Though they may look the same, they’re not. Just ask their parents. Even as newborns, they could tell them apart, and as they grow up, they’re distinctions become ever more pronounced. This is why we don’t give twin babies the same first names.

In the business world, this idea would seem to carry over as the foundation for a common sensical approach to branding —that different products need to be different brands with different names. However, the only thing common about this sense is that it’s all too commonly ignored in the hopes of cheating risk and the possibility of failure.

Overextended brands are like overstretched rubber bands

Everyone’s heard of a company called Kraft. “Hey, those are the cheese people.” Yep. For years, Kraft and cheese were synonymous. It was a Corporate Branding with a position competitors would have been hard-pressed to erode had company brass been content in their cheesiness. They weren’t. Like many companies blessed with strong brands, Kraft began to think their brand name was invincible and that any product introduced under its banner would dominate their markets simply because of its name. So, Kraft began offering jams, jellies and mayonnaise among other things.

The numerical truth about Kraft’s brand extension strategy

Ohio-based Smucker’s owns 35% of the jams and jellies market. Kraft has 9%. Hellman’s mayonnaise has 42% of the mayo market. Kraft has 18%. The plan for equal domination didn’t quite work out as planned. Despite its dominance in the cheese market, Kraft was relegated to bit player status in these other categories. Their strategy of trying to leverage a great brand name into being all things to all people resulted in few real winning products.

Why doesn’t being all things to all people work?

In your family, you may have been the smart one. If you had brothers and sisters, there may have been the “social” one, the “rebellious” one or the “athletic” one, too. And invariably, those attributes seem to stick with a person throughout their life, often regardless of whether they change.

In Japan, Honda is known as a motorcycle company that dabbles in cars. In America, it’s a car company that dabbles in motorcycles. Despite the fact the company is equally prolific makers of both, the two different markets have Honda pegged as either/or. One name, one product. Burned-in and branded for life. This is because motorcycles and motor vehicles are two different product categories. It proves that conquering multiple different categories with one brand name doesn’t work. Rather, companies who wish to expand into other product areas, or a first product area for that matter, need to do so by using a strong brand identity as the foundation of its marketing strategy. Either that or create new product lines that somehow relate to your old product line, such as cheese companies putting out a line of pre-made cheese and cracker snacks. What Ritz did with Mini Ritz sandwiches, Kraft could have easily done by focusing the product’s marketing slant on the cheese in the cracker.

So what do you do with a brand once you have created one?

Those responsible for the brand defend the integrity of the brand and build on it. Just as Barbie dolls have for decades while Ninja Turtles and Cabbage Patch Dolls came and went. The Barbie brand recognizes the niche it fills in the toy industry—dolls with interchangeable clothes. Nothing else. Of course, refreshing a brand is completely necessary over its lifecycle. Barbie has a way of doing this built-in to its product—changing clothing styles. As the times change, so do Barbie & Ken’s wardrobe. But that’s just one way a brand remains strong through the years. Survey any industry, and you’ll find that long-term successful brands have at some point had to reinvent themselves along the way—like automobile companies of today in the beginning stages of moving to alternative sources for energy. This is the same thing that successful magazines do. They carve out a niche, become the leader in it and then defend it by banking on their uniqueness and further differentiating themselves from the competition—not duplicating it.

If this is the case, why do companies try to extend a brand?

Because launching a completely new brand is very risky and expensive. Often times, initial results of brand extension are positive, but the initiative commonly begins to lose ground and takes some of the overall brand strength with it.

Why creating a new brand is better for business than extending one.

In New Zealand, there is one Airline Company, but two airline brands. Air New Zealand is about top-class service with all the frills. Freedom Air, on the other hand, is the airline for the budget conscious. The two brands operate successfully and independently of each other, which allows the parent company to serve two distinctly different air travel markets.

Less really is best

A niche brand may not offer the sheer number potential of a more generalized brand, but it does offer something a lot better—sustainability. Over the long term, as your brand becomes synonymous with a specific kind of product or service, more people will turn to you for that product or service…and continue to do so because they believe they’re getting quality only a specialist can provide.

A jack-of-all-trades really is master of none. So if you are a master, or wish to become one, do it. Be it. Just not to everyone.

