Towards A Healthy Economy + Marketing World

June 13, 2005 — Jane Chen (Producer) of the Red Doors Movie stated, “The necklaces have been a huge hit. Several people have offered to buy them. They are great at parties and at screenings - the red glow looks really cool in a dark room. Everybody asks about them when they see them so it’s a great entre into talking about the film”.

Not only has A&R Designs worked with the promotion of the Red Doors Movie but they have worked with Tribeca Film Festival for last year’s 2004 festival awards. Red Doors tells the story of the Wongs, a bizarrely dysfunctional Chinese-American family living in the New York suburbs. Ed Wong (Tzi Ma) has just retired and plots to escape his mundane life. However, the tumultuous, madcap lives of his three rebellious daughters change his plans. From the beginning A&R Designs took this marketing project to a whole new level by creating a marketable product that the public would buy into based on key elements surrounding the Red Doors Movie.

The Movie & Entertainment Industry relies on ad specialty companies like A&R Designs to help generate sales, awareness, create interest and promote a theme to achieve their marketing objectives. Behind every success, A&R Designs has always been the front runner when it comes to developing and creating a marketable promotional product for every type of special event. There is no doubt that A&R Designs is truly a company that knows how to get the job done when it comes to marketing.

Angela McKenzie
A&R Designs
Tel: 1-866-503-8687
Fax: 703-995-0715
Web: http://www.arpromotionalproducts.com
Email: amckenzie@arpromotionalproducts.com

Technology companies often want to emulate Intel’s success in moving from a hidden ingredient inside personal computers to a brand that consumers recognize, value, prefer and pay a premium for. For most, however, that journey represents a task much easier said than done.

On the surface, the Intel Inside campaign looks like a simple stroke of genius. Shell out a few million bucks for some well-placed television commercials, and in no time consumers will be insisting that your customers put your name on the outside of their product, right? If only it were that easy. What most people fail to realize is that the remarkable success of the Intel Inside campaign — or any campaign that seeks to turn a commodity into a recognizable consumer brand — rests on two very important principles.

First, it requires the financial resources to support a lengthy consumer-oriented campaign. You don’t create a brand name overnight. Second, and more important, it requires a dimension of value that end-user consumers actually perceive as important. Without both of these elements, branding campaigns won’t have enough muscle to convince consumers to demand your product above all others.

Let’s address the money issue first. At last count, Intel spends about a $1 billion a year in cooperative advertising with their major customers, such as Dell and HP. Add to that the $1 billion Intel’s customers spend and the total financial outlay to support the Intel Inside brand comes close to $2 billion a year. Or, as we say in the business, serious money.

In general, Intel matches every dollar its customers spend on advertising that mentions the Intel Inside brand. For example, those hundreds of millions of advertising circulars that Dell sends out each year? Intel absorbs about half their cost. In fact, every time you see the Intel Inside logo or hear the Intel Inside sonic brand, you know that Intel paid for about half of the marketing costs. This enormous financial commitment is one reason why the Intel brand stands out from the crowd and why technologists easily point to it as one of their favorite brands.

On the end-user benefit side, the key word here is “perception.” In this case, Intel has successfully convinced enough consumers that a computer with the Intel chip inside is the fastest available and therefore can handle any application they can throw at it. As a result, consumers perceive real value in the Intel brand, which is why the vast majority of PCs rolling of the assembly lines carry that well-known sticker on the outside: Intel Inside.

Likewise, any commodity product or ingredient technology that hopes to develop a powerful consumer brand must similarly convince the buying public that their product is so superior that consumers won’t accept anything less. And that’s exactly what a little-known company called SanDisk is trying to accomplish.

Will SanDisk Be the Next Intel?

A leading provider of flash memory — the tiny wafers that store digital music, photos and videos — SanDisk is one of the primary beneficiaries of the soaring demand for cell phones, digital music players, digital cameras and game consoles. Over the past three years, revenues for the Sunnyvale (CA)-based firm have surged an average of 70 percent a year. This year, they’re tracking an increase of 19 percent, for a total of $2.1 billion in sales. Not surprisingly, SanDisk’s stock has shot up 40 percent over the past 12 months.

Despite these glowing numbers, SanDisk faces a huge challenge. For the most part, memory is a commodity business, and prices can be harshly cyclical. Pricing wars frequently erupt overnight, and prices can take a nosedive almost as fast. During the summer of 2004, for example, flash memory prices plunged precipitously, causing SanDisk’s stock to drop 40 percent in four days.

To avoid ongoing pricing hiccups, SanDisk is striving to develop a strong brand that consumers will recognize and value. At the most basic level, this means convincing consumers to ask for a “SanDisk one-gigabyte card” for their digital camera rather than just any one-gigabyte card. Just as Intel has convinced personal computer buyers to insist on Intel as the “chip of choice.”

From where I sit, it seems like SanDisk has the first part of the consumer technology branding formula right. They’re spending millions on a worldwide advertising campaign that targets retail stores, magazines and even prime-time TV shows like The Simpsons and Survivor. In terms of sheer dollars, SanDisk isn’t shelling out as much hard cash as Intel, but it probably doesn’t have to. If fact, most companies don’t need to spend nearly that much. They just have to commit enough financial resources to garner the attention of consumers.

SanDisk also seems to have the second part of the formula well underway by working hard to distinguish itself through technology that delivers real consumer benefits. Last year alone, SanDisk increased R&D spending by a hefty 48 percent to $125 million. The result has been a string of innovations — waterproof memory cards, titanium cards, and secure memory cards with embedded fingerprint readers — that have captured the attention of consumers because they offer compelling value.

SanDisk is also working with wireless carriers to help protect consumers from fraud and identity theft. When faced with a lost or stolen cell phone, consumers can contact the carrier to remotely disable the card and keep sensitive personal data safe. SanDisk has even successfully offered new products in the gadget business. Last August, for example, the company introduced an MP3 player that quickly raced to first place in the category, only to be knocked off by Apple when it introduced the iPod Shuffle.

Does SanDisk have what it takes to make the leap from anonymous commodity provider to a recognized consumer brand like Intel? Only time will tell. In the meantime, I plan to follow them closely to see how their branding campaign continues to unfold and, more important, how the market responds. As someone who lives and breathes technology branding, I believe we can all learn a great deal from SanDisk’s ongoing branding efforts.

Get your free whitepaper: The 10 Biggest Technology Marketing Mistakes… and How to Avoid Them

Rod Whitson serves Townsend as President and Chief Brand Strategist. Townsend is expert at helping organizations with innovative products and services develop differentiated, compelling value propositions. Townsend is the largest integrated marketing agency in Southern California. Rod has personally led recent branding engagements with Intel, BAE Systems, Merck, DowPharma, Marsh & McLennan, and the University of California system. He has also worked with a host of successful and not so successful early stage technology and life sciences companies. Since Townsend’s founding in 1993, it has helped clients create market valuation in excess of $80 billion.

Visit Rod’s blog, Branding the Complex

© 2006 Rod Whitson - All Rights Reserved Worldwide

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Measuring brand equity allows a company to establish a baseline and track changes in its brand equity over time. If a company consistently works to improve the strength of its brands, it must trace progress, or risk “flying blind.” Changes in a quantitative measurement of brand equity can show the company the effects of its work, and greatly aid in setting marketing and management priorities in the next business planning cycle.

Once a brand equity measurement system is established, a company can better understand and therefore determine if equity in a given brand can be leveraged or transferred to an entirely new product or service category. Thus, a firm can increase the return from the investment in building a particular brand over time by extending that brand’s equity into new categories.

A company may want to measure its brand equity to aid in assigning a monetary value to a brand. Wall Street measures the strength of a brand by looking primarily at current and historical financial measures, with minimal use of information directly from the “voice of the marketplace” (i.e., current and prospective customers). While historical financial performance is important in understanding brand strength, it does not tell the whole story, especially in terms of what the future might hold for the brand. This potential deficiency derives from the choices made in defining brand equity.

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.

This Article may be freely copied as long as it is not modified and this resource box accompanies the article, together with working hyperlinks.

Over the course of his 15-year branding career, Scott White has worked in a wide variety of industries: high-tech, manufacturing, computer hardware and software, telecommunications, banking, restaurants, fashion, healthcare, Internet, retail, and service businesses, as well as numerous non-profit organizations.

Brand Identity Guru clients include: Sun Life Financial, Coca Cola, HP, Sun, Nordstrom, American Federal Mortgage, Franklin Sports and many others, including numerous emerging growth companies.

