Companies have probably used some form of branding for identification purposes from the time competition began. According to Wikipedia, a brand is the symbolic embodiment of a product or service. Thankfully, the process has evolved. Although we no longer sear flesh with a hot iron, we want our brand to be universally recognized and remembered. This chapter of the Online Community Startup Guide deals with establishing and maintaining online brand recognition. Among the topics we shall consider are:
≈ Developing your own “look and feel”
≈ Trademarks and Copyrights
≈ Developing Brand Loyalty
≈ Branding Tools
Developing Your Own Look and Feel
Probably the most difficult task of creating a brand is developing your own look and feel. When creating your brand it’s important that you create something that is uniquely yours while conveying a sense of what your business is about.
Most businesses will develop a logo that will hopefully one day be all that is needed to identify their business. A logo will generally consist of a combination of a graphical representation and the company name in a particular typeface. Sometimes colors are also an integral part of the logo. Who doesn’t recognize the Nike and Pepsi logos, even without the words? Nike and Pepsi have spent many years and millions, perhaps even billions, of dollars developing brand recognition but they began as unknowns. Nike paid just $35 for the SWOOSH logo in 1971. Pepsi recently spent several million dollars to update its logo. It’s similar to the old one so that it can still be recognized as Pepsi.
Trademarks, Copyrights and Patents
Before you expose your brand to the world, make sure you’ve taken the necessary steps to protect your rights. It’s a good idea to establish that your logo is your Trademark once you have decided on it. That’s not as difficult as you might think. All you need to do in order to establish that you’re your new logo is your unique intellectual property is begin using the trademark symbol (™). There are, however, benefits to trademark registration. In addition to being able to use the registered trademark symbol (®), trademark infringement protection is expanded beyond the local geographic area.
If you have an original work you’ll want to obtain a Copyright to protect yourself from piracy. “Copyright applies to any expressible form of an idea or information that is substantive and discrete and fixed in a medium” (Wikipedia). Copyrights are temporary and the length of time one is valid depends upon the authorship of item that is copyrighted. Once a copyright has been obtained the Copyright symbol, a circled C, (©) may be used to indicate the Copyright status. In the case of sound recordings, the Copyright symbol of a circled upper case P (℗) is used.
Some people employ what is called the Poor Man’s Copyright. In these instances, the US Postal Service, email or a Notary Public is used as an attempt to establish an ownership timeline. This method might not hold up in court because advanced technology sometimes makes it difficult to distinguish between the real thing and a very good fake.
A Patent is recommended if you’ve come up with an invention that is substantially different from anything already in existence and considered useful. The terms and duration of patents vary. If you make a “significant” change to your invention, you might be able to renew your patent. This practice is widely used in the pharmaceutical industry.
For more information on Trademarks, Copyrights and Patents visit the United States Patent and Trademark Office website.
Developing Brand Loyalty
As of April, 2009, it seems that you’d encounter 231,510,169 websites before you reached the end of the Internet. With this number growing exponentially each day, how will you get traffic to your website… and keep them coming back?
Bob Baker has an article online called 9 Ways to Communicate a Rock-Solid Identity that I think is very good. He discusses brand definition, the human element, word usage, visual elements and more. In addition to the quality information contained in the article, there are some other things I feel should be mentioned:
≈ Bob’s article is posted on a “competitor’s” Blog
≈ Bob included links to other “experts” in his article
≈ Bob included links to his own site in his article
≈ Bob entices the reader to his site with the promise of something “free”
≈ Affiliate marketing is used to possibly generate another stream of income
The things in the list above help to establish Bob as an expert in his field.
Branding Tools
The logo as a branding tool is obvious but its usage might not be. Put your logo on everything, including but not limited to: