SSW Rules To Better Branding

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I've been putting together Development Guidelines for my employer and in the process have reviewed many published standards (in the .Net arena) from around the world. In each category, the suggestions at SSW are always among the best.

- Leon Bambrick,

Branding is a key to success. In the cluttered global market your company's brand is the way the outside world perceives your product or service. Many business problems revolve around poor branding: your clients might think you're too small for a job, or not technically capable, or charge too much. Common customer grievances could be alleviated by a positive brand image.

Branding isn't necessarily tangible. It touches the emotive side of human behaviour - you feel, see or relate to a brand. But because it has such power it needs to be managed in any organization, no matter how big or small.

Here's a series of branding rules that govern how we believe branding should work. Do you agree with them all? Are we missing some? Email me your tips, thoughts or arguments. Let me know what you think.

Rules to Better Branding

Do you have a sweet and simple company logo?
Does your website put forward your company theme?
Are your products branded?
Does your company have a standard font?
Do you follow the standard font for the mail copy?
Do you brand your events?
Do you have cool business cards?
Do you brand your employees?
Do you brand your cars?
Do you use email signatures?
Do you use a consistent phone message?
Do you use sound?
Do you brand your computer friendly coffee mugs and water bottles?

Do you have a sweet and simple company logo?

When you think about McDonalds I think first of the Golden Arches. When I think of Nike, I think of the Swoosh. It doesn't take millions of dollars and 15 marketing consultancies to come up with a logo. What you should be after is simple shapes, fonts, colors, everything. You should be able to look at the page from a distance and know which company it's for. The best trademarks end up cemented into the minds of individuals worldwide.

Some of the best logo's are extremely simple:

Philips - a simple font with the blue background
Mini - the mini wings is simple and easily recognisable
Canon - the font of the logo simple and is tweaked with only a slight tilt

It is most important to remember that your logo should be consistently displayed wherever your company promotes itself.

You can have options with your logo. At SSW we use elements of the logo all over our site; in the way we present the URL on our footer, to our software product names. Here are all the options we have for the SSW logo.

Does your website put forward your company theme?

The initial point of contact for most businesses is their website. I've seen too many websites which are just a dogs breakfasts - there are hundreds of different templates all over the site so users aren't sure whose site they are on. Each web page should be based on a template, no matter how simple or complex, so that each page has the same look and feel.

Here are some of the basics of the SSW site:

Headings have red and grey bars
Tables and boxes are formatted consistently - see About Us for an example
Verdana is the standard font

At SSW we believe content is more important than graphical design, but we do care that every document, invoice and proposals that is viewed by an external party follows out theme. We've encapsulated these in the SSW Rules to Better Websites.

Figure: Even on this small image on Alexa, our theme is still clearly visible

Are your products branded?

At SSW, after consulting, the second tier of our business is software products. It should be obvious, as soon as our software is run, which company built the application. And more than just plonking the logo in the corner - the app should be recognizable even if the logo has been taken away.

Here are some of the basics of our software:

Logo in the top left hand corner of the title bar e.g. ssw.ico file
Consistent colors throughout the whole page
The name of the product on the left side of the title bar
Every SSW Product plays an Australian Bird Call when the software is started.

Figure: SSW Software Branding

The setup exe for your applications should also be branded. We use Wise for our setups.

Figure: SSW Setup.exe's are branded

Does your company have a standard font?

Every company should have a standard font that they use for all promotional material. In order of preference, the font's we use are Helvetica, Verdana and generic sans serif.

Category List photos should be company font.

Do you follow the standard font for the mail copy?

Do you still follow the standard (Helvetica etc) for the mail copy?

Do you brand your events?

Think of a sporting event and it's likely that you can think of a sponsor for the event. For example:

Australian Iron Man Series - Uncle Toby's
Formula 1 - Mobile, Valvoline, Ferrari
Wimbledon - Rolex

The list goes on...

