Photo by Adam Crowe

Guest post by Jade Evans

It’s all about the brand. When you buy the premium product, the sleek design – say of the King of branding – Apple, you’re buying the projection of the brand and all the marketing that goes along with it. It’s like when you buy Nike shoes or those designer jeans – built into the price is their perception of you after you have ownership of that new, shiny, designer whatever.

What do you associate with Target? Most could come up with an answer on a dime. Who do you think of when you think of Patagonia? Pepsi?

These associations – I can tell you – they are not the byproduct of the environment of the company, or at least not solely. Companies work hard and put millions, hundreds of millions of dollars into creating that emotional and subtle immediate response when customers think of a brand. Emotional buying means impulse purchases. (Which is something that any heartbroken girl can tell you when all of those new shoes arrive at their door). Continue reading

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A few days ago, I was walking with my mom on the streets of my home town, Ploiesti. Out of nowhere, it poped in front of my eyes: QUICK! The name of a very particular shop that used to make all my money disappear since I was in 8th grade. They soled notebooks, pens, pencils, anything someone with a passion for writing would definitely be into. They retailed foreign brands that I was addicted to: Schneider, Parker, Staedtler, Rotring with their very suscessful Tikky pencils. I used to save everything I got from my parents and grandparents, along with the money I got from school for being such a good student, and spend it all to enlarge my pen, pencil, marker and notebook collection.

When I rediscovered it, I couldn’t help smiling and being extremely happy it was still in the market. They had changed locations a few times and I thought they had closed down years before. I did not love Quick just beacause of what they sold. I loved the shop’s smell, how the items were displayed, the fact that most of the staff was nice and probably the fact that I had to work hard for every little treasure I got from there.  Continue reading

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Guest post by Carol Wilson

One of the most important aspects of your company is its image in the public eye. Branding has become an integral part of marketing and public relations. Today, companies create brands through their social media and internet presence. Developing a brand that is both memorable and unique could become the key to your success as a small business or company. Any successful brand has a notable image associated with it. This image must be clear and simple, but also engaging and remarkable. Building a brand and image is a difficult process to master, particularly in a society completely driven by branding. Oftentimes, a brand will outgrow its image. In this case, an unsuccessful, misleading, or outdated brand image with bog down a company’s marketing strategy. While branding is all about consistency, the time may come that you’ll need to reinvent your brand image. Follow these three tips to creating a new and exciting image for your company or product that is fitting, current, and potentially profitable. Your image is your greatest asset. Use it right. Continue reading

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Guest post by Annie Wallace

One of the most important things that you can do in the computer age to promote your business, whether it’s an online company or a brick and mortar store, is getting into social networking and social media. These sites have made setting up your profile relatively straightforward, but knowing exactly what to do with that profile can be an entirely different matter. Here are some important things to keep in mind when building your brand through social media.

Avatars: Tiny Pictures with Powerful Impact

Your avatar, a small picture that is no more than about sixty by sixty pixels, is the place where you’re going to make your first impression on potential contacts. As such, it’s important that you have a professional and recognizable picture. This same picture should also be used on all the sites that you frequent to increase your branding opportunities.

Making this picture look professional means following a few basic rules. It’s a good idea to start by putting the picture on a background that is white or neutral. Avoid busy backgrounds. What exactly should you put on this background? Well, surprisingly, your logo isn’t recommended. Using a personal picture on these sites tends to make your networking go more smoothly.

Continue reading

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Does any of you know the Rotring Tikky mechanical pencils? They are awesome! The best in the world if you asked me! And you would have a terribly hard time changing my mind! I fell in love with them back in secondary school. We first started seeing them when our teachers used them. Then some of the kids saw them in the specialized writing utensils stores and wanted to try them. They came back the next day to school, telling us how great they were, how much they loved them.

Soon after that, we all wanted a Rotring Tikky! It was a must to all of us and no other pencil could compare to it. We got them and when we lost or broke them (it took a lot of effort to break them, but kids manage to succeed in such dire conditions ), we wanted a new Tikky, not another one. The greatest part of my story is not the hype around our discovering Tikky, it’s the fact that our preference lasted through high-school and college. Even now, when I bought a new pencil, years after my last Tikky, I still went for the same brand.

Why such devotion when it comes to a simple pen? Simply because, other than the word of mouth recommendation that helped us decide what to buy, the product itself never disappointed. It was cool, it was amazing and everybody wanted one, although it was two or three times more expensive than the other pencils in the stores, but it also worked perfectly. It was enough to also convince our parents that it’s better to pay extra for the quality than buy us other 5 or more pencils for the same amount of time.

These days, Rotring Tikky looks a lot like the original pencil I fell in love with back in secondary school. The design and materials have been updated a bit to make it look slicker, more modern. But the original product is easily recognizable, otherwise brand enthusiasts would be unable to spot it in the see of pens and pencils usually sold together…

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