As a professional branding consultant working for a branding agency I am always amazed at the lack of knowledge of ad agencies or marketing companies when it comes to branding. Sure, they all say they do branding but saying a buzz word does not make it so. All they really care about is doing what they do best. Media. That is right, they buy and sell media. That is how they make their money and what they are concerned about. So when considering an agency consider what ultimately motivates them.

Another big disadvantage that ad agencies have compared to a branding agency is their short term thinking. Sure they come up with funny and witty TV commercials that make you laugh but they are extremely short lived. A true branding company thinks long term and how actions internally and externally affect the brand. For instance you may have seen the new ASK search engine TV campaign that features Kato Kaelin. That was obviously done by an ad agency that could care less what the long term effects are on Ask’s brand. Of course the customer approved that ad and should be ashamed.

How many TV commercials do you see that require you to scratch your head in amazement? These were all produced by ad agencies that have no real branding knowledge. A branding agency would not make these mistakes. Short term advertising is not part of the tactics a branding firm would recommend. Everything is done according to the strategy and brand identity of the client.

So why is that important? Building your brand identity is the most important thing you can do for your company. It is what differentiates your company from all your competitors. It is what makes your employees stay with your company or draws perspective candidates to your company. It is what reduces your marketing and advertising budget. Brand identity is the driving force behind your company. It will also help to develop your brand image in the marketplace which is what you are after.

When deciding on hiring a branding agency or an ad agency consider what is important to you. If you are just looking to make a quick hit in the marketplace then an ad agency may be the way to go. If you are looking to develop a long term integrated branding strategy then hiring a branding agency will be a smart decision for you and your firm.

Hiring a firm to help you with your branding is imperative to your company’s success. Choosing the right branding agency is equally important. There are so many decisions to make and considerations so tread water lightly. Here are some things to consider when selecting a branding company.

There is one important decision you will have to make and that is developing your brand identity. It is by far the most crucial decision you will make. Your brand identity is how you want to be perceived in your market space. Any branding agency worth their salt will try and help you develop a brand identity that is targeted correctly.

If Volvo equals safety and Nike equals performance what will your company equal? This is critical. What will you stand for? What will be the soul of your company? These are then decisions your branding agency should help you with. They should recommend strategies and tactics that will help you leverage this brand identity and positioning in the marketplace.

So now you’ve made the decision that your brand identity will be to enrich the lives of your clients. Optimism is your new weapon and positioning. Take the Life is good brand; they are all about being optimistic and enriching people’s lives. They are clearly positioned and their brand identity is set in stone. You want your brand identity to be set in stone as well.

A branding agency will help you clearly position. Using other companies like ad agencies or graphic design firms might be a bad idea. You want a firm that has no motivation to sell you any one specific tactic. Ad agencies want to sell media and graphic design firms want to redesign your logo and make pretty pictures. The most important thing to consider is the strategy to leverage your branding.

Now you need to execute the strategies and tactics necessary to leverage the new positioning. What you should do is make a wish list of tactics that will help you propel your branding. Start with a list of tactics that will not only bring your branding forward but also help to create sales. Choose the best tactics with the highest return on investment. Some of these tactics may be web design, search engine optimization, advertising, direct mail and more.

So those are some of the things to consider when selecting a branding agency. Remember your brand identity is at stake so choose wisely.

The idea of a brand is deeply rooted in the psyche of managers as being associated with the delivery of tangible products to consumers but today we are increasingly delivering intangible services rather than goods so is branding still relevant. Traditionally a business has been viewed by senior management as split into discrete divisions, sales and marketing, production, HR, IT, legal and accounting. Some divisions created revenue and b the brand identity was important for customer recognition and action needed to be taken to maximize that while other divisions created cost that reduced the brand value and this needed to be cut. Following this methodology would logically result in increased profits.

This led in practice to highly dysfunctional decision making with, for example, IT staff being cut only for decreased effectiveness across the business producing reducing sales generation and increasing costs in other parts of the business.

Decreased profitability was the result of making otherwise perfectly logical business decisions based on KPI metrics.

