build your brand.

#1 CHARACTERS
Is your company founded by a high energy tycoon like Mark Cuban? Do you have a priest on staff? What is unusual about your crew that would stand out as a character profile?

#2 SETTING
This means both electronic and physical settings. How can you change your office or your website to better incorporate your image into your business? What can you change visually? Should you alter the sounds in the office to include more music? More silence? How is the temperature in the building?

#3 DIALOGUE
Talk to your clients and your employees, and always seek to upgrade the chatter to more and more creative levels. Take care in your messaging. What’s written is law.

#4 MOTIVATION
What new journeys will your company go on in the near future? How can you publicize your greatest adventures? What will you say to your audience to let them know what you want to accomplish?

#5 PROPS
Is your logo solid? Do you have a cool app you can show your audience? Jingle? What actual devices can you use to hook people in?

The business landscape is much like a city street. Getting noticed isn’t easy. The average consumer is drowning in commercials, telemarketing calls, spam emails, news articles, billboards, coupons, PSAs, sales pitches, sweepstakes, popups…

Information overload! How on Earth are you supposed to claw through all of that mess and find your market?

BrightBox is here to help. Our clients often come to us with a novice understanding of communication and leave with the tools they need to find customers and capture their attention and imagination.

For your company’s personal mission, consider these ten aspects of branding meant to get you into the mind of the consumer.

#1 CONSISTENCY

Speaking to someone in a single voice and still managing to get their attention is hard enough. Speaking in fifty different voices makes you look like a crazy person, simultaneously frightening and confusing your potential audience. Make your messages similar.

#2 UNIQUENESS

No business is exactly like yours. Standing out means using a name, approach and swagger that sets you apart from the competition. Apple is a computer company, not a fruit distributor. Think about what is unusual about you and how you can use that to stand out from the pack.

#3 BEAUTY

The prettiest dog in the show is usually the one that gets the prize. Make your brand appealing in the most basic human sense. Draw in your customers with charming presentation to stand out from the drab, predictable, cookie cutter scripts cranked out by many major American businesses.

Also keep in mind that this means more than just “looking cool.”

#4 PERSISTENCE

Maybe this one is obvious, but never give up. Just because your one person in your market doesn’t respond to you doesn’t mean the market is cooked. Just because one market doesn’t respond to you doesn’t mean you won’t find another. For that matter, just because your first attempt falls flat doesn’t mean your next one will. Be willing to fail. It happens.

#5 VERSATILITY

Some people prefer to communicate electronically, through social networking sites and email. Others are much more inclined to phone calls and face to face meetings. Your company can and should do it all. Flexible communication makes for less missed opportunities.

#6 MODERNITY

It’s 2012. Without a website and company email addresses, your business runs the risk of looking like a Victorian dress company. “Old” is not usually a good adjective in the business world.

#7 PROFESSIONALISM

One common aspect of almost every consumer is that they hate to be taken by “fake it ‘til you make it” wannabes looking to make a quick buck with little effort and even less skill. Fortunately, that’s not you. You’re a dynamic, gang-busting outfit that can fill real needs. If you aren’t, go get educated before pitching your services. Consumers can smell the difference between amateurs and professionals.

#8 EMOTION

Is McDonald’s the best hamburger in the world? Probably not. But people are still “Lovin’ it”. Nike tells you to go out and be a world beater: “Just Do It.” Visa is “Everywhere you want to be.” Love. Persistence. Want. These are states we can all relate to. Try to frame your company in a way that reaches the deepest heart strings of your market.

#9 STABILITY

Heaven forbid you finally do reach your consumer and actually draw them into picking up the phone and giving you a phone call… and you never call them back! A good company is like a good friend: Solid, supportive, stable and reliable. Consumers need comfort, not uncertainty.

#10 LEGITIMACY

Moral, ethical businesses are the only ones surviving these days. If you break the rules, you will eventually wind up in the social or legal slammer. Keep your business clean. Treat people well. Tis better to be the superhero than the villain. Reap the rewards of corporate responsibility.

BrightBox Brand Design has always been focused on brand and design strategy, creating a machine meant to drive on the interactive process between strategic and creative work. That machine carried the company into a realm of unprecedented success. With the networking, outreach and graphics efforts of Jason Arcemont and Patrick McDonough, BrightBox grew from a two-man start-up to a $4.5 million company in four years.