Nokia is a multinational communications corporation, concentrated on the important advancing areas of wired and wireless telecommunications. Nokia is today the planets biggest builder of mobile telephones, with a world wide phone handset market share of around 38%. Nokia fabricates cellular telephones for every major market cut and protocol. The outfit also fabricates telecommunications network appliances for applications such as mobile and fixed-line voice telephony, ISDN, broadband access, VOIP and wireless LAN.

Nokia plays an extremely 0 role in the economy of Finland. Nokia is plainly the largest Finnish company, making up more or less 0.3 of the market capitalisation of the Helsinki Stock; an extraordinary position within a first-world country. It is an important employer in Finland and various spinoff businesses have grown up into 0 ones as Nokia’s subcontractors.

Nokia added to the GDP of Finland by over one and a half % in nineteen ninety nine alone. In 2004 Nokia’s fraction of the the GDP of Finland was 3½ % and made up almost 25 percent of Finnish exports in 2003. In 2007, Nokia mobile phones achieved revenues which overtook the state budget of Finland. This has led some to refer to Finland as “Nokialand.”

Finnish people have ranked Nokia (lots of times) numero uno Finnish brand and employer. Nokia is known to be the fifth most valuable brand on earth in BusinessWeek’s Best Global Brands compendium of the twenty most revered outfits on earth in Fortune’s World’s Most Admired Companies.

Nokia’s Mobile Telephone section equips people with mobile voice and data products across a big selection of mobile devices. The section endeavours to focus on principally high-volume category sales of cell phones and devices, with the consumers being the most essential customer segment.

Nokia reckons that price, design, brand, and ease of use are main-stream mobile’s most critical considerations for customers. Nokia’s product portfolio includes camera telephones with great features, for example, megapixel cameras and MP3 players which temp the mass market.

In the 1 st quarter of ‘07 Nokia moved in excess of fifteen million MP3 capable mobile phones, which means Nokia is not only the globe’s primary manufacturer of cellular sets and digi cameras (as the majority of Nokia’s cellular sets have digital cameras, it is also believed that Nokia has recently beaten Kodak in camera manufacturing, making it the greatest in the world), Nokia is nowadays also the primary manufacturer of digital audio. Nokia means to sell 80000000 music enabled phones by the end of 2007, outrunning sales of things such as the iPod from Apple.

A great name is like extra octane in a brand. A bad, boring or sound-alike name won’t necessarily kill a brands chances for success. In most cases however, it dramatically dilutes the brand equity and potency.

Do You Have A Name That Basically Sucks?

If so, shame on you. If you acquired it, I send my sympathy.

Should you change it? Yes. It will cost some bucks, but it’s also a great opportunity to get a lot of great attention and renewed momentum. Weigh it out, look at the cost versus the benefit and remember that change can be scary, but a lame brand can be scarier!

Birthing A Brand Name

The task of developing that killer name has become quite complex. For years, business owners and management named their offspring, then creative service firms and ad agencies jumped in, often with a sprinkling of college talent, finally, the general public added their wisdom in naming contests. I’m sure all have produced their share of brilliant names as well as some very scary ones. Now this field of art, science, skill, and luck has gone professional. Naming brands is big business and can come with a big price tag. Hire a professional naming company and expect a bill of $10,000-$100,000 or more before the graphic execution or production.

So What Is A Great Name Worth?

The answer: a lot. If your brand is properly nourished, it grows and has a long shelf life or history-do the math.

Not All Great Brand Names Cost A Lot

Nike(tm) is one of the best examples. Nike is Greek for victory and is also the Greek goddess of victory. The name came in a dream to Jeff Johnson, Nike’s first “real” employee, and replaced the original name of Blue Ribbon Sports. It beat out Phil Knight’s own name change idea of “Dimension 6.” However, the company did pay Carolyn Davidson, a graphic design student at Portland State University, $35 in 1971 to design the trademark “swoosh.”

When faced with the challenge of naming, start with your ideas and those of your staff. No matter what, even if the names you come up with stink, it’s a good creative exercise about defining your brand essence. If you have the budget, outside input and other naming solutions can also be a valid investment. Remember that the life and benefit of your brand name may last for years.

It will be plastered on lots of things including your market’s mind. Whatever you spend, divide it by the projected years of use and value. This same formula applies for investments in corporate identities and tagline. They are as valuable as a great employee or, piece of manufacturing equipment.

