Sunday, March 30, 2008
Are You Losing Control of Your Brand?
Keeping Your Logo Consistent
One of the most important components of your brand is your logo. If you have done it right, your logo has been carefully crafted to convey a specific message to your target market. It represents and identifies your company. As you company grows, your logo allows your company to be immediately recognized, and it may also serve to inspire and reinforce loyalty and trust.
With all that your logo does for your company, protecting it is important. Yet it's easy to lose control over your logo if you don't establish guidelines for its use.
Guidelines ensure that your logo appears in the way you want it to appear and in places that you have approved its appearance. If you don't want any person or organization to make free use of your logo (i.e. implying endorsement of their product or services; or including it in an online rant), you will want to provide an approval process for the use of your logo as well as specific guidelines for using it.
It is also important to educate your employees on the use of your logo. Your guidelines should not allow anyone to change the colors, or to add graphics or text to your logo unless that is your deliberate intent. If, like Google, your company alters the logo for holidays or other recognitions, this should be guided by your policies.
In the coming posts, I will cover the details of the following basics to include in your guidelines:
- Set a standard for where and how your logo can be used.
- Avoid having too many versions of your logo.
- Ensure that your logo appears only in the approved colors.
- Designate approved sizes for your logo.
- Make your logo available in a variety of formats to those approved to use it.
Your logo has a job to do. Using these guidelines will help you keep your logo consistent and protect your brand. After all, your logo is the first impression many people have of your business.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
The "Critical Inch" in Private Practice
- Critical: Important to Have or Do
- Inch: Small Measurement
At first glance, you may wonder how these are useful.
Here's a hint:
What small, measurable activity is necessary - or important - to the success of your business?Dubbed the 'Critical Inch' [of your business], it's an area worth your attention.
Identify those small activities that make a big difference and start monitoring and measuring them.
You could see that "Critical Inch" become the pivot point to your success in no time!
Saturday, March 15, 2008
It can't be done!
The other day while getting services at a business, I made a request.
I was told it couldn't be done.
Well, of course I already knew it could be done, I'd done it myself before. What this person meant was:
- I don't know how to do it
- I don't have time to do it
- I don't want to do it
- It's not our policy to do it (or some variation)
- Insert your own excuse
At best, the "it can't be done" phrase frustrates your customers.
At worst, it raises an eyebrow about your company, its knowledgebase and perhaps even its integrity - especially when the requester already knows that it can be done.
Don't let that phrase - or any variation - become a habit at your company.
Provide a mechanism for employees to share these requests with you and brainstorm on how to meet them.
Even telling the client where they CAN go to get their needs met is better than shrugging it off with "it can't be done".
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