This year, BrightBox ranked 230^th on the Inc. 500 List of America’s fastest growing companies, an honor bestowed on businesses with awe-inspiring growth.

But BrightBox, as a strategic brand, acts strategically to further its branding efforts. No company is perfect, and good entrepreneurs and brand managers know to always keep an eye out for improvements that can be made.

In this case, the move that made sense was a merger. BrightBox has now added the incredible advantage of diversity and revenue power with its mutual merger with Pop Labs, one of the world’s leaders in online and internet digital and interactive marketing. As social media evolves and becomes more complex, BrightBox has now built a creative and strategic partnership with a company whose elements will work in a symbiotic, complementary fashion to create a better business.

Pop Labs, who recently made the Inc. 500 for the fourth straight year by growing 176% in that same time period, is run by exposure king Gene McCubbin. McCubbin’s ability to network and represent the new creative company is a larger representation of what Pop Labs brings to the table. Because BrightBox and Pop Labs are both unique companies, their intersection will lead to its own unique, multidimensional, personable brand with the tools to compete as image ambassadors for any company in the world.

This theme is this: Keep an eye out for business opportunity. Partnerships evolve over time to account for circumstances, but a proactive approach to building yourself a more competitive scenario or set of tools is always preferable to waiting with uncertainty for what comes next.

Use the BrightBox-Pop Labs merger as an inspirational example of how to improve your current business standing.

BrightBox is built on the backs of its employees and its clients. Part of keeping our clients happy is keeping our employees happy. When our employees are having a good day, they perform better for our clients. Business is largely based on the ability of people to connect and perform in a holistic way to create the best, most comprehensive service for anyone on the market or part of a potential market.

BrightBox wants our employees to remain creative and steadfast in their endeavors inside and outside the company:

-Our graphic designers have large, fully-equipped creative spaces in-house.

-Our writers often pound out press releases at local Bohemian coffee-shops.

-We talk to our staff members constantly, and brainstorm continuously throughout the week.

-Our sales staff is kept up to date with the latest communication components.

-Our founders speak to one another consistently about how to better help their employees.

In doing so, we get far better results in service to our customers.

Some of the steps we have taken have been so simple that even the average manager could easily master them. When BrightBox initially launched ShowBox Exhibits, BrightBox CEO Jason Arcemont put up large, awesome-looking posters of the company logo throughout the workspace and changed the energy of the workspace into a more energetic place. ShowBox is now cruising, and it’s in no small part due to this gesture and several others like it.

Great companies understand that employees need room to grow and flourish. Give your artists just a bit of space and they’ll make such spectacular content you’ll need to give them even more space to work with. Keep them shut away and you’ll cramp their style and their output.

Many of the best companies in the world offer that treatment:

-Google tells its engineers to spend 20% of their time on creative projects, lets employees bring dogs to work, has awesome on-site restaurants and covers massages.

-Starbucks offers all employees paid vacation and sick leave, subsidized health benefits, stock options and a 401(k) plan.

-MillerCoors employees in Milwaukee and Chicago both have awesome bars located on site so employees don’t have to go far for a happy hour with the freshest beer in the whole city.

And what do a techie, a barista and a brewer have in common?

They’re all employees with somewhat artistic jobs at awesome, successful companies.

Of course, you probably can’t afford an amusement park and Porsches for everyone from the President to the interns. What you can do is follow a few incredible simple steps to make life easier for everyone in the company.

#1 OFF DAYS

This one will seem obvious to some and absurd to others. We can hear it now:

“You want me to decrease the amount of man hours in my company? In THIS economy?”

Yes. If you are a company that hasn’t had a weekend since 2009, now is the time to take a few days. If you have done your job properly in creating a solid organization, your employees will want to work for you. If they’re overworked and underpaid, you will get what you pay for.

#2 HEALTH

If you have the money and the space, consider getting a gym. If not, consider working out a deal for a discount with a local gym. Get the crew massages. For those that can’t do strenuous physical activity, offer them decent food options rather than a consistent option to run out and grab a to-go order of deep-fried bacon-wrapped shrimp-stuffed bon-bons. Encourage an atmosphere of physical comfort.

