Posts Tagged ‘Book
Primal Branding Series #3 – Icon
Continuing with my series on Primal Branding by Patrick Hanlon
Icon is something that allows people to able to instantly identify your brand. The iconic yellow boarder lets people know that you’re reading a National Geographic from a distance away. That iconic swoosh tells people that you’re wearing Nike, even if the brand name is no where to be found.
Therefore, in essence, icon is the various physical / tangible attributes of your brand. However, these tangible attributes may very well evoke intangible feelings.
Women can instantly recognize a Tiffany box by its distinctive color. That color evokes a variety of emotions. That color is so important to the Tiffany brand that Tiffany trademarked it.
This is a good video on color, and how color could be applied to your personal brand.
YouTube video: What Color is Your Brand?
But, it’s not just about color or logo. For example, could you recall all the logos / colors of all your utilities companies? There are countless forgettable logos out there. You could spend a lot of time creating one, and it would not resonate with your audience. Why? Because a logo, or color, or any other attribute cannot stand on its own. Like every other primal code, it needs to be incorporated into everything that you do.
Does that mean that you plaster your logo everywhere? YES!
But, is it ever so simple?
The fundamental question you need to ask is what truly symbolizes your brand in the minds of your audience. UPS is brown because UPS has brown trucks, brown uniform, brown everything. Swoosh is Nike because Nike put much advertising dollars toward building up the Swoosh. But it’s all a very carefully orchestrated effort…
Allow me to make up an extreme example to illustrate my point.
You’re a caterer. You painstakingly designed a logo that is an abstraction of a red pepper. It symbolizes so many things about your food. The red represents passion. The pepper is that little extra kick in your food. Also, the veggie represents the fresh ingredients that you use, etc. That logo is on everything. It’s on your website. It’s on your business card. It’s even on your apron, which you wear to every event. You have spent much time networking in the community to build your business, and it has paid off. You get referrals after referrals. At this point, you don’t even need to call people. People call you.
In fact, you’re so successful that your phone number is just on people’s phone / laptop as a contact at this point. People can pull up your number in an instant.
But, this also means that people are not really looking at your business card or website.
People do see your apron though. Yes, the bright yellow one with the red pepper logo properly embroidered just above your chest.
Let me tell you how this story ends… the red pepper may be your logo, but it is not your icon, but the yellow apron is.
As for myself, I have found this to be the hardest part to fully activate. I have yet fully developed the look and feel of my personal brand. The first and foremost icon is myself, which makes me wonder if there is a need of a logo. My picture would essentially become my logo. I also try to incorporate a tidbit of my real life into my online representation via the coffee mug images. At the office, my coffee mug is about the twice the size of a normal coffee mug. In all likelihood, any meetings that would take place outside the official office setting would be at a coffee shop. So, I thought coffee would be a reasonable icon to associate my brand with… However, I welcome any suggestions you may have regarding how I could better activate this part of the primal code… How I could have better icons.
A side-by-side comparison of a regular mug and my type of mug at the office.
Work Smarter, Not Harder Tip: Fill your days with sand, not rocks
The other day, I was thinking about all the projects I have going on, and I began to wonder how I would be able to do it all. Well, the simple answer was that I am quite good at multitasking.
Then, I remembered that once, at an interview, I was asked how do I handle multiple tasks? I remembered that I had some answers at that point, but I also remembered that feeling at an interview where you just knew you did not really nail that question…
So, I remembered answering something about prioritizing. They asked, how? I gave some vague answer of depends on the deadline, the requestor, etc. Since then, I read The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey, and he explained a great system of prioritization. Basically, divide your works into four groups. 1) Urgent and Important, 2) Not Urgent but Important, 3) Urgent but Not Important, and 4) Not Urgent and Not Important.
His advice was the need to address the first group was quite obvious. The second group would also be important, but since it’s not urgent, we would need to be extra diligent to make time for these tasks. We should learn to say “no” to the third group of tasks. As for the fourth group, we should forget it, but many people would waste too much time on things within this group. I thought this was a great way to frame up how I prioritize. But somehow, I didn’t think this quite answer why I was good at multitasking… I thought there was more to it still.