Whether you decide to outsource or to create on your own name, I suggest walking through the following preliminary exercise.

Ask Yourself The Following:

Who will ultimately decide the name? One person or a team? Whoever that is should be involved in the criteria-building process. What kind of brand are you naming? Company, consumer product, business service, or event? What is the expected life of the brand name? Does the name fit into a larger family of names? Will it be used only in the U.S. or will it go global? Remember that today “global” can mean the Internet too. Who is your primary audience for the brand names? Are you creating a new category or joining an existing one? If joining a category, what are your competitors’ names? What are the primary strategies for building your brand?

Once you’ve completed your basic criteria or framework, you can proceed with the grueling task of a name dump of endless possibilities.

Should A Name Be Literal And Descriptive Or Obscure And Emotional?

My tendency tilts toward obscure and certainly emotional, primarily because I’m a strong proponent of distinctive brands. However, I also believe each case is unique and sometimes brand names get passed down and changing them would take an act of Congress.

An Obscure Or Unfamiliar Word Can Be A Brand Home Run

Consider Apple(tm), Nike(tm), Google(tm), FUBU(tm), and Yahoo(tm). They all have visibility/frequency, brand-story telling communication, and brand performance. They are all hugely successful brands but, started as small companies.

Although not my favorite, literal and descriptive words can work in some brand naming situations. Generally, though proceed with caution because they can be more easily copied or imitated, leading to buyer confusion. Such confusion usually defeats the purpose of a sound brand.

If you have a big branding budget, you can salvage or sustain a boring, generic, or literal brand name with some other compelling messaging. Take, for example, Southwest Airlines. Their consistently creative and “on brand” advertising has transformed a somewhat nonexciting name into a great brand name. However, most companies don’t have the luxury of Southwest’s media budget or have not engaged a great ad agency like GSDM in Austin, Texas.

With that said, unless you have a big, endless budget, I say… Avoid like the plague:

Dumb Generic Names

Dumb generic names like Computer Solutions, Performance Printing or Innovative Technologies. I’m sorry if I’ve offended anyone, but these names will just make you spend more and work harder at building a brand. They don’t have legs and will likely drown in the sea of sameness. Avoiding generics names is also critical in consumer-packaged products, especially when private label copycats by mass retailers are showing up. Many times the name can be the strong point of difference.

Copycat Names

I also think copycat names or those that sound like a competitor or some other big brand are not worthy of much.

Names That Are Hard To Spell Or Pronounce

Finally a name should be something most people can spell and certainly pronounce.

Whatever route you take, be it working with a naming company, a creative consultant, rallying your troops and making it an internal company project, enlisting strangers in a naming contest, or combining several of these methods, you have created an extensive list of possible contenders. Now what?

More Big Naming Questions

How will the market receive the name? With supporting context, will the market get it?

Will it jive with your strategic positioning of the brand? Are there negative connotations or associations with the name? Is it available to use? On the earth? On the Web?

Once you’ve boiled down the list of prospects, you can organize nonscientific opinion polls (i.e., in shopping malls, bars, office gatherings). You can also conduct focus groups to test reactions further or you can do a pricey quantifiable study to gauge understanding acceptance, likability, or associations with your name prospect.

Is there a magic, fool-proof method for testing names? No. In fact, sometimes too much analysis just delays decisions and defeats the whole mission of naming your brand before the next decade. I recommend that you test a little, listen a little to people you respect, listen to your gut feelings, and proceed with a choice.

Great Brand Names

1) Are emotional

2) Stick in the brain

3) Have personalities

4) Have depth

While The Brand Name Is Very Important, A Brand Cannot Survive On Name Alone

The brand name and how the brand is executed are equally vital for a successful and sustained brand life. A great brand name can serve as the anchor to your cause, a symbol to your story, a point of difference in your marketplace, a memory trigger, or just one important part of your branding arsenal. Go get you a great one!

Move over pop star “Posh Spice” Adams and English soccer hero David Beckham, the personal branding power of newly engaged Australian celebrity sports couple Lleyton Hewitt and Rebecca Cartwright could be worth up to $100 million dollars.

In terms of public relations and effective public relations, their media performance this week in both print and television proves they have the potential to become a truly global brand and rival Posh and Becks on the world stage.

Hewitt, who has undergone a lot of media training has earnings from sponsorship and tennis valued at $13.7 million per year according to the BRW Rich List.