The Balanced Business Scorecard seeks to address this dysfunctional approach to business management and looks at how the entire business operates as a cohesive, holistic whole. Viewing all divisions of the business as creating value allows for logical rational business decisions that do lead to increased shareholder value and enhanced profitability.

Is measuring traditional brand metrics still relevant?

The blunt answer is yes, the company brand is perhaps more important than it ever has been but how the brand is being used has probably altered greatly as is how the value of a brand is perceived not just by customers but also by shareholders.

For many listed companies the value ascribed to the company brand accounts for more than a third of the company share value. In many instances, brand value accounts for far more than that. The issue is how do we measure brand value and what metrics are available for us to use as part of a Brand KPI tool.

Using financial metrics for brand performance measurement you will find the following as the primary metrics to monitor and analyze:

- Sales Generation – measures brand as a factor in the purchasing decision

- ROI – measures the ROI using the accounting goodwill value and treating it as any other balance sheet asset

- Transaction Value – looks at the contribution from product lines and product mix and the impact of the brand on that contribution

- Growth Sustainability -this is a measure of how much the brand is contributing to sales rate growth without the business introducing further investment to gain that market share.

Financial value is probably the simplest metric to determine as we can extrapolate “goodwill” valuations using accounting and financial data coupled with share price information. At least with share pricing information we have a set finite value that the market is placing on our business and the financial accounting information can give us a basis for determining how much of the price the market will pay for a share is determined by the valuation of the goodwill.

Measuring brand perception and performance is trickier as we dealing with nebulous concepts that we know have an impact but cannot directly measure. Performing customer awareness surveys will help in providing a measure of how well known the brand is with consumers in a given section of the population or target market segment. All of these can be measured but the metrics that are produced are based upon subjective questioning and even more subjective answers.

“Brand identity” is the combination of consistent visual elements that are used in your marketing materials. A basic brand identity kit consists of a logo, business card, letterhead, and envelope. It can be extended to include a Web site, brochure, folder, flyer, or any other professionally designed pieces.

In today’s economy of intense competition, a company’s brand is of paramount importance. This is further enhanced by the fact that the Internet makes your nearest competitor just a click away.

The values associated with your brand can make the difference between having lots of repeat customers and constantly losing people after one sale. It can mean the difference between having positive word of mouth advertising working for you and having a diluted conception of who you actually are. These brand values ultimately make a big difference to your bottom line, and they’re something every business owner or brand manager should be looking at closely if they want to secure the longevity of their brand.

Email marketing is a key element of the brand building exercise that often goes overlooked by decision makers. People will spend countless hours, days and weeks analyzing their websites and making sure each page has a consistent feel. But how long are your customers really on your website? While all of us wish we were eBay with a retention time per user in excess of 90 minutes (source: Nielsen//NetRatings), the fact remains we are not. Email marketing lets you impose your brand values on your customers (and prospective customers!) even after they leave your website.

If your customer spends 7 minutes on your website, do you think they have absorbed enough of your brand values? Think of popular brands in today’s marketplace: when someone says McDonalds you instantly think and feel certain things, but those values were built up over a long period of time (…definitely dwarfing the 7 minutes you got to spend interacting with your customer!). But, email marketing can help fill that void. The best email marketing programs will offer email signup boxes for your website, so you can prompt your site visitors to sign up for your newsletters, coupons, promotions, etc.

By sending effective email marketing campaigns to your customers, you can communicate with them even after they’ve left your website. This is not to suggest that your strategy should be to bombard your customers with constant email marketing messages so that they have no choice but to remember your brand. In this case, your email marketing may have effectively gotten your customers to know your name, but the brand values you are communicating is that you are excessively annoying (and you probably don’t want that!).

An effective email marketing strategy for brand building would be a monthly or bi-weekly newsletter. You want to send enough email marketing messages so that your customer gets a feel for your company and keeps you in mind for their future purchases. It’s important that your email marketing campaigns reinforce the brand values you began to setup while the customer was on your website. While your customers may not become brand loyal after just one email marketing message, over time your brand will become ingrained in the ‘purchasing habits’ part of their psyche and that’s exactly what you are striving for.

