By Karen Post, Branding Diva®

It’s no understatement to say women rule. They make up over 85% of the driving force behind the largest consumer purchases. Yep, they are a $5 trillion dollar buying machine. So what’s the best way to connect these powerful femmes?

Like I reported earlier, I’m in Memphis addressing a group of healthcare executives and here’s what I told them. Women process information significantly differently than men. Make sure you are speaking their language and that you are relevant to their worlds.

9 ways to connect your brand to women buyers.

Read the rest of this entry »

Brandchannel has released its 2008 Brandjunkie Award results (re-branded from the annual Brandchannel Reader’s Choice Award) and one thing is apparent, Brandjunkies are not to be trusted.

Read the rest of this entry »

Recently, Portfolio magazine looked at the potential spending for this year’s presidential election and settled on a probable figure of $1 billion. That, Portfolio rightly noted, is a serious bargain.

Porfolio’s reasoning is that, comparatively, $1 billion buys a lot more than, say, Microsoft’s $500 million to promote Vista. One gets you written into the history books and access to the purse strings to the most powerful nation on earth; the other, a substandard OS upgrade that will be replaced in a half-decade But by these guidelines, the Presidency is nothing compared with the bargain that is health care.

Read the rest of this entry »

We all have a few of our own memorable (even if not good!) brand sounds. For us, some are the NBC chimes, the Intel Inside sound and the Yahoo! yodel and 867-5309/Jenny by Tommy Tutone. These are all simple sounds, but they’ve gotten lodged in our brains - sometimes annoyingly so, hence another name for them, ‘earworm.’

How are these sounds created? What makes them memorable? Is there a magic formula? We wanted to know so that we could pass the information along to you.

We found a great series of podcasts called BRAND SOUNDS series with John Groves. There’s tons of good info on topics such as: composing unforgettable brand sounds, when to hire a sound consultant and answers to the question “Is a Sound Logo a Sound ID?”

Check them out here.

Are you one out of 1,000? The one of 1,000 that can smell sound? It is a psychological phenomenon called synesthesia, in which an individual can smell a sound or hear a color. Most of these people are not aware they are synesthetes: they think the way they experience the world is normal. This accoriding to Science Daily.

Continue reading…

An Introduction to Trademarks for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises

What is a trademark?
A trademark is a sign capable of distinguishing the goods or services produced or provided by one enterprise from those of other enterprises. Any distinctive words, letters, numerals, drawings, pictures, shapes, colors logotypes, labels or combinations used to distinguish goods or services may be considered a trademark. In some countries, advertising slogans are also considered trademarks and may be registered as such at national trademark offices. An increasing number of countries also allow for the registration of less traditional forms of trademarks such as single colors, three-dimensional designs [shapes of products or packaging], audible signs [sounds] or of factory signs [smells]. However, may countries have set limits on what can be registered as a trademark, generally only allowing for signs that are visually perceptible or can be represented graphically.

Read the rest of this entry »

A carefully selected and nurtured trademark is a valuable business asset for most companies. For some, it may be the most valuable asset they own. Estimates of the value of some of the world�s most famous trademarks such as Coca-Cola or IBM exceed $70 billion each. This is because consumers value trademarks, their reputation, their image and a set of desired qualities they associate with the mark, and are willing to pay more for a product bearing a trademark that they recognize and which meets their expectations. Therefore, the very ownership of a trademark with a good image and reputation provides a company with a competitive edge.

Source: “MAKING A MARK!
An Introduction to Trademarks for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises” by Carol Desmond http://www.trademarkstogoinc.com/

In order of estimated number of speakers

Based upon a 1998 survey. There are also three other languages that are spoken by more than 100 million people each: German (128 million), Japanese (126 million), and Urdu (105 million).

Source: Opusfourfour.com

To read more fun word and language factoids, and get some ideas for brand or product names, visit: http://www.opusforfour.com/language.html

When creating a PowerPoint (or any other kind of) presentation, lay it out in a cohesive manner, not as a set of unrelated slides. You want to tell a story. Part of that story telling is using your slide titles wisely. They should be thought of as brief sentences that when strung together could tell a story and progress in a logical fashion. Think introduction, body and conclusion. This will also help you put the most relevant information in the slides and prevent the dreaded page overload. We’ve all been guilty of that at one time or another, trying to squeeze all the information we can onto ONE page in 6 point font. Remember, your presentation is there to support you and provide bullet points (with sans serif font). You are the star of the show. Your audience should leave impressed by you and what you had to say, not having read everything on the wall behind you.

This is an oldie, but a goodie and sort of contradicts our Smart Tip of the week, where we suggest that you should boil down your PowerPoint slides to as few words as possible. But, hey, we like to hear all sides of an argument and challenge our own Smart Tips.

This article from the New York Times December 14, 2003 discusses Edward Tufte’s (the famous theorist of information presentation) 28-page pamphlet that claimed that Microsoft’s PowerPoint forces people to mutilate data beyond comprehension.

What do you think?