#3 GEOGRAPHIC FLEXIBLITY

Artists need to move. Sometimes, staying one place is the source of a creative block. If your salesman is making a one on one call and feels as though it would have a higher chance of success if it were made from a park bench down the street, tell him to go get it. If the artists are bringing home the bacon, play to their quirks and give them perks. Let them do their work where they please even if they can’t always do it when they please.

#4 GET PERSONAL

Well, not too personal. But get a little information about your people. They’re not robots. Humans usually have brothers, sisters, parents, children, friends, hobbies, interests, fears, goals… complex layers of daily occurrences that affect their careers for better or worse. Be there to assist if you can.

#5 TOYS

What is it that your employees really want? You tell us. You are the one who brought these people aboard and you will be the one who is in charge of keeping them.

If you run a comic book shop, your employees probably love comics and other comic-related gear. Hook them up.

If your employees work in a movie theater, you should give them free movies.

If your employees love sporting events, take them to a game.

Taking an office pool of your employees about what they would like would take as much or less time than it took you to read this blog post.

BrightBox is Branding.

This is the message our business pushes at every turn. Through clever, multifaceted methods of communication, we help you find ways to link emotionally with your markets. Namely, we want to help you anchor emotional messages into certain combinations of language and symbols and connecting them to your customers.

Simply by explaining what we do to our existing, potential and internal consumers, BrightBox has made great strides in taking ownership of the branding concept. BrightBox doesn’t have to own the idea of being the “best” at branding.

BrightBox IS Branding.

In that same way, successful brands on the open market should seek to represent concepts. Don’t tell people your brand is the best. Embody the adjectives you want to be, and use those terms to pitch your product.

Nike doesn’t claim to be the “best” running shoe. Nikes = athletic shoes. (It doesn’t hurt that they’re worn by winners).

Google didn’t have to be the “best” search engine. Google means “search”. That’s why when we look for something, we “Google it.”

Whether you define “best” as “safest” or “most powerful”, Mr. Clean isn’t the “best” product for cleaning floors. Mr. Clean is a clean floor, represented with a head as shiny as you want your floor.

Lays isn’t the best potato chip. Lays is a synonym for the classic, salty, American chip. Lays are the natural complement to a Coke.

Of course, Coke is the only acceptable soda for any major event. I’m partial to Italian soda and Perrier myself, but Coke is still the most powerful brand in the world because it was first in the soda category and forever owns the concept.

Some people say that braggarts only boast because they are hiding their insecurities. Real winners don’t need to brag because everyone already knows how spectacular they are. You can say all the nice things you want about yourself, but your real strengths lie in your public reputation. When third party sources say pleasant things about you, you don’t have to say them about yourself.

Restaurants take off when customers brag about the food. Nobody cares what the manager thinks of his own french fries.

Because of the power of the media, social networks and plain old-fashioned conversation, the world is ripe with opportunity for businesses looking to make a bang. Modern marketing has advanced to the point that public relations is a requirement, not a bonus. You need the attention of others. No business is an island.

Seeking and gaining that type of attention is a central part of the philosophy, principles and practical strategy at BrightBox. We don’t just give our clients ideas. We help them own ideas through excellent, planned, well-executed creativity. In the past, we have assisted a great variety of our clients in seizing and owning concepts in the mind of the market through specialized branding techniques related to both audio-visual appeal and public messaging.

Don’t Brag. Brand.

For more information, see BrightBox’s case studies at http://brightboxonline.com/look.php.

At BrightBox, we have noticed that keeping an eye on the big picture is a necessary but not so simple task. Looking out far in advance is not something the average person is used to doing.

Despite those difficulties, you have to try to show some foresight. Most companies (including ours) have periodic assessments of the state of the organization. Public corporations have quarterly meetings and release 10Ks to analyze oncoming trends. The US President gives a State of the Union Address once a year. Even scout troops have periodic meetings to change leadership and have discussions amongst the elders.

The problem with looking out from your own perspective is that you have a somewhat biased view of your of company. Emotion can cause you to make excuses for poor performance numbers, including but not limited to actual profits. Some companies may be better served by a third party analysis.