Scott White is President of Brand Identity Guru a leading Corporate Branding and Branding research firm located in Boston, Massachusetts.
 
Brand Identity Guru specializes in creating corporate and product brands that increase sales, market share, customer loyalty, and brand valuation.

1. Corporate identity

Corporate identity is a company’s visual presence, which involves the corporate logo and design strategy for corporate marketing collateral. Corporate identity does not encapsulate brand identity, which is best defined as the soul of your company. However, a corporate identity may, and often does, reflect a brand identity. But some ad agencies, marketing companies and graphic design agencies would have you believe that brand identity is the same thing as corporate identity and that changing a logo or design strategy will change the brand identity. However, this is not the case. There are many intangible factors that weigh in on a brand identity. Such cosmetic changes can help a brand identity by making it evident to customers that a company cares about its appearance, but that’s about the extent of its power. A corporate identity does, however, need to evolve with the times. Failure to do so can negatively affect a company’s brand identity, but care must also be taken to not overly revise the presentation of a brand, lest customers be concerned about the state of a company. Corporate identity, along with organizational culture, product quality, service reputation, features, benefits, performance and value, are some of the key factors of brand identity.

2. Brand Identity - It’s the essence of your company

Brand identity is the complete package of a business to its customers. It includes the company’s service reputation, product quality, features, benefits, performance and value. It is the summation of all these things, which create brand identity.

3. Brand image

Brand Image is the market’s perception of your brand identity, which may or may not coincide with your intended brand identity. Companies must work hard at the daunting task of getting brand identity and image to align…or hire a true branding company.

A branding company can show you how success starts with the brand identity. Do you have a branding strategy? Are your employees aware of it and able to be ambassadors for your company’s brand during interactions with the outside world? Are you making the most strategically sound decisions for your brand? Do you know your customers’ perceptions of your brand?

 If your answer is “no” to any of those questions, take the first step in being able to answer yes to all of them and success.

Scott White is President of Brand Identity Guru a leading Corporate Branding and Branding research firm located in Boston, Massachusetts.

Brand Identity Guru specializes in creating corporate and product brands that increase sales, market share, customer loyalty, and brand valuation.

 For months now, the 7-year-old search engine has been testing new crawling and indexing systems with the hopes of making web searches more intuitive and accurate. The project, called “Bigdaddy,” is much more than a software update. It’s a total refit of the search engine’s infrastructure and software.

 “…It’s not just a data push or algorithm update,” says Search Engineer Matt Cutts of Google. Three data centers have so far been updated with new ones coming online every 10 days, a pace that’s expected to increase. Web users can access the updated Google search by typing in the IP address of the updated servers in their address bar: 66.249.93.104, 64.233.179.104 or 216.239.51.104. All of Google’s reported 85+ data centers are expected to be updated around the end of February or early March, and the closer we get to that time, the odds increase that your Google search will hit a “Bigdaddy” data center.

What ‘Bigdaddy’ addresses

 The biggest issue “Bigdaddy” will fix is hijacking redirects of URL requests—what happens when someone redirects a request for one website to another though illicit techniques. These kinds of redirects are called “302 redirects.”

“Bigdaddy” will also add something Google calls “canonicalization,” which will instruct a search engine how to decide which of a series of URLs is the proper one to insert into the Google index. For instance, most people would consider these the same URLs:

 www.example.com

example.com/

www.example.com/index.html

example.com/home.asp

In reality, these URLs are different and could conceivably return completely different content for each request. However, Google’s “canonicalization” will pick the URL that best represents what the user is likely asking for.

What ‘Bigdaddy’ does

“Bigdaddy” will also bring different crawling and indexing criteria, the groundwork for more advanced algorithms, larger databases and faster, more effective indexing of content.

Additionally, Google will be able to index new kinds of content. Testing is underway on a new search engine spider based on the Mozilla browser that can read links within images and even within Flash video.

What ‘Bigdaddy’ means to you

Brand Identity Guru has spent the past week researching what the implications of “Bigdaddy” will be for our Boston Search Engine Optimization clients. By comparing the results, we found that “Bigdaddy”-powered keyword searches returned improved rankings for 77% of our clients while 17% stayed the same and 6% (mostly those without a good number of incoming links) experienced a decline.