Their personal brand is definitely stronger as a couple because they are opposites that attract, and this is always very seductive for consumers in terms of marketing strategy.

Hewitt’s values of the gritty, anti-establishment, anti-authority fighter appeal to the Australian larrikin in us all, while Cartwright’s youthful, wholesome girl-next-door image provides a balance to this, a component essential to any brand building.

Brands help keep products or services fresh in the minds of consumers – and good marketers and influencers are able to identify what is at the core of a brand.

The outstanding attribute of the Hewitt/Cartwright personal brand is that their values are very authentic and resonate across a wide range demographics, a very clever marketing strategy.

Both are not afraid to show their emotions and this is what cynical consumers want in a noisy, crowded and often over-hyped marketplace, plus their clever use of effective public relations.

Mr Murrell calls this concept Integrity Marketing, where the values of an organisation are aligned with those of its staff and customers.

The fact that both these Australians are so comfortable with who they are in front of the public, whether that’s on a tennis court, in front of a TV camera or doing a photo shoot, means they will appeal to all people, from grandmothers to young kids, and that’s their real marketing appeal as a brand. More information (http://www.8mmedia.com/)

Thomas Murrell MBA CSP is an international business speaker, consultant and award-winning broadcaster. Media Motivators is his regular electronic magazine read by 7,000 professionals in 15 different countries.

You can subscribe by visiting http://www.8mmedia.com. Thomas can be contacted directly at +6189388 6888 and is available to speak to your conference, seminar or event. Visit Tom’s blog at http://www.8mmedia.blogspot.com.

People often come to me to assist them with developing
their brand because they are unable to accomplish the
business success they desire. They’re experiencing what
we call the Big Uneasy–the state of being when things are
hard. They are stuck in an idea, unable to make it happen,
and dreams are unfulfilled. Life is heavy, there’s a lack of
flow… the Big Uneasy has taken over.

Knowledge is needed to alleviate the discomfort– to grow
your business, to make the right decisions. In our
information-rich world of today there is a multitude of help
available.

Multi-day, multi-speaker and multi-vendor events have
become the norm. More help is coming to the rescue
everyday. These essential events open people up to a
greater world of possibility– as well as something else that
can be debilitating– the clouds of guess.

Yes, you heard me right, the clouds of guess.

The breeding ground for the clouds of guess is amongst the
amazing speakers sharing valuable experience and
powerful tools at many multi-day events and the wonderful
people seeking to grow and fully participate in success. I
recently discovered this excruciating phenomenon on the
speaking trail with my own company.

Like experiencing the marine layer as it gradually rolls in at
dusk from the ocean, during the first day of the event the
clouds were nearly undetectable–masked by the crowd’s
excitement and enthusiasm. But as day two and three day
rolled out, the clouds of guess were swirling overhead.
Hundreds of people became engulfed in these clouds. At
first I thought it was simply information overload, however
looking closer I found the “clouds” were really DECISION
overload. “How do I decide which expert to go with?”, “What
tool is right for me for the money?”, “What approach is best
for my business right now?”. These business owners were
trying to decide without having a solid method to make a
decision so…they were reduced to guessing.

By the end of the multi-day event they were unable to make
any powerful decisions for their business. Only a skillful few
were able to circumvent the clouds. What did they know, that
most others didn’t?

We often trip ourselves up by asking the wrong questions.
The question isn’t, what expert, tool or approach that can
assist you best. If you are listening to someone on the
stage they are most likely successful infopreneurs; and
certainly has something of value to share with you. The real
question is “where am I in my business, service or product
at this specific point and what comes first.”

We all take something for granted in our lives, myself
included. A member of the Producers Guild of America with
a background producing theatre, television, interactive
games and the Internet, and an education in architecture, I
often forget the value of the “process” perspective that I have
honed.

Please know that there is an indisputable process
necessary to produce anything– especially something of
value. And the process clears away the clouds of guess and
prevents them from ever returning.

However, if the order of the process is altered, or if a step is
skipped, something WILL go wrong. Not only will those
clouds return, the new question will be… how much and
how bad will it hurt?

The major milestones of a typical production process
(bringing a idea into manifestation) in the language of
entertainment is:

• Development (idea, concept & script)

• Pre-production (how will it be made, delivered, budgeting,
casting, etc.)