One wonders if an outside view is something that would assist a company like Google.

GOOGLE’S NEW-SCHOOL APPROACH

Google started in 1996. The brainchild of Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Google was meant to completely alter internet search forever with advanced new methods of compiling and presenting search results for users. Google was a partner of the former search engine category leader, Yahoo!, early on in its history.

Over time, the company’s culture came to be known as a fluid, flexible, new-school approach to gaining power. While Microsoft, a powerful tech company known for operating system success, played the part of old school boss by muscling out competitors, gobbling up smaller businesses and facing down anti-trust suits while simultaneously encouraging internal competition among high-level executives, Google played the part of the creativity-driven group. Google is known around the world as one of the best companies to work for, a paragon of how businesses should run. Workers were happy, growth was largely organic (even if the company went public by way of IPO) and revenues were record-breaking.

This savvy take on how to run a large American moneymaking group allowed Google to grow at an unprecedented pace and serve as a thorn in the side of many of its competitors. Yahoo! broke off its partnership in 2004 and has since fallen far back in second place when it comes to search engine sites. Microsoft’s Hotmail system has suffered tremendously since Google released its now more popular Gmail. As for blogs, Google has a fairly popular Blogspot system, a group that jockeys with WordPress as the most popular way to start a blog.

GOOGLE’S NEW OLD-SCHOOL APPROACH

Now, Google looks to be headed down the same path that has all but buried many American behemoths. Most recently, Google has been attaching its name in odd fashion to everything it does. Google Labs, Google Trends, Google+… They’re even thinking of changing Blogspot to Google Blogs!

Converging brand names and resources creates a slew of issues for the company to deal with in the future. First, it contributes to the idea that they are a sprawling, growing, swarming beast, which can’t be helpful in its legal and public relations battles. Second, it confuses people regarding the focus of Google and opens the door for another search engine to take its place as number one in the category.

Also, Google is now taking over more and more companies. By turning away from organic growth, Google is playing with fire. Companies that grow on the backs of their creative thinkers are more primed for advancement in this age of decentralizing, flexible power.

NOW WHAT?

Google should focus as hard as it can on regaining its old lightning in a bottle take on the market. Not all companies can bat a thousand, but Google is closer than any other company in the world. Any method that pumps up the engineers in the company is a step closer to security. Furthermore, Google should aim to build up its new projects under divergent names. While Google+ is a nifty new contraption with a good chance at succeeding because of its interface and creative layout, the name suggests it is somehow search-based, placing the company in a marketing quandary.

The diagnosis for Google? Diverge, design and defend market share by doing what you do best. Don’t give people a reason to fall out of love with you.

Just ask Yahoo!

As cool as your business is, you are not perfect. Your employees are not perfect. Your marketing strategy is not perfect.

BrightBox is one of the coolest, freshest, most innovative businesses in the world. Our team members include born businessmen and women. Our graphic designers can make any company look awesome, even when the product is not. In four years, BrightBox has attended Coachella, gone after BMW with a viral campaign and brought on board a member of a professional NBA dance team as an account manager.

Even with all of that, BrightBox isn’t perfect… And neither are you.

Don’t take it too hard. Nobody is. The real issue comes with thinking you are. Self-centered types have great trouble seeing their own flaws, thereby sabotaging their chances at self-improvement. Even worse, many of the world’s most conceited people don’t even recognize their own conceit, leaving them with an overly optimistic view of the world. Rather, some of the world’s best companies eventually spend too much time locked in a room with their own employees drinking their own Kool-Aid and causing themselves more problems than does anyone else. With no independent minded sounding boards, these companies wind up falling flat with uncreative, inside-the-box business plans and poor, lethargic execution.

However, if you can overcome your own bias in favor of thinking you are awesome, you will be able to create a much more effective business machine. No one knows you like you. You built your own house, and any dilapidated part of your own business was something you neglected or implemented incorrectly.

If you had to attack your own business, what kind of strategy would you use? Are you weak in the public relations department? How is your marketing team? Do your managers communicate effectively? Does accounting track money well? Has finance been raising the appropriate amount of resources to take care of your expenses?