What this highlights is a company's ability to successfully partner their brand with events that their target market either attend or watch. Though on a much smaller scale, every business should apply this same principle. So we say if you're going to hold any events that are geared towards your target market - like a user group, make sure there's some branding at the event. Here are some examples of how we brand our user group:

You should have a promotional sign.
Any presentations should use a standard PowerPoint presentation template
You should use branded plastic bags
Evaluation forms should have clear branding

When it comes to branding events, you need to remember that it's often the little things that make the biggest difference. That evaluation form or gift bag that you gave out to someone at one of your events could land in the hands of one of your biggest clients in the future, so be diligent and consistent.

Do you have cool business cards?

You should spend the extra dollars to ensure that you get nice cards and your employees are proud of them. That way they will give them away at every handshake, which is fantastic free advertising for your company.

Do you brand your employees?

Extend opportunities to use our branded shirts. Cool shirts with small logos. No - not in the cattle branding style - but your employees are in effect, walking billboards. The corporate uniform should be stylish, and the branding can be subtle and effective at the same time. Branding employees is especially important at events such as conferences, user groups and client meetings.

Figure: All employees have branded SSW shirts.

Where ever your employees gather in large numbers, ensure they come branded.
Do you brand your cars?

We also brand our employees when they're on the road. Those employees who are driving company cars are essentially moving billboards for SSW.

Figure: All our company cars are branded

Do you use email signatures?

Email signatures are a great way of adding some advertising and branding to a medium which isn't seen as too obtrusive. E.g. A URL in a footer from your friend isn't as taboo as junk mail from a unknown company.

At SSW we've set a standard where every email that goes to an external address must have an appropriate email signature. The general rule of thumb is that a URL to the company website should always be on the signatures. In addition, on selected emails we have a signature (The Long Signature) which has product advertising which we rotate on a monthly basis to coincide with the advertising on our home page, user group page and newsletter. Here are our two different signatures:

The Short Signature
The short signature will consist of your name, and our URL (www.ssw.com.au). For example:
Thanks, Adam
www.ssw.com.au
Note: if you use an iPhone or BlackBerry to send an email always include the "Sent from my iPhone/BlackBerry/Mobile Device" signature. This means the recipient of the email knows you are writing on the fly and won't be as upset if you make little spelling mistakes or use acronyms.

Figure: Let people know you are using a mobile device. You hope they will be more forgiving of minor typo's or acronyms
The Long Signature

Is created in HTML and goes well on emails with Word used as the email editor. Here's an example.

Figure: Notice that the phone number is in international format.

Note: Use the short footer when you're replying to an email that already has a long footer (above) in the message history and if you're using Outlook Web Access.

We have a program called SSW LookOut! for Outlook that will will warn you if you forget to include a signature in your email.

Do you use a consistent phone message?

You should remember that any point of contact leaves an impression on clients or customers so even the answering service on your phones should be taken into consideration. If you have a mobile phone which is used for work purposes, we recommend that you use a standard message like this:

"Hi, you've reached Adam Cogan from SSW. If you can leave your name, number and a short message I'll get to you as soon as I can, thanks!"

Here's an example of how it should sound.

Do you use sound?

Some companies associate their brand with particular sounds, for instance Intel and those chimes to represent the Pentium series. One way that you can add a sound to the repertoire of your brand image is to add some to your website. You need to remember that sounds aren't for everyone. At SSW we use bird songs to give our website a distinctive Australian feel.

Do you brand your computer safe coffee mugs and water bottles?

How often are you sitting at your desk typing away and have an open cup of tea or coffee or glass of water sitting right next to your computer? Do you know how much liquid it takes to kill your computer? The answer is not much; some of our developers found this out the hard way and on more than one occasion. There is an alternative though, which if in the event spillages occur limits the amount of liquid being released. Travel safety mugs and sports water bottles are a great way of protecting your computer from unwanted damage from spillage, but they also make a fantastic gift to clients, which is an opportunity for you to have a constant reminder of your business in their face and their clients. We give our clients SSW branded Travel Mugs and Sports water bottles as a way of saying thanks to our clients for engaging our services. We also use them for ourselves in the office to protect our own computers. The minimal outlay for these items can literally save you thousands and could potentially start earning you money too.