A good designer knows an effective logo conveys the essence of a brand to its audience, without the clutter of too many components attempting to encompass the entire company.

The earlier iterations, especially, of a logo design are often the most literal and complex—take for example Apple’s logo, as shown below—while as the logo evolves it usually transforms to symbolize the philosophy of a company as a whole. In an interview from the blog Creative Bits with Rob Janoff, designer of the Apple logo, he states regarding the logo, “I feel great that it’s still the same basic silhouette even though it went through lots and lots of changes. The apple shape changed slightly from my original design in the early 80’s. The design firm Landor & Associates made the changes. They brightened the colors, they made the shapes much more symmetrical, much more geometric. When I designed it I pretty much did it freehand. I often think to myself why didn’t I do that. It’s because it wasn’t where I was coming from at the time. I think they did a great job and it will be fascinating to see the next iteration and how it works out.”

The most powerful brands often have the simplest logos; those that have changed over time from being overly complicated to a more straightforward design. See, for example, the evolution of Ford’s logo below. Remaining uncomplicated allows the brand’s image to be more likely remembered as well as easier for its audience to associate the logo with that company.

Take a look at Gap’s logo design, as shown below; as the President of Gap, North America Marka Hensen stated in the Huffington Post, “The natural step for us on this journey is to see how our logo—one that we’ve had for more than 20 years—should evolve. Our brand and our clothes are changing and rethinking our logo is part of aligning with that.” The new logo was not eagerly accepted, therefore the Gap decided to revert back to its most recent, time-tested version of their logo.

A recent case study done on the Pepsi brand’s newest logo demonstrates that trying to complicate a design results in a confusing representation of the brand’s identity. For a reported fee of several millions of dollars, the Arnell Group created a painstakingly detailed 27-page document that attempts to connect the simple design of the Pepsi logo to a multitude of epic universal theories—some even biblical—including the Parthenon, the solar system and the Gutenberg Bible.

You can attribute all of the universal explanations to a company’s logo that you want, but the message is clear: make a brand’s logo simple and it will be successful.

Ask Burst Marketing about our vast logo design experience; we can design you a clean logo that portrays your company’s core values—and for a whole lot cheaper than a few million dollars. Guaranteed.

The infamous Baby Boomer generation just reached another important milestone… retirement.  The first Boomer turned 65 at the beginning of 2011 and for the next 19 years, 10,000 Boomers will retire every day.

Every generation has specific characteristics that define it. Millennials are growing up with the Internet, which some blame for their short attention spans and need for instant gratification.  The Great Generation (parents of Baby Boomers) grew up during the Great Depression and learned to save their money and be resourceful in their everyday life.

In their prime, Baby Boomers were big spenders.  Generally speaking, Boomers felt entitled to buy nice things and not worry as much about retirement, hoping to inherit their parents’ money and rely on Social Security when the time came.

But the world is a completely different place than it was 40 years ago.  Economically, socially and politically – things have changed.  These unexpected changes have knocked the baby boomers off their feet and they are now coping with the side effects of becoming what many call the “sandwich generation.”

Nearly 85 percent of 2010 college grads (and children of Boomers) planned to move back home with their parents because they either wanted to save money or they had no choice, according to an article by CNN Money. The recession and unemployment have hit recent college grads especially hard.

To make matters worse, nearly one out of every eight boomers is caring for their own family while providing some type of financial assistance to an elderly parent.

The sad reality is that 20 years ago, Boomers thought they would be taken care of by Social Security and their parents’ money; but today things are the complete opposite.  Social security has an uncertain future and many statistics show that inherited money is spent too quickly to provide stability.

This leaves Baby Boomers with an uncertain future.  Although the official retirement age is 65, nearly 75% of Boomers plan to continue working full or part time well past that age.

And your marketing plan needs to reflect that. Let Burst Marketing help you adjust to current and future trends.

Somewhere inside this whole mess with Charlie (”winner”) Sheen, producer Chuck (”my way or the highway”) Lorre, Warner Bros and CBS which stand to make/lose tens of millions lies some big business and marketing lesson.  I’m just not sure which one is the most interesting.

Biggest Two and a half Men Marketing Issues:  Vote for your choice

There’s the PR / damage control.  The threat of losing a major cash cow.  The impact of a tarnished key product that makes selling other products much easier.  The customer’s reaction to a drastic change in a popular product.  The disgruntled ex-key employee badmouthing you to anyone who’ll listen.

Wow…What a bonanza!

Do you mess with what works even if you hate it?

Two and a half Men was projected to earn CBS and Warner Bros. $250 Million in 2012.  Even with bad boy Charlie doing his thing, the money rolled in.  So, is it even a good idea to dump Sheen and bring in Kutcher – thereby messing with a tied and true formula?  Or should they have just canceled and built around something else?

What’s the damage to the show’s (or the network’s) brand?

CBS has been able to leverage the Two and a half Men brand to boost the value of shows it places around it.  Now that their dirty laundry has aired so publicly, will it be so easy to cross-sell other products?

