Brand Tuned

Shireen Smith is an intellectual property lawyer specialising in trademarks and brands, with years of experience in marketing small businesses. Her TUNED framework is designed to guide you to create a brand that attracts sales for the long term.

Part 1 – What is a brand and why does it matter?

IntroductionThe UK TV program Grand Designs shows how a building project is achieved with the involvement of several disciplines. Creating unique Brand Tuned needs to similarly involve various disciplines. Intellectual property, in particular, is not an appropriate subject to leave till after the brand is created. As Steve Jobs highlighted, design means how it works, not just how it looks. The book explains how the Intellectual property dimension of brands impacts branding, and why visual identity needs to be the final step, not the first one. It incorporates interviews with subject experts from the fields of design, marketing, PR, digital marketing, SEO, and intellectual property valuation

Chapter 1 – What is A Brand? Why Is Branding Important?
Understanding what brand and branding mean is fundamental to getting a better outcome from branding. CEOs and other target audiences of the book would benefit from developing their knowledge of branding. There are many myths and misinformation surrounding this subject, particularly the intellectual property dimension of it. I will try to interview a high profile individual for this chapter on the importance of IP, possibly Deborah Meadon

Chapter 2 – The 3 Fundamental Problems in Branding
The branding industry includes many new media companies, such as web designers who provide branding services as a secondary activity. Many are unaware of the business purpose of branding, and the role of intellectual property in their work. The industry tends to separate branding from intellectual property, leading to problems. Unlike big business, founders of small businesses do not have a brand manager to take care of their brand needs. Even large companies can lack an understanding of the role of IP in branding. Richard Kirstein and Anne. H. Chasser & Jennifer C. Wolfe

Part 2 – TUNED methodology - Think IP First

1st Component of TUNED

Chapter 3 – Using an inter-disciplinary approach to branding

The world has changed, so must branding. It needs to take account of IP so IP and branding are dealt with together. Branding in the 21st century needs to be inter-disciplinary. This partly involves professionals expanding their expertise to include related disciplines, such as for lawyers to include branding as part of their skillset, or designers to also cover strategy, communications, marketing or PR too, A wider range of skills is especially needed when supporting smaller businesses. Focus on the Brand Rewired book, as well as considering Aaker’s book on Spanning Silos Anne. H. Chasser & Jennifer C. Wolfe. Lucy Wern, Seek comments from Aaker,

Chapter 4 –Think IP First! Is the first component of TUNED

IP is about erecting barriers to entry, a moat around your business as Warren Buffet calls it. A review of what brand elements are protectable, and how these considerations impact the approach to designing a business and brand. Leaving IP till after Brand Tuned is the wrong way around. Branding needs to start with IP, and deal with designs last. International nature of IP principles will be highlighted. Stephen Robertson. A visual representation of the TUNED model.

Part 3 – TUNED methodology - Understand your Market

2nd Component of TUNED

Chapter 5- Understanding Customers and Competitors

Understanding your client and market are the focus of this chapter. Identifying what customers want and need is key to success for any brand. This involves knowing who your competition is, and what market you’re in. Competition is not just direct competitors. It also includes indirect competitors who may have similar offerings or entirely different ones that enable customers to achieve similar outcomes in different ways. This involves finding groups of people based on their psychographics, worldviews, life stage, priorities, attitudes to life, rather than focusing purely on demographics, and creating personas. Byron Sharp research findings. Mark Ritson, JP Hanson, Phil Bardon

Chapter 6 - Key role of positioning.

What moves the needle in branding? Here I will also look at the evidence-based research, and how it impacts brand strategy, outlining the Ehrenberg-Bass institute’s evidence-based research from Byron Sharp from his books How Brands Grow, and also from Jenni Romaniuk’s book Distinctive brand assets. They introduce fresh thinking that impact certain areas of branding such as purpose. and differentiation, The chapter considers positioning in more depth, highlighting Seth Godin’s distinction between positioning and differentiation. Byron Sharp, Jenni Romaniuk, Comments from Mark Ritson and Seth Godin will be sought too.

Part 4 – TUNED methodology - Name it right!

3rd component of TUNED

Chapter 7 – Considerations When Choosing the Name

Discuss the different approaches to brand naming – “house of brands” and “house brands” and the hybrid approach to brand hierarchy. Coca Cola, and Proctor & Gamble case studies of brands that changed their approach to use an endorsed approach a few years ago. Jeremy Miller,

Chapter 8 – Use own name?