The nice thing about email marketing in conjunction with brand building is that it is very viral. Once you have brand loyal customers, they essentially become your brand ambassador and that means they can easily forward your message to their friends and colleagues (most email marketing programs should have a ‘forward to friend’ feature). This is a huge benefit because when John gets an email from his friend Mike saying “Hey John, these guys sell the absolute best widgets, check out their flyer below”, you better believe that John will be landing on your website ready and eager to be your customer.

Email marketing, when done correctly, keeps the lines of communication open long after a customer has visited your website, which gives you the time to build your brand and ultimately reap the benefits.

Like any popular brand, your customers are your lifeblood. You’ve built your brand’s image to embrace your customers and draw them in. You’ve carefully designed your logo, chosen the colors and invested in a professional web presence to create branding for your products. Your customers, in turn, take these colors, symbols and logos and brand themselves to demonstrate their loyalty.

Your company and your products are not equivalent. Rather, each of your products requires its own brand identity. Here are 5 tips for branding your product.

Tip #1: Distinguish between your company and your product: Your company is not the product you are trying to brand. Some companies waste enormous resources and confuse customers when they divide their branding efforts carelessly between their company name and a specific product. When you message to the public, be crystal clear about whether you are talking about your company or your product.

Tip #2: Select a logo that is applicable to multiple media: Quite simply: your logo should look just as good on your business cards and letterhead as it does on your Web site. Make sure you choose a logo that reproduces well in multiple media. Ask a graphics design specialist for their input.

Tip #3: Leverage every customer-facing process to build your brand: Your brand is not just about your name, your logo, and your tagline: it is about the total package. Examine every customer-facing point your employees have – including telephone calls, e-mails, your Web site, ads . . . even how product returns are processed – and make sure that they say the right thing about your brand.

Tip #4: Do not spread your brand too thinly: If you have built your brand for one product or product line, it can be a good idea to expand that niche using your current brand equity. However, it is usually a very poor idea to try to spread that brand to other product lines. Imagine if BMW came out with a line of high-end golf carts. You get the picture. Doing this will only serve to dilute your brand.

Tip #5: Work to associate a specific customer promise with your brand: Your customers should always be reminded of one particular quality that they will always experience, without fail, whenever they do business with you. This is your customer promise and everything about your brand should reinforce this customer promise, without fail, every time. Consistency is key here as even a single point of failure could ruin your brand image for a group of customers which can never be restored.

Branding a product is not complicated, but it does require expertise, attention, and careful thought. By developing an effective branding strategy your products stands to fair very well against its competition.

The word brand originally meant anything hot or burning, and for hundreds of years was associated with the process of marking an animal with a unique symbol so that the owner could identify it at a later date. The practice involved heating a branding iron that was fashioned into a symbol, letter or name, in a fire, which would then be pressed against the hide of an animal, burning the hair and skin and leaving a permanent scar on the body.

Building a brand is more than just fixing a catchy name on a product. Brand is all about relationships—it is how customers feel about your product. That feeling will either incline them to use your product or pass it by for something else. What control does a marketer have over the minds and hearts of buyers? Marketing authority David Jobber has identified seven factors in building a successful brand.

Did you know that you can have your own brand of handbags made in Italy by the same manufacturers of the biggest brands but at a fraction of the cost?

Quality made in Italy handbags are a very profitable trend. In fact handbags are an immediately recognizable sign of distinction, taste, wealth. A beautiful handbag is a fashion and a personality statement which is a must for each contemporary, successful woman.

Selling handbags is quite profitable also as, as opposed to apparel, there are no sizes to stock and therefore very little inventory is left unsold while very few items are returned. However getting the big name handbags to resell is difficult, expensive and the price competition cutthroat, leaving uninteresting profit margins.

Luckily a new trend is emerging with vast profit opportunities associated with it. The trend is for unbranded or private branded handbags. In fact, in the more advanced markets worldwide, conspicuous brand names are quickly becoming “out”. Showing a famous brand name is more and more considered ostentatious, obvious, not in good taste and associated with “new money”.

The trend for the unbranded is so strong that even the biggest names are quickly producing some of their new collections with discretely placed brand names and logoes or without them alltogether.

A corresponing fast-growing trend is thus that of private brand, private label, OEM handbags. In this case the handbags are sold with the logo of a trendy boutique or of a small but high quality importer (yourself).

