Blog Archives
Trends in Branding this year: What are the hot topics?
Most marketing professionals would agree — there isn’t anything much more important than your brand because it’s your face to the outside world. As far as what you need to know to help shape and maintain your brand, Landor, the brand strategy firm responsible for creating the image for a number of our clients, including Procter & Gamble and John Deere, provides a look at current trends in branding with a series of articles and videos, including gamification, brand purpose, Asian luxury, packaging, data, China and design.
I think that the following five are the most relevant for the balance of this year and into 2014.
Photo Credit: Landor Associates
1. Gamification
Gamification is poised to be as important this year as social and mobile were in the past, according to Jason Bice, Landor’s senior manager of verbal branding. “Gamification could be considered the third component of a new ‘holy trinity’ of digital marketing,” Bice says. The question that all small-business owners must ask is: How do I turn a virtual achievement in a real one?
Find out the answer and more about Bice’s take on Gamification here.
7 Great Tips for Marketing Strategy and Building Your Brand
You don’t need the luck of the Irish to find the pot o’ gold this St. Patrick’s day. KRT is here to remind you about “The Seven Golden Rules of Marketing” that will help you get lucky when it comes to building a stronger brand.
The seven golden rules, provided by The Brand Factory, remind us that a strong marketing strategy is essential for a successful business. At KRT, we specialize in recruitment marketing, where we apply these “golden rules” to create a strong brand that candidates will gravitate to. Below are the 7 Golden Rules with a KRT twist:
- Highlight your uniqueness – Avoid talking about what it is you do. Focus more on what makes your services unique compared to your competitors. Instead of discussing what you offer, talk about how you offer it. You might have a special way of presenting clients’ accounts or a system of assessing their advertising needs. At KRT, we take an organized and creative approach that shows our clients exactly what kind of ROI they are getting from our vendors.
- Be consistent – Once you’ve presented your unique selling proposition (above), apply it! Don’t be tempted to leave old messages out there. New prospects can come to you from all kinds of ways – business card, website, phone call, newsletter, blog, print, online ads and so on. Read the rest of this entry
Did Someone Say “Spring Training”?
I know the first thing that popped into your mind was the excitement of baseball, the anticipation of the new season and the smell of ballpark snacks. What about “Spring Training” for your talent acquisition team?
Today’s media platforms are ever-changing and improving their tools to assist your recruitment teams in “catching” the most QUALIFIED applicants. Just like choosing a great ball team, you only want the “best of the best” to come to the tryouts or be screened for the application process.
We at KRT think that setting up trainings for your team is essential for a great recruiting season!
LINKEDIN
Depending up your level of comfort, LinkedIn has training for everyone! From showcasing your employment brand, to spicing up your recruiter profiles to turning your team into a recruitment machine, LinkedIn has the training to get your staff into pitch perfect shape! http://help.linkedin.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/530
INDEED
If you weren’t aware that you could get FREE access to Military personnel resumes, or any resumes in Canada or India, you haven’t been through a recent Indeed training. What are you waiting for? You’ll hit one out of the park with this training session. http://www.indeed.com/resumes
SOCIAL MEDIA
Wondering how to hit a home run with your Social Media recruitment plan? Let KRT’s Social Media experts join your team as a clutch hitter and train your team to hit one out of the park!
Contact KRT today to get you recruitment team ready to have a winning season!
Walk into 2013 with a BRAND new YOU!
Many of us enter the New Year with resolutions to lose weight, save money, take a trip, etc., but the truth is, most of us never stick to these resolutions. So, here’s my real challenge for the year – to get rid of empty resolutions, and focus on improving my personal “brand.”
I recently attended the “Dine with Alums” event at Saint Mary’s College, and the keynote speaker was Susan Chritton,.Ed.- she wrote the book, Personal Branding for Dummies in which she explains why branding is so important for corporations, celebrities, and ourselves. (Did I mention that she is a Saint Mary’s alumna?) According to Chritton, branding helps position us for success through image transformation and self-prominence.
Here are ten cool tips from Chritton’s book to help you build your personal brand:
The Universal Arts of Graphic Design
Wikipedia describes graphic design as “…a creative process—most often involving a client and a designer and usually completed in conjunction with producers of form (i.e., printers, sign makers, etc.)—undertaken in order to convey a specific message (or messages) to a targeted audience”. That simple description fits, until you realize how much more graphic design influences our lives. Design surrounds us to the point that it’s often overlooked. The only place where you might not see graphic design would be on the final pitch to the summit of K2, but even in such a wild desolate landscape, there’s that Patagonia or North Face logo emblazoned on the front your climbing partner’s jacket. As Debbie Millman, brand consultant and president of Design Sterling Brands, states: “We use graphic design to pay our bills, to get married, we use graphic design to get divorced. We use graphic design in every single aspect of human life…”
Here at KRT, we use graphic design in all aspects of our marketing solutions for our clients – from simple online marketing to product logos to multi-page corporate brochures. The final design is a result of carefully understanding the message to be conveyed, and creatively communicating it to be informative and impactful.
This “PBS Off Book” presentation looks into the world of graphic design and how it affects the world around us. Let us know how we can help to make your message, services or products more impactful.
Brand Logos are Apart of Our Daily Lives
Logos are everywhere. From the moment we wake-up to the time we turn off the lights to head off to bed, you‘ll probably be exposed to hundreds of brand logos throughout the day. One blogger recorded seeing 33 logos in the first 33 minutes after waking up: http://www.logodesignlove.com/33-logos-in-33-minutes Just sitting here at my desk, I counted 12 brands on various products. The competition for brand recognition is fierce! There are a lot of factors that can make one logo standout over another. A simple but unique design, free of noise and clutter, is usually the best solution. It also needs to convey what the brand is all about. Of course, trying to achieve those goals is difficult. The great American graphic designer Paul Rand once said: “Design can be art. Design can be aesthetics. Design is so simple, that’s why it is so complicated”.
I recently came across this cute video posted by logo designer Adam Ladd. He showed his five-year old daughter various brand marks to get her reaction and commentary. It’s surprising how many she correctly identified. Even from a young age, we begin to associate images with a company or product. It’s hard to say whether her reactions were a result of good design or product exposure – probably both. How many logos do you think you’re exposed to in one day? What makes one logo more memorable over another?