Do you have even bigger troubles, such as wretched customer service or even basic safety and ethical issues?

Try to see your business through the eyes of your competitors. Is there something that stands out about you that would hurt sales if exploited by other brands?

Try to see your business through the eyes of your consumers. Is there something about your service or your product that makes them irritable?

Try to see your brand through the eyes of the media. Is there something the average newscaster would find unusual about your business?

In the new age of marketing and the new world marketing atmosphere, branding has largely focused on the power of social media. Social interaction is the most powerful form of communication because it implies that both parties are sending and receiving messages. Interaction differs from the more traditional methods of marketing, such as commercial advertising, because it involves two-way communication that places consumers in charge of creating content and messaging on behalf of what they want for the company. Everyone becomes a player.

Regardless, modern marketers can still learn a great deal about how to pitch and market ideas based on the actions of past marketing masterminds. The field is not new. Since the inception of commercial trade routes, merchants have had to find clever ways to stand out from the crowd. PT Barnum is famous for having garnered attention at every turn when he built up the great Barnum and Bailey Circus Empire. Television advertisers have taught us all about the specific aspects of messaging, including where the conclusion of the advertisement should go and how best to engage the audience with such advertising. The American Gilded Age featured incredible advances in production. Modern companies now understand the concept of treating employees well to secure positive marketing internally as well as externally. Public Relations practitioners such as Edward Bernays discovered long ago that if you garner attention the right way, you don’t even have to pay for it.

Even social media tacticians have already discovered useful, valuable, seemingly universal principles for using their favorite medium. Facebook posts tend to do better during certain times of day and certain days of the week. Twitter messages are obviously better for content that can be expressed in short, bursting messages. MySpace is for music brands. FourSquare works well for retail.

As a marketer, finding new, innovative ways to get out your ideas is only a very small part of what you do. Knowing when to use strategies that already exist might be even more important. There’s no reason to reinvent the wheel of marketing when half of your toolkit has already been invented.

Here are five ways to stand on the shoulders of marketing giants.

#1 READ BOOKS

I know it was annoying at the time, but your school teachers made you read because it has been and still is the easiest way for a person to learn massive amounts of information at incredible speed. Every day, marketing strategists make discoveries that progress the field and their own businesses.

#2 READ CASE STUDIES

Case studies are works designed by people who have already benefited from learning about the past. All you have to do is read their previously distilled information, available all over the internet, and you have a leg up on the competition.
In fact, you can start with the BrightBox case studies.

#3 READ NEWS

While social networks are great, we are still in the era of mass media. You have to know how news works. There is no better way to gauge the news than to actually observe it as it unfolds and interpret it. Get a fingertip feel for the way the media works. Try to predict the outcome of events and assess why your predictions hit or miss. This is a lot easier said than done, but practice helps.

#4 TALK

If you work in marketing, branding or public relations, then you already know plenty of smart, crafty, clever, intelligent people just waiting to impart their knowledge on others. All you have to do listen and take their advice. You don’t know everything, and everyone knows something. Besides, listening is a key part of pitching a product or a service. Practice and educate yourself in one swoop. Open your ears.

#5 WATCH TV

When asked at point blank range, most consumers will tell you that advertisements annoy them. Two minutes later, though, those same consumers will rant and rave about how much they love Flo from the Progressive commercials. Certain advertisements can be effective at certain times. Instead of leaping off of the couch for those three minutes to grab another soda and refill your salsa bowl, focus on the advertisements in front of you and see which ones stand out.