• Production (making it)

• Post-production (delivering it)

Translating these major milestones to manifesting any
business, service or product:

• Idea, Concept & Branding

• Productization - how will it be made or delivered, priced,
where it fits in the existing product line or market, etc.

• Making it

• Marketing it

Use ALL those steps and the success you seek is yours.

The discipline and excellence you put into each step and
every little thing you do is what allows success to manifest.
The very process that you use directly impacts the speed of
your result. Skipping a step in the process or doing it
incompletely WILL delay or even prevent you from making
your success happen.

Before your make any implementation decision, be clear
about where you are in the manifestation process. I
guarantee, operating in this place of clarity will keep away
the clouds of guess and turn your Big Uneasy completely
around.

Now that you know this, go out and make it happen!

W. Vito Montone, Co-founder BrandU™, Co-Author of Why
Brand: Big Business Success No Matter Your Size, and
BrandU™ Bible, the only step-by-step workbook for
developing your business as a brand.
www.whybrandu.com.

© 2003 Castle Montone, Limited All Rights Reserved.

W. Vito Montone has produced over 25 stage plays including
To Oz and Back, the television show Entertainment Atlanta
™ for a CBS affiliate, three multi-million dollar award
winning CD-ROM projects for Disney Interactive: including
MathQuest with Aladdin featuring Robin Williams” and the
award winning broadband website,“Concept:Cure” for
Digital Domain and General Motors. He has consulted on
story structure on over 15 feature projects, and was
Executive Producer at Paramount Digital Entertainment
leading development of the next generation of entertainment
on the web. His vast array of work experience has earned
him the title of “Experience Architect.’ He is the Co-Founder
and President of Why Communications where in addition to
the day to day branding business, he explores next
generation digital entertainment & branded virtual
experiences. He co-created BrandU, the only step-by-step
process of developing your business as a brand, and
co-authored the BrandU Bible, and the upcoming Why
BrandU: Big Business Success No Matter Your Size

No competition?! Is this naïve? Wishful thinking? A load of bunk?

Not at all.

As a coach who has consistently defied conventional wisdom as to what makes a successful coaching practice (NOT built on coaching other coaches!), let me share with you what I have learned along the way and what saves me EVERY SINGLE TIME I start to get overwhelmed or lose my business focus. It is so basic but SO critical to the success of solopreneurs and small business owners and it all boils down to that old saying, “KNOW THYSELF”. Simple, yes, but surprisingly difficult for many and a lot richer journey than you might expect.

What follows is a simple model that will help you see exactly where you can focus your business building efforts most effectively.

First, you do need to know a few things about your industry and those who specialize within it. This will give you the context in which your business exists. Consider these three major areas for your investigation:

1. Your industry as a whole (e.g. all coaches, all massage therapists, all nutritional consultants)

2. Those who share your ‘specialty’ (e.g. retirement coaches, those who do sports massage, those who specialize in the nutritional needs of menopausal women.)

3. YOU.

Trap #1: Becoming a Commodity

Not uncommonly, new businesses suffer from a lack of definition. To niche or not to niche? It’s a scary proposition to enter in to a new field, or to opt for self-employment and we often want to keep our options (for revenue) open. It is natural when one enters new territory to search for any measuring stick one can find to learn how to succeed in one’s chosen field.

Unfortunately, this often means discernment gets tossed out and you can start to read every industry directive on what it takes to succeed as relevant to your business. It may not be. In fact, some of what you read may go so against your inherent strengths that you will risk being trapped in inefficiency and find yourself stalled and overwhelmed at every turn should you try to follow their recommendations.

It’s important to understand that what is common to all distinguishes none. Identify, the overlap of those skills and techniques that are the foundation of your industry, regardless of your specialty area. While it is critical that you have a strong foundation, do not allow yourself to believe that this alone will build your business. It will not. You will simply be an interchangeable entity with everyone else in your field where prospective clients are concerned which leaves them no reason to choose you on factors other than price and gives them no reason to be loyal to you.

Businesses playing to commodity will experience high turn over of clientele, poor return on investment for marketing efforts and lack of a clear direction in their business building efforts.

BEWARE: Distinctiveness today is commodity tomorrow. Once upon a time there was only one coach, or dentist, or widget maker. It was enough to just be that. As the field grows what is distinctive for the individuals in it MUST evolve.

