Branding
I’ve written about this before — years ago, but, seems that companies still haven’t learned their lesson.
Was in a store and there was an employee wearing a branded shirt (no, not Nike), but a logo with three letters. For this use case, let’s call the company ABC.
That was their logo. ABC. Good luck searching the internet for a company that’s called ABC — there’s lots of them — but, which one this was/is, have no clue. Of course it had a “design” and even a logo, but, between shopping and then remembering the name a few hours later, had no clue what the company was/did.
ABC, I’m sure, was an acronym for a name. Administrative Beaurocracy Company? Who knew (of course, those weren’t the letters, but, you get the idea). Fill in whatever words you want.
NOTE: I always love companies who do this — do a two or three letter acronym for their company and they begin with the letter F or S. Yes, the mind jumps to “f**k” and “s**t”. I’m sure the employee’s use it to describe their company. I consulted for a company that had the letters JAC — and I heard employee’s calling the company “Just Another Company” — when in fact it stood for “Jet Air Capable”.
Back to the point. Why do companies insist on doing this? I can only think that they don’t have professional marketing or sales people (even a sales person wants the name of their company to be advertised out in the world).
Is it because the company is private and when the company was founded, that is all the company could afford to have designed? (It cost another $100 per letter to be added?)
If it is the case of the above, that the “logo” was three letters and has been used for years, at least, as a marketing professional, put a tagline underneath it. Two, three words at least. Something to give the person who see’s it an inkling on “who” the company is and “what” they do.
I also wrote about this years ago — and it sticks with me to this day. There was a company called BASF. They did massive television advertising. Remember? “We don’t make the boats, we make the boats go faster!” or “We don’t fly to space, we make going to space easier!”
Brilliant brand building. Imagine if BASF did the tv advertising, but showed a boat going across the water and all they said was “BASF, that’s us”. You would think they made boats. Or spaceships, or whatever.
It takes nothing to describe what your company does — or, at a minimum, gives the name of a company instead of “ABC” and expect people to remember the two or three letters — no one cares or will take an interest. In fact, don’t waste the money. Don’t brand unless you are going to give the audience who see’s the brand the “reason” why it’s important. Note — I understand, not every company has the millions of dollars to run advertising campaigns and build their brand — that’s why, if you are going to spend money, spend it the right way.