How long will the ex-key employee (Sheen) remain a problem?

This is a nightmare scenario for any business owner.  What happens if your top employee – salesperson, engineer, executive – leaves and says nasty things about you to anyone who’ll listen?

These themes here should be familiar to any business: The loss or devaluation of a top product on the company’s finances, sales and marketing strategy.  The fallout from a poorly handled employee separation.

Good theater is watching something we can relate to – happening to someone else.  In the case of this production, the most interesting storyline is taking place off screen.

Frank And Jamie McCourt, the owners of the Dodgers are at war. Their irresponsible management of the team followed by a pugnacious divorce forced the commissioner of Major League baseball to step in and take over the operations of the team.

The way I see it, nobody was ever minding the store. The owners lived in an alternate reality and demonstrated sheer lunacy. They ran the business into the ground and nobody was watching.

Give someone else the keys

Such can be the case with family businesses. The owner reports to no one. Family distractions, being in over their heads, poor leadership skills and ego can produce horrible decisions. Who’s going to tell the emperor he has no clothes?

To avoid the pitfalls inherent in family business ownership decision making, get yourself a boss. Or at least make sure someone is looking over your shoulder.

Suggestions to protect you from yourself -

1. Build a trusted Board of Advisers and give them some real authority to veto bad decisions
2. Appoint an official arbitrator to settle disputes between family members quickly and in the best interests of the business
3. Find a great accountant and attorney and report to them on a monthly basis. Allow them complete access to your books and have them each conduct a surprise audit once a year.

Owners of family businesses are in the enviable position of having greater control over their lives. But you’re human. You make mistakes. You don’t know everything. You have family problems. And you have a healthy ego or you couldn’t run a business.

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Smart marketers know personalization

A recent survey of marketers around the country show that the benefits of personalized marketing – online and offline – has been embraced:

1. Start by placing your logo on all materials. Your logo is a visual cue for brand association, but don’t confuse your logo for your brand. You’ll need much more than just a consistent logo to maintain a cohesive brand identity.

2. Use the same tone and terminology across all marketing platforms. Whether your tone is casual and playful or formal and serious, it needs to stay the same in each commercial, blog post and Tweet you create. If you refer to cars as “automobiles” in your printed collateral, it should be the same on your website.

3. Your slogan or tagline should be the same in all media. If you have a jingle, it must be performed the same way every time it is heard. Use companies like Oscar Mayer and Nike (two companies with unmistakable slogans and jingles) as your touchstone.

These branding “tricks” are a solid first step in maintain a consistent brand identity. Continue to ensure your brand is accessible to your consumers – that is, make it easily recognized. Use your brand notoriety to build trust and offer new opportunities to your audience.

File this under the heading “there’s a right time and a right place for everything.”  Here’s the story:

In Washington DC , at a Metro Station, on a cold January morning in 2007, this man with a violin played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes.  During that time, approximately 2,000 people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.  After about 3 minutes, a middle-aged man noticed that there was a musician playing.  He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds, and then he hurried on to meet his schedule.

Joshua Bell in DC Metro

About 4 minutes later:

The violinist received his first dollar.  A woman threw money in the hat and, without stopping, continued to walk.

At 6 minutes:

A young man leaned against the wall to listen to him, then looked at his watch and started to walk again.

At 10 minutes:

A 3-year old boy stopped, but his mother tugged him along hurriedly.  The kid stopped to look at the violinist again, but the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk, turning his head the whole time.  This action was repeated by several other children, but every parent – without exception – forced their children to move on quickly.

At 45 minutes:

The musician played continuously.  Only 6 people stopped and listened for a short while.  About 20 gave money but continued to walk at their normal pace.  The man collected a total of $32.

After 1 hour:

He finished playing and silence took over.  No one noticed and no one applauded.  There was no recognition at all.

No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the greatest musicians in the world.  He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, with a violin worth $3.5 million dollars.  Two days before, Joshua Bell sold-out a theater in Boston where the seats averaged $100 each to sit and listen to him play the same music.

This is a true story.  Joshua Bell, playing incognito in the DC Metro Station, was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and people’s priorities.

The Post’s researchers throught that one conclusion of the study was akin to stopping to smell the roses – missing the beauty around us as we rush through life.

Beauty feed the soul.  But we’re here to make money.  So as professional marketers focused on growing a business we would ask this question:

Even if you had the best product

Or the best service

Or the best price…

Would anybody stop and pay attention if they weren’t in the right frame of mind?

The old adage “Location.  Location.  Location.”  doesn’t just apply to Real Estate.  It applies to everything about how your business is perceived.

Just as a house in a good school district will be worth more to families with young children, your products and services will be worth more if they solve a particular problem for a customer or client.

Just as umbrellas sell better in the rain.  It’s about timing.  Right place, right time.

Always but always, be relevant.

This week, he received notice from his new contact that his services were up for bid and that he needed to respond to an RFP. He was given 3 days to respond!