Then, I read Radical Careering by Sally Hogshead, and she used the term timestacking. She defined it as “extracting every bit of capacity from time for maximum efficiency. Uber multitasking.”
I thought, this was it. I have been timestacking!
But, I still did not quite grasp what that really meant.
Then, the light bulb went off, and I understood how I seemed to be able to do more with the same amount of time.
Remember back in school, a teacher taught you about volume with a glass. She then filled it up with rocks, and she could only fit so much. Then, she filled it up with pebbles, and she found more space. Then she filled it up with sand, and she found more space still in that glass.
That was the essence of my multitasking!
I break my projects into the tiniest little pieces of tasks. This way, I have more flexibility in fitting the different tasks around each other.
For example: A project would be to create a piece of marketing material. A procedure within that project would be to gain legal alignment. Many people stops at this on their to-do list. Then, at 8:29am, you could not get to it before your 8:30 meeting. At 11:59am, if “gain legal alignment” was still on the to-do list, it would get rolled off to after lunch. Then, what would often happen after lunch? Some other things would ambush you and they would occupy the top spaces of your to-do list. So, at 4:59pm, “gain legal alignment” remained on your to-do list and it would get rolled off to another day.
However, what if that procedure was broken down even further? What if what made it to the to-do list was “email copy to lawyer”? At 8:29am, you could still fire off an email to the lawyer before your morning meeting. Then, you would be able to cross of an item on that to-do list, and it would just feel good. But, of course, back on the to-do list would be “awaiting legal reply”. However, this simple step kept the project moving forward. Perhaps at 11am, you got your legal reply. Then, the new thing on your to-do list would be “call agency”. In all likelihood, you still wouldn’t have been able to “gain legal alignment” by the end of that day. If it was so short, simple, or easy, it would have never got put off to begin with. However, I believe you could appreciate how much further along in the process you would be if you would just take it one step at a time.
In addition, with me, I have found that there is another benefit to breaking my projects into tiny tasks. It allows me to be completely focused at the task at hand. Whenever I have worked on mega-tasks, I would get fatigue mentally quicker. I would get distracted easier, probably because I wasn’t able to see the end of the tunnel. With a lack of focus, I would just simply not get as much done…
Also, with a to-do list of tiny tasks, I would never feel like I was unaccomplished at the end of the day. I would always be able to cross off something!
So, try to break your rocks into sand, and fill your days with sand!
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Photo credit: Bill Frazzetto
Primal Branding Series #2 – The Creed. What’s yours?
Continuing with my series on Primal Branding by Patrick Hanlon
The second piece of the primal code is the creed. It is what you believe, and what you want others (internally and externally) to believe. It is what a company mission is built on. But it’s so much more, because the creed encompasses everything that you do.
So, in many ways, activating the creed is not simply a tactic. You cannot just build a “about me” page and call it a day. It is a soul searching session in what you believe, and why are you doing this.
This on the surface looks obvious, but if you just sit down for a moment, I think you could think of many examples when this code is obviously violated.
50% of small businesses fail. Now, there are many reasons why. In the context of the creed, there is one obvious reason that contributes to this failure rate. Many people launch their business because they can. But the fact of the matter is with competition / technology / etc., whatever it is that you can do today is unlikely going to sustain you forever. If you did not first sit down to think about what you stand for and what is your aspirational goal, you would not know where to go next once you’ve exhausted your current options / advantages.
If you became confused, your partners (internal / external) would be confused and your consumers would be confused.
Now, instead of calling this the creed, let’s call it by a more commonly used term: Positioning.
So, what’s my creed? Be the best marketer by always learning and adapting in this ever-changing world.
What is your creed?
Jeannie Chan is a Brand Manager for a Fortune 500 consumer goods company. She considers herself a marketer, a traveler, and a foodie. Jeanne lives in NYC. 
