Quick, decisive tests always come handy to assist scientific experiments. One notable example is the Litmus test. For those who have forgotten your Chemistry: the Litmus test simply involves rubbing the Litmus solution with the target substance, and observe if the Litmus changed to red (acidic) or blue (alkaline).
As Branding and Marketing are part-Art and part-Science, you too can use the Litmus test for your Branding efforts. It simply goes like this:
So do that test, and see the results. If people recognize your company, that is a great news. If they don’t, it is an indication that you need to work smarter with your Branding.
On the soothing side of the harsh reality: If people don’t recognize your brand, you are not alone, there are many companies who fail the Litmus test. In fact, majority of companies will fail that. The reason is simple:
The bottom of the problem basically: there are too many Marketers (or their bosses) with “me-too” mentality and lack of guts to be different, consciously or not, resulting in companies that doesn’t have any identity and its by-product: boring marketing materials.
Moral of the story: Your brand is not just about the logo that comes with it. If you replace the logo in your materials and it could be just anybody else’s, you have not filled a position in your target audience mind.
A promotion about banking services in Thai in purple color must be about Siam Commercial Bank (SCB). Bold advertisement, showing modular furniture and creative application? That’s IKEA. If you are looking at an ad about a phone that boasts about its intuitive interface and beautiful design, you probably looking at Apple (before Samsung copied them; disclaimer: I’m not an Apple user).
This works in B2B too.
If your see a robot arm that is in orange color, you’d know immediately it’s KUKA. When you see CRM ads that sounds chill and relax, it is probably Salesforce.com. You see a testing, inspection, certification service provider in oil and gas with a futuristic font, who else could it be if not DNV?
As Branding and Marketing are part-Art and part-Science, you too can use the Litmus test for your Branding efforts. It simply goes like this:
- Take your marketing copies (brochures, webpages, whitepapers, eDMs, etc.)
- Remove the logos
- Get an existing customer (or your colleague) to assess if they know which company makes it.
So do that test, and see the results. If people recognize your company, that is a great news. If they don’t, it is an indication that you need to work smarter with your Branding.
On the soothing side of the harsh reality: If people don’t recognize your brand, you are not alone, there are many companies who fail the Litmus test. In fact, majority of companies will fail that. The reason is simple:
- There are too many companies out there to remember
- Nobody remember anything or anybody that is not remarkable (read: the same like any others) (re-read: not different from others)
- Most companies, like most people, don’t really know who they are, and as a result, they become more or less the same with each other
The bottom of the problem basically: there are too many Marketers (or their bosses) with “me-too” mentality and lack of guts to be different, consciously or not, resulting in companies that doesn’t have any identity and its by-product: boring marketing materials.
Moral of the story: Your brand is not just about the logo that comes with it. If you replace the logo in your materials and it could be just anybody else’s, you have not filled a position in your target audience mind.
A promotion about banking services in Thai in purple color must be about Siam Commercial Bank (SCB). Bold advertisement, showing modular furniture and creative application? That’s IKEA. If you are looking at an ad about a phone that boasts about its intuitive interface and beautiful design, you probably looking at Apple (before Samsung copied them; disclaimer: I’m not an Apple user).
This works in B2B too.
If your see a robot arm that is in orange color, you’d know immediately it’s KUKA. When you see CRM ads that sounds chill and relax, it is probably Salesforce.com. You see a testing, inspection, certification service provider in oil and gas with a futuristic font, who else could it be if not DNV?
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