He called the contact. No answer. Sent an email and received an out of office reply saying she’d be back the day after the RFP was due.

Our client also learned that several other firms had already responded and been reviewed, with one already chosen for a separate project. And our client, the incumbent, hadn’t even been notified that an RFP was issued to replace him.

Sounds like he’d done a bad job and wasn’t being renewed doesn’t it?

Well here’s the rub. The contact’s boss didn’t know our client hadn’t been properly included in the process. It seems as if she’s decided to railroad the project through with her own chosen vendor.

My client needed some way to fight for the business.  So not really knowing anything about this new contact, he went on LinkedIn to see if he could find out something about her mindset. Turns out one of his close friends was a 2nd level contact of hers, who also had a connection with a 1st degree contact of hers.

Turns out the 1st degree contact was her ex-boss. He did not give her a glowing reference.

With this information in hand and a printed record of how he’d been treated, our client now feels comfortable going over his contact’s head to her boss – someone he’s always had a good relationship with – to find out if he’d done something wrong to warrant such treatment.

The answer should be interesting. Especially for the new contact if her boss isn’t happy with how she’s handled this long-standing relationship.

I’ve protected the names for privacy here. But if you can connect the dots in this story – you’ll see even further proof of how powerful – and personal – social media sites can really be.

IMHO this word – Brand – is thrown around much too casually.  Every creative shop in town talks about “Branding” to their clients.  But, do they really know what branding is?

A complete Brand strategy will accomplish two important objectives.  Here they are along with a sentence to clarify:

1. Explain why anyone should do business with you
   • Defining who you are and the benefit(s) you deliver to a specific target audience over a long period of time.

   als

2. Aid in recognition and recall
   • Creating a recognizable logo and differentiable tag line along with supportive color schemes and consistency guidelines for how to use them.

Unfortunately, too often Brand is mistakenly thought of as only a visual thing.

A Brand strategy should help you generate business.  It must answer the “why” question to generate profitable action.  It’s more than just the pretty stuff.

Mention the DMV and instantly images of gargantuan lines pop into your head and your eye begins to twitch.  More recently however, the DMV had made some improvements by adopting common sense operational efficiencies and online tools.

Many locations will give the poor motorist an appointment window to respect their time.  Online renewals and payments further helped ease frustration.

But there’s a hole in the DMV donut – the locations don’t necessarily coordinate with the website.

This may sound familiar to those who’ve shopped at WalMart.com.  After finding a great price online, you run to the nearest store to snatch up your bargain – only to find the store price isn’t the same as the online price.

Reason?  They’re run as two separate business.  Frustrating and sometimes angering.  But many retailers have the same arrangement, confusing and inconveniencing their customers.

This morning I heard the DMV has a trap lying in wait.  If you should move during the time of your vehicle registration – and do the right thing by dutifully going down to DMV to file the forms – it won’t change a thing as far as DMV is concerned.

That’s right.  Go down to your DMV office, file the change of address, affix the stickers to your license and registration – and they never even update your file.

You have to CALL their customer service center to let them know or they don’t change your records.  Imagine how you’d feel when your renewed registration was sent to the wrong address and you got a ticket for an expired registration.

Then they charge you a fee to send a duplicate!

Check the forms and the website.  It’s itting right there amongst a sea of words.  In type so big that only those who’ve eaten 3 carrots a day can read is the instructions…you must call the customer service center to change your address.

So, DMV offices, online service, and the customer service call center don’t communicate on a simple, yet important function.  And you’re the loser.

Moral for business.  Embrace technology and efficiency.  Be thorough.  Be clear.  But be sure you’re actually helping those you want to help.

My partner Dave recently had trouble with his iPhone.  As great a gadget as the iPhone is, neither Apple nor AT&T Wireless offer insurance on the iPhone.  Best Buy stepped in offering the only insurance available on the product – serviced by its Geek Squad.

Oh oh…dead cow!

After 2 years of paying $11+ per month, Dave needed service.  He dropped it off at the Geek Squad – “it’ll be ready and back here by Friday.”  Friday comes…and an hour of voicemail hell later…”sorry, maybe tomorrow.”  Saturday…no answer at the Geek Squad all day.  He left a message with the store’s customer service to please call him back.  Sunday…another hour of the run around, “sorry, there are no deliveries on Saturday or Sunday.  Maybe Monday?”

“I didn’t even get a call from you guys, isn’t there a message for you?”  “Truth is we’re really busy, and there’s a whole pile of messages sitting on this desk.  We don’t look at them.  We just wait for the customer to call back.”

Okay – get the picture?  Now ponder this:

Best Buy is in the electronics business.  Why can’t they put your order status online for you to check?  Or shipping status?  Especially when the Geek Squad desk is too busy to even look at the pile of messages on their desk!

Best Buy promised a service that made them unique – but the promise turns out to be pretty empty.  That’s a dead cow.  That’s utter brand destruction.