“Bigdaddy” data centers also reported much higher numbers of search results: searching for “landscape software,” the non-“Bigdaddy” search engine returned about 30 million results while “Bigdaddy” returned over 60 million. We’ve concluded, then, that sites ranked well because of solid on-page SEO techniques and inbound linking will benefit from this update. But there are still many unanswered questions about the implications of “Bigdaddy.” However, Google (as usual) is remaining mum on specifics in the hopes of preventing people from taking unruly advantage of the system.

Scott White is President of Brand Identity Guru a leading Corporate Branding and Branding Research firm located in Boston, Massachusetts.

Brand Identity Guru specializes in creating corporate and product brands that increase sales, market share, customer loyalty, and brand valuation.

From a branding perspective, Google has much in common with the Kleenex’s, Xerox’s and Rollerblades of the world. It’s a brand name that has become the name for a category—a far cry from the time, not that long ago, when only the urban hipsters with Tony the Tiger shirts knew what Google was.

The Yellow Pages may not be gone, but their star is fading quickly as more and more people turn to Google (or other search engines) when they need to find a product or service. Why? Better, more complete and up-to-date information. No contest. When someone looks up a company in the phonebook, they get their address, phone number and maybe some flashy ad graphics; depending on how much money they spent on the ad. On a Google search, they get a link to the company’s website, where you can find as much information on a company and its offerings as you need.

For things like books, tickets and music, Googling will often lead to an instant purchase if the price is right. But even for more “considered purchases,” where one competes on more than just price; Googling is often the first research step buyers take to arrive at a decision. They search keywords and combinations of keywords, comparing each set of results to the next, looking for the most relevant information.

In a perfect world, people would systematically study three to five competitors in a selection set, write down the pros and cons of each and come to a calculated decision. But a perfect world isn’t the real world. Here’s what happens: if a search result looks promising, the buyer will click through to the company’s website and investigate the possibilities of a match further. If it looks like a fit, case closed. Customer won. No

further research required—even if someone’s out there with a better deal waiting.

This is why being on this “short list” of high-ranking search results is imperative in this day and age—the higher the better. Top rankings give you the chance of having prospective customers knock on your virtual door, knowledgeable about your offerings and eager to buy before you ever say a single word to them.

Don’t be ashamed of self-Googling

Come on, you know you’ve done it: typed your name into an Internet search engine such as Yahoo or MSN. Don’t feel embarrassed. We all do it. It is, after all, interesting to see what others are saying about you.

In a business context, it’s not narcissistic at all. It’s smart, especially when you’re trying to build your brand online. But besides looking for your specific name, try looking for your category. For instance, if you’re a Denver widget maker, look up “Denver widget” or any other combination of keywords or phrases relevant to your business. Where do you rank? Top two? Top 10? Top 1000? It doesn't take a genius to figure out the top five results will get a lot more clicks than Numbers 75-80. Are you where you want to be?

How top-ranked websites get their positions
 
Especially for the most competitive keyword searches, companies must engage in a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy, which encompasses strategic smarts, hard work and clean code.

 How search engines rank your websites

Computer programs called “spiders” are responsible for visiting, indexing and ranking web sites. Each search engine has its own spiders with somewhat differing methods for ranking the websites it finds, and there are strategies you can use to make yours more appealing—and also mistakes that can negatively affect your rankings.

 4 SEO Urban Legends
 
Legend #1: You can muscle your way into top rankings. Maybe in 1999, but not anymore. Simply repeating a bunch of hidden keywords on your page or in your <META> tags no longer fools the search engine spiders into giving you high rankings. Algorithms that power the software behind these spiders have become much more advanced, and employing tactics like this will more likely hurt your rankings than help them.

 Legend #2: It starts and ends with traffic. Many people will click themselves repeatedly in the hopes of boosting their search rankings. However, this is a futile effort because spiders don’t care one bit about traffic.

 Legend #3: I can get rankings cheap from those nice folks sending me all those emails. If you fall for one of those spammer schemes, you deserve to be ripped off! Seriously though, you’d be paying good money for a clerical job you could easily do yourself. But even if you did do it yourself, you would run the risk of getting even worse rankings. It’s like membership at Augusta National—if you say you want it, you won’t get it. Search engines regard repetitive submissions as desperation, which they reject wholeheartedly.