Customer Service Powerhouse Signs on as Senior Project Manager

September 28, 2010 (HOUSTON) —BrightBox has officially hired customer service expert Cassandra Franceschini for the position of senior project manager. Franceschini’s hiring is effective immediately, instantly improving BrightBox’s communications infrastructure and customer support.
“Franceschini is going to add a new dynamic to our rock-solid, exponentially growing work force,” BrightBox President and Co-Founder Jason Arcemont said. “In conjunction with our already powerful sales staff, creative team, operations managers and public relations specialists, this addition is going to bring new skills and a fresh perspective that will bolster our abilities as a company. We’re glad we were able to recognize the value she brings to her work and sign her as the newest member of the BrightBox family.”
A detail-oriented project manager with a knack for understanding and engaging clients, Franceschini previously served as a Director of Special Events and Marketing at an events planning and marketing firm and has built a career based on effective client communication, engaging promotional campaigns and highly social marketing efforts. Her track record is that of a communications manager well-trained in executing successful, flexible, elite, multifaceted marketing plans meant to improve the outreach efforts of the brands she represents.
Franceschini is an accomplished professional and Houston native, graduating summa cum laude and receiving a BA in communication from St. Edwards University in 2007. She brings to BrightBox her professional knowledge of social media, viral marketing and consumer-focused advertising, skills that serve as essential assets in the new, complex, digital and social branding environment.
——————
BrightBox is a Houston-based brand-focused marketing and design firm serving companies spanning various industries. BrightBox provides clients with a wide range of services including brand strategy, graphic design, animation, video production, copy writing, public relations, web development, and marketing communications. The company has grown tremendously over the past few years with the creation of InkBox printing, a full service print house as well as ShowBox Exhibits, a manufacturer of tradeshow booths and displays. For more information, visit www.brightboxonline.com.

To some, branding appears to be a magical world of fantastic psychological tricks that hypnotize and ensnare the average consumer while he or she rests on the couch, dumbly clicking the remote, or staring out the window at billboards on a weekend road trip.

BrightBox’s philosophy has positioned us differently: We know that branding is about practical business strategy and understanding of sales-based results. While branding is difficult to quantify, the value of our services has been outstanding. BrightBox’s returns have grown at as fast a rate as those of any branding firm in the country, and we can take those results to potential clients and markets and use them as the proof in our pudding.

Consider these five reasons why branding is a practical (rather than magical) approach to business.

1) BRANDING HAS CREDIBILITY

Some of the world’s greatest business professionals now approve of the concept of branding and stress it in their business practice. Daymond John, most famously known as the owner of Fubu, has developed his personal brand through a series of dynamic business strategies including books, television and a dynamite flash-based web site.

Branding existed before Daymond John, and his success bridges the gap between old school and new school marketing ideas.

Branding was around before, and it’s here to stay.

2) BRANDING IS EMOTIONAL

People are emotional creatures. We communicate with emotion, speak with emotion… even THINK with emotion, sometimes. A brand is an emotional connection between you and your clients. If the modern marketplace is one of the most advanced human relationships, then you will want to build that emotional connection.

Through a series of sensory-based audio-visual measures, you will be able to build up your company in a way that establishes impressive customer loyalty. Without that emotional connection, you lose out on customers to anyone who can get to them first.

It’s that simple.

3) BRANDING IS MEASURABLE

Many organizations refuse to invest in brand-building because branding and public relations work appears to have little measurable impact. The real issue is that you cannot attach a pure monetary value to the branding and public relations work themselves. However, the measure of these efforts and tactics still allow for an alternative kind of measurement. When an article is posted in a Facebook link and is read hundreds of times and gather little social media indicators (likes and retweets), you gain advertising and word of mouth. Studies have shown the powerful impact of word of mouth advertising.

Your business will also more than likely experience a boost in the hard numbers (sales, revenues, profits) after redoing its style to better match the concept it seeks to encompass.

We’ve seen it enough times to know.

4) BRANDING IS PROACTIVE

The marketplace of ideas is a veritable Red Sea of ideas, complete with tweets, likes, phone calls, television stations of all kinds, newspapers, podcasts, public speeches, text messages, blogs, radio show and a slew of daily released methods of communication. We’re drowning in it.

Some of the stuff that is said out there is about you. If you don’t make an effort to make those messages positive and supportive of your cause, you’re letting the environment paint you. The business graveyard is filled with bodies of organizations that sat on their hands and let external forces brand them. Even companies that have survived branding and public relations nightmares- crises and crippling, long-term issues-have learned better and had to hire communication professionals to survive.

5) BRANDING IS REQUIRED

Selling your product takes marketing, and marketing is silly without a brand behind it. Your company has to have its own personality and stand out to survive. Without a brand, you have no imprint on the public. In a territory full of companies just like you, there’s very little room to maneuver. When you lose that flexibility, you can’t stand out.

And if you don’t stand out, you won’t survive.