Trap #2: Playing to the Competition OR Trying to “out-Oprah” Oprah

Once you have a handle on the foundation of your industry and have developed the requisite set of skills, the next logical place to look is at those who share your specialty area.

Where your business shares aspects with those in your field in general, you are in unfocused, general competition arena with everyone in your industry. Where you overlap with those in your specialty there is focused competition.

The temptation here is to adopt a “me, too…only better…or cheaper…or…” attitude. You see everyone in your specialty has an e-book so you set off to write yours. Or they market in a certain way, so you do also. Or they use a really great catch phrase so you adopt their language, or seek the same licensure for a program that is bringing them money.

Hear this: You can’t play their game better than they do. When you play “me, too” you will always play “catch up” and it is exhausting to jump over a bar that someone else keeps raising. You risk being taken away from your inherent strengths and your customers will be able to tell the knock-off from the original. They may come to you based on price, but you may lose them in the long run unless you discover what you uniquely bring to the table. You can’t out-Oprah Oprah. Nor can you out-Laura Laura. (Nor can Oprah out-you YOU). Don’t even try. It’s okay to be inspired and led but you won’t be able to replicate the exact steps of any successful person and end up in the same place.

YOU, GLORIOUS YOU

What this leads you to is that big section of the business arena that you share with no one. This is where personal branding lives. This is where the stuff that makes customers raving, loyal fans lives. This is where most business owners back off and scare themselves silly.

It’s easier to hang out and follow competition or to play the ‘me, too’ game. It’s hard to play by your own rules without feeling like a nut. You WILL be out of your comfort zone. Passion and creativity and a thriving, living business are not static entities. That’s just the truth. You will need LOTS of courage to be unapologetically you. You will have to understand that some folks will not hire you if you are too ‘you’…they may be looking for me, or Mackenzie, or Oprah…and the folks who don’t want us may be looking for you! You don’t want to work with EVERY one. You want to work with the RIGHT ones. Trust me on this. I used to work with everyone and it was exhausting! Now, the clients who DO resonate with you…that is powerful stuff!

Clients who are allowed to fully experience doing business with YOU (as opposed to someone like you) are a wealth of information, not just business. When you are clear about who you are and communicate that clearly you allow your customers to start a dialogue with you about what is relevant to them in your business. They will willingly give you feedback, support, referrals and product ideas because people want to help people they believe in. If you are giving your customers value, they are going to want you to be around to keep giving it to them!

When you are clear in your vision, uncluttered in your business habits and responsive in an ongoing dialogue with your customers your business will grow effortlessly. Your customers will help you know when you are becoming a commodity and they will encourage you to stretch. They will require it and so should you.

Now how do you find your uniqueness? Your uniqueness, my friends, is not in any article. You will discover it in dialogue, self-reflection, experimentation and boldness. THAT is where the fun begins!

Laura Young, M.A. is a life and business coach and owner of Wellspring Coaching. She is a contributing author to A Guide to Getting It:Purpose and Passion, Become Your Own Great and Powerful and A Guide to Getting It: Creative Intelligence, due out Spring 2006.
Laura specializes in working with individuals facing midlife transitions (personal and career), self-employed individuals on business development strategies and high level leaders on communication and leadership skills.
With doctoral training in counseling psychology, Laura has written extensively on such topics as stress management, motivation, finding one’s life purpose, achieving life balance, cultivating a healthy lifestyle and improving communication in personal and professional relationships. Please visit her blogs and website to tap in to her extensive resource base.

This question I don’t really get asked its more I see when a person requests a quote and say’s “I would like a custom flag made using my logo the colors in my logo are navy blue, red, yellow and white”

After being a flag maker for many years I have found out that many flag manufacturers out there especially the one’s on the internet say that the custom flag above is 4 colors when they send the quote.

I would like to tell you right now!

This is not true!! The flag above is only 3 colors WHY?

White is not a color

When we screen print onto the flag material if there are 6 colors in your logo then we will use 6 colors eg: blue, red, yellow, green, black, violet.

The color white is not used, the material is white so when we make the film to use to screen print your logo the part which is supposed to be white we don’t use any color.

So next time you go to have a custom flag made be shore they don’t charge you for the color white. If you have white in your logo the flag makers will use white material, most flags are screen printed on white material anyway.

Jason Littlewood of Custom flag makers has been making flags for many years supplying everyday people with decorative custom flags see his and the teams work at http://www.custom-flag-makers.com.