 Legend #4: A Search Engine Optimization service guaranteed a Top 10 position on Google. In short, nobody can legitimately do that. Such guarantees are a telltale sign of snake-oil salesmanship. Here’s how the scam works: technically, they live up to their end by getting you top billing on a search term of their choosing, which is so specific to you that only your mom would likely search on it.

 Smarty-pants spiders

Search engine optimization is far more complex than it’s ever been. The obvious shortcuts to great search engine rankings have long since been identified and shut down by the search engine companies. These days, high rankings have much more to do with the structure of your HTML code, your acumen at avoiding “trip wires” that send spiders away, where certain keywords appear on a page, how you use JavaScript and Cascading Style Sheets and where your formatting instructions appear in relation to your website copy. If you used a WYSIWYG code-writing program—such as Front Page, GoLive or Dreamweaver—you almost certainly will get a much lower score from the spiders.

It really does take a team of people, like the kind we have at Brand Identity Guru, dedicated to monitoring the everyday changes on the battlefield to maintain a high-ranking web presence. And it does change frequently—search engines are notorious for changing their search algorithms often.

What about pay-per-click?

Organic (“free” or “natural”) rankings are completely different from sponsored (“pay-per-click” or PPC) links. PPC can be an effective part of a brand’s overall online marketing strategy, and a lot professional SEO companies work with clients to design PPC campaigns that are both cost-effective and eye-catching. But PPC won’t substitute for SEO. High positioning on a relevant keyword search on Google, with its reputation for returning highly relevant results, bodes well for your brand in a way that sponsored links just can’t. However, neither is it wise to engage in an all-SEO, no-PPC strategy. Serious online brand marketers get the best results with a comprehensive strategy run by professionals with both the branding and technical know-how to determine the right mix of the two.

 Yes, it’s complicated.

But you get back a lot in return for your investment of time and money. A more “Googleable” online branding strategy will quickly yield improved sales and a more visible brand on the web, which, in turn, will also positively affect your bottom line.

Scott White is President of Brand Identity Guru a leading Corporate Branding and Branding Research firm located in Boston, Massachusetts.

Brand Identity Guru specializes in creating corporate and product brands that increase sales, market share, customer loyalty, and brand valuation.

 Why is brand identity so critical?

 A strong brand identity can position a company above its competition all by itself. But having a brand that strong takes time, money and effort to develop. It’s not as simple as just redesigning a logo or rewriting a tagline. Brand identity is the reason you offer for your customer to choose you instead of your competition.

 How to rework your brand identity

 Successful re-branding involves “evolution,” not “revolution.” You must impress upon your existing customers that your new brand is just a new and improved version of the same you. It’s important to not get too crazy with a re-branding effort because you could end up destroying fragile emotional ties and customer loyalty.

 Brand identity is much more than marketing

 Having a brand identity that resonates with your market is important, but not at the expense of the people within your company. They need to not only get it, but also be your brand’s most fervent ambassadors. Do your employees believe in your company? Do they feel like they have a vested stake in its success? Companies with solid brand identities can say yes to these questions. Can yours? If not, here’s some things you can do:

Get every aspect of your company on the same page: Easier said than done, right? Well, that doesn’t mean it’s not necessary. Get all your departments talking to each other and understanding each other.

1. Promote everyone to the position of brand ambassador: Give everyone a common understanding of the company, its mission and their part in it. They should feel like they have ownership—even if they don’t.
2. Reinforce brand values and behaviors: To do this, use the tools you have, such as internal communications…and like a good basketball coach, consistently promote these fundamentals until they’re second nature.

 
Your employees will ultimately determine your success or failure. That’s why it’s so important to have them buy into your company’s brand identity. However, that’s not something that can be forced. You, as leadership, must earn it. But once you do, you’ll have a company that is full of happy, motivated successful brand ambassadors.

Scott White is President of Brand Identity Guru a leading Corporate Branding and Branding Research firm in Boston, MA

Brand Identity Guru specializes in creating corporate and product brands that increase sales, market share, customer loyalty, and brand valuation.