That’s okay — so do we.
We all suck at branding when it comes to our own brand,
You see, when it comes to brand development, we have found the biggest mistake companies make is trying to D.I.Y. it. Even your internal teams who are the brightest, most creative, best artists and messaging team ever? Well, when it comes to brand development, they are way too close to your product to know clearly what your name, tagline(s), visual elements and impact graphics need to be.
How can I say that? Well, let’s look at our own case study.
Our brand, Spark Rocket Marketing, really reflects what we are all about — small campaigns with huge impact, start-up launches, out of this world creativity touched off by a spark of an idea and a little bit of geek mixed in. We want clients to need and want those qualities when choosing us to create their marketing campaigns. And the feedback we get tells us they do! But, you want to know what our first choice in names was when we went to brand ourselves?
WingFlap Marketing
(pause for stunned, puzzled silence)
Yes. Yes. A thousand times yes, we sigh. Sheepishly. We admit it. We had a list of 20 or so names we’d come up with and at the TOP of the list was “WingFlap Marketing.”
“Because, you know, when a butterfly flaps its wings in the Amazon it can have a huge impact on global weather just like our experiential campaigns have huge impact beyond the day of the experience!” I exclaimed with passion as I tried to sell WingFlap to the brand company we were at least wise enough to go to in hopes of creating the graphics and imagery that just wouldn’t come to us for some reason? (doh. SMH)
“Uhm…okay, we get it,” they said (I think I could actually hear them rolling their eyes through the phone).
And they tried, bless their hearts. They really did.
But thankfully, gratefully, miraculously our account exec said, “Hey Angela, bear with us and try this…” And then she showed us the amazing work they had done by going much further down the list to find Spark Rocket Marketing and the quality of our brand is simply outstanding — no real thanks to us.
So you see — you suck at branding and I can say that because we suck at branding too WHEN IT’S OUR OWN!
I beg of you — when it comes to your brand, at some point in the process, seek outside marketing counsel!!! Better to start with them from the beginning, but at least bring them in before you’ve committed to a single idea you can’t let go. Because you don’t want to end up being a WingFlap in the Amazon that has no impact on your global brand!
(P.S., Want an even bigger cautionary tale about this? Have you heard of a little company called UBER? )
(P.P.S., This starts a series of in your face marketing posts we’re going to post on No F*s Left Fridays — probably before we all head out for martinis — so come join us! Because if we are going to claim to be audacious in what we do for our clients, we have to be audacious ourselves! You may not agree with us so we encourage respectful comments.)