On behalf of Graphic Designers EVERYWHERE! Your message should be heard far and wide … shouted from the mountains … whispered in back alleys … passed as notes from person to person on little scraps of paper … etched in granite … OK, you get what I’m saying.

Trust your graphic designer. DOWN WITH COMIC SANS!!!

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“I am one who believes that one of the greatest dangers of advertising is not that of misleading people, but that of boring them to death.”
…€” Leo Burnett

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Last week I had a conversation with a local tradesman who came in to our office with his wife inquiring about a logo…. He had VERY specific ideas about what the logo should be, what it should look like, what colors to use, what imagery to use, etc…. Indeed, this was an entrepreneur with a clear vision…. The only problem was that his ideas broke just about every logo design convention I could think of AND his ideas had no basis in any type of brand strategy.

I tried to gently coach him off the ledge and educate him that there was a more powerful way to approach the design process…. He was to have nothing to do with it … His quote; “Darn it, I just need a logo!”… We mutually agreed that we weren’t a good fit for his project and he cordially went along his merry way.

So, why did I tell you that story?… As a lead-in to this post from the Motley Fool…. Apparently, someone figured out that a powerful brand can actually change the way a consumer thinks about the quality of any product associated with that brand ….. imagine that!… Here’s a snippet from the article;

Researchers presented several dozen children with a taste test, offering them various foods such as carrots, milk, and apple juice in both unmarked and McDonald’s-branded wrappers. As you might expect, the McDonald’s-branded foods received uniformly higher marks.

Think about what this means. It shows how powerful brands can be in our minds. A mere brand label can affect how we perceive something. According to the study, the children’s perception of taste was “physically altered by the branding.”

I’m sure the customer I “lost” last week will find a perfect match…. Some designer out there will create a logo that exactly matches the image etched in his mind…. It’s just too bad that neither of them will have read the above article … or will ever likely open their minds to a better way of presenting themselves to the world … or likely realize the power of what a great brand can do for their marketing and business health.

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In my bi-weekly(ish) scan through my HitTail.com account, I’m am rarely let down from being amazed at the obscure words and phrases that people use on the Internet … to find MY blog!… This week’s batch includes the following phrases:

• Fishing Cliches
• Elvis made to measure suits
• Hawaiian Catchy Phrases
• Swimming Leaches in Lakes

Now, I vaaaaguely remember using some of those words in a blog post in the past year … I mean, heck, it’s not too often that one weaves the word “leach” into a conversation or a blog post!… The interesting thing about this analysis is NOT the bizarre phrases that pop up in your analytics, but the rich variety of words and phrases used by people all over the world in their effort to find information on the Web.

Here’s the real point; The traffic to our Website has increased over TWENTY fold in the past 12 months due to blogging…. YES, the vast majority of these visitors are folks not unlike the person looking for Elvis suits…. However, I also estimate that the number of “real” prospective customers has increased almost five fold!
Consider this my weekly nudge to get you blogging if you’re not already doing so.… Don’t let this be “the big one that got away” … or get caught “up a creek without a paddle” (gosh, I just love those fishing cliches, don’t you?)

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It doesn’t happen very often in a small New Hampshire town, but when it does, you have to take the photo opp that it is…. Yes, indeedy …. THE OSCAR MEYER WIENERMOBILE came to town today!… We just returned from a Boy Scout Troop hike with four of the Scouts and we all got the chance to be filmed singing the Oscar Meyer Wiener song together.

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What a brilliantly simple and elegant idea that Seth Godin as proposed! … an important part of understanding your brand is to know who is the opposite of you. Some examples:

• The opposite of Starbucks is Dunkin’ Donuts
• The opposite of an iPhone is a plain-Jane-Motorola
• The opposite of Rush Limbaugh is Al Franken

… you get the idea.

Like all things in the universe where you approach understanding, there is always opposites (good/evil, dark/light, yin/yang, etc.), so it makes sense that every brand needs to understand it’s opposite. As Seth points out, your brand’s opposite already exists, but it MAY not be understood by you and all your people may not agree on what it is.

This will now be a new part of our brand definition process. Can you describe your brand’s opposite?

It doesn’t get any better than this … simplicity leading to a deep understanding. Thanks Seth!

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Check out this Holiday Inn commercial featuring three corporate dweebs capping on a female cohort’s blog. It’s not participation with a blog, but it’s certainly acknowledgment of the power of blogging and the significance of viral video in the blogging community.

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