Private branding is used also to quickly add a line of accessories to a brand which concerns itself mostly with apparel or something else and who does not want to invest in designing and manufacturing handbags but nonetheless desires a product of matching quality.

How can one profit from this fast-growing trend? It is quite simple and quick, provided that you know where to source your handbags.

Italy is home to the best manufacturers of handbags and to the best leather tanneries in the world. Quite often the biggest brand names spread their manufacture among many smaller handbags makers within Italy. These manufacturers are chosen for their ability, attention to detail, reliability.

Besides producing for the top brands, typically each of these Italian manufacturers design and manufacture several lines of their own, with the same quality, materials and skill employed for the top names but they sell these at a fraction of the price.

In fact you can purchase for $70 the same handbag quality that retails for $900 when branded by the top names. This is because there are no middlemen and no monster organizations on payroll nor expensive advertising campaigns to finance. You just pay materials, workmanship and an honest profit to the manufacturer.

Of course when selling under your own brand, or unbranded, you are unlikely to be able to charge as much as the top names; however the profit margin is still 3-4-5 fold! And your lower prices, being more affordable, attract more customers and translate into a higher volume of sales.

Let’s be clear about one thing: when we talk about private label/private brand handbags made by the top Italian manufacturers who work for the big names, we are talking about original designs of the manufacturers and NOT of copies or so called “replicas” (which are also illegal copies).

These original designs however are always very successful because they follow each season’s trend in terms of style, materials and accessories.

In fact they are often even MORE successful than the big names because the often “hostile” or difficult to wear “cutting edge” of the big names is “smoothed out” in the private brand designs which are thus more wearable, comfortable, saleable.

Many Italian manufacturers will of course produce your own designs, this however requires considerable skill in preparing the designs, investments for setup costs, large minimum orders, travels to the premises to define details etc. Manufacturing your own designs, therefore, while a very profitable option, is a medium term project and worth it if you have already established good revenues in the field of handbag retail.

Instead, choosing existing designs and have them branded with your own logo is very quick and minimum quantities are as low as one dozen! This is also a safe choice unless you are an experienced designer and marketer.

In fact the Italian manufacturers, being very experienced with worldwide trends and sales, know exactly which designs are hot in each country, which colours sell best in each country, which features are necessary to succeed in each country; from the lenght of handles to zippers to inside pockets. This type of knowledge is worth thousands of dollars in marketing consultancy otherwise!

If you can, it is best to travel to Italy, (to Tuscany in particular, which has an excellent handbag manufacturing district) and go visit the factories and warehouses yourself. Here you can select styles, materials and colours and get valuable imput from the manufacturers about the best choices for your own particular target market.

After having chosen styles and colours, you provide the artwork for your logo to the manufacturer which will be used to produce custom items to brand your handbags.

Typically your brand logo can be: a) embossed on a leather patch inside the handbag, b) etched in a metal plate to be also applied inside the handbag c) etched in a metal plate or pendant which is fastened to the handbag handles d) printed on the fabric dustbag which is used to protect and store the handbag. The dustbag is a much appreciated accessory by customers and associated with the idea of quality.

The extra expense to brand the handbags is negligible, $2-3 each plus one-time setup fees of around $100 to make the necessary metal stamps and moulds. Typically you are required to order a minimum of only ten handbags per style per colour. For a comparison, consider that when making your own designs the figure can be ten times as much.

Your order will be typically ready within three-four weeks, including all setups and private branding! The manufacturer will also arrange a freight and paperwork for the shipment to you. In order to source the best manufacturer for you and to have smooth and timely transactions, we recommend to use a local fashion broker for the purpose.

In fact, a good broker will save you lots of time and money by imediately pointing you in the right direction and by following all details and communication until the delivery of goods is completed. The broker’s fees are typically paid by the manufacturer on a yearly basis and therefore all the valuable services provided will be at no direct cost to you.

So to summarize: selling private branded handbags Made in Italy is an excellent opportunity to expand your business or create a new one. It is quick and inexpensive, you can start small and place larger orders as you grow, quality Made in Italy handbags are always in demand, profit margins are fat.