When is it appropriate to use the founder’s own name for a business? Pros and cons of using the founders name as the name of the business brand. Explore this topic thoroughly here so chapter 11 just refers back to this chapter when covering proper names as a type of brand name. Dell, Disney, Marks & Spencer, Clarks, and many other examples of brands using founder’s own name. Relevance of such a choice to the chapter on the importance of building own personal brand in business will also be touched on here and expanded upon in chapter 15. Jeremy Miller, Rand Fishkin

Chapter 9 – How SEO, Online Visibility and Marketing impact branding

The internet impacts every industry. It is constantly evolving and changing. Our approach to branding needs to keep up, and not hold onto outdated notions, such as the continuing emphasis on the need to own the .com domain of a proposed brand name. SEO considerations that impact marketing imperatives should not override branding fundamentals. Choosing generic brand names is misguided because branding involves using a unique and distinctive name. It’s doubly important to use a unique name when going global. There is widespread confusion about which considerations should prevail when it comes to names and keywords. Rand Fishkin

Chapter 10 – Choosing the name.

The right way to go about naming. 5 types of name: descriptive, suggestive, names that have a dictionary meaning, proper names, made up names. Why descriptive and certain other name choices, such as well-known initials that stand for something like KPI, key performance indicator should be avoided. Will illustrate types of name by using examples drawn from the latest Interbrand list of top 50 brands. Brand value and names. Darlene Hart of US Tax and Financial Planning. Stephen Robertson. Interbrand representative on naming.

Part 5 – TUNED methodology- Establish the Brand Strategy!

4th component of TUNED

Chapter 11 – What is Brand Strategy? How does it impact branding?

Setting the brand strategy plays an important part in developing and growing the brand to reflect the promise the business wants to be known for. It’s the pre cursor to naming and visual designs. Drawing from the book Marketing Myopia by Theodore Levitt this chapter covers the importance of thinking about business fundamentals such as ‘What business are you really in?’ Kodak and Blockbuster case studies. Also, 6 Ps are outlined for determining the brand strategy: Purpose, Principles, Positioning, People, Product, Personality. Michael Johnson. JP Hanson (Image of Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs)

Chapter 12 – How to plan your strategy.
The core of your brand strategy is your vision, mission and values. These are the basis on which to build the strategy, and to use to align it to your products and processes. Asking a series of Why, What, Who and How questions to uncover some common areas of thinking needed to set the strategic direction of the brand, The strategy will play a major role in determining the brand story, and messaging, as well as internally to inspire and motivate the team. Consider the brand book and begin thinking about what messages to communicate and how.

Part 6 – TUNED methodology - Drive the Brand Strategy!

5th component of TUNED

Chapter 13 Drive the Brand Strategy! – the fifth component of TUNED

Once the strategy for the brand has been established involve designers to create a visual identity that can best reflect the brand promise. Marty Neumier’s ideas about importance of enabling the creatives who are designing the brand to revisit the strategy as part of considering the visual approach. Jenni Romaniuk’s book Distinctive Brand Assets impacts branding choices. The design considerations need to bear in mind what is ownable as IP. Jack Wills trade mark dispute case study, and example of Azrights development of Ram icon. Interviews with Marty Neumier, Jenni Romaniuk,, Laura Ries. Images of Azrights Ram icon. Jack Wills icon. Ehrenberg-Bass institute’s Owl icon. Visual icons of some famous businesses that evoke their names, Compare the Market logo. Nike’s swoosh, MacDonald’s M, Coca Cola’s bottle, Apple’s apple, Rolls Royce

Part 7 – Brand building

Chapter 14 –Promoting the brand.

Driving the brand strategy also impacts how you promote the brand internally and externally, and communicate brand messages. Draw from Byron Sharp’s How Brands Grow to illustrate some ways it impacts marketing and branding. Brand building on social media, being omni-present- being everywhere, visible, and recognizably the brand. Budget constraints for smaller businesses, and how to manage this as they grow. Promoting the brand internally to support the culture and to motivate the team to make on brand decisions. Using the brand to guide recruitment. Tony Hsieh, Katie Burke

Rand Fishkin. Will Critchlow. Byron Sharp

Chapter 15 – Personal, Business and Product Branding

Discusses the importance of having clarity around your personal and business aspirations and aligning the two so you build the right business. Unless the founders own name is being used for the brand, it’s essential to promote a triage of brands, the brand name, as well as the personal brand of the CEO, and also key product brands. Trend towards using personal brands of individual team members to promote the business brand. Stephen Robertson.

Conclusion
The environment of the 21st century calls for a rethink of society’s approach to branding. More education is needed for the many businesses that offer branding services to update their thinking, particularly around intellectual property and its role in branding.

Appendixes

Document to assist when identifying a new name.

Brand strategy document, including checklists

Brand book document and what needs to be included in it