Organization Age & Size Impact

A key role of brand management is to create and reinforce an identity that promises relevant points of difference to consumers. Smaller, younger organizations have an advantage in this area for a number of reasons:

Leadership
Smaller|Younger Organization: An entrepreneur with a vision and passion Larger|Older Organization: A seasoned executive with experience in running large, complex enterprises

Size
Smaller|Younger Organization: A small number of people who work closely together and often share the entrepreneur's vision and passion Larger|Older Organization: A large number of people in different divisions and departments with different functional backgrounds and allegiances, often very much decentralized

Business Scope
Smaller|Younger Organization: Usually focused on one core product or product category
Larger|Older Organization: Usually offering a wide variety of products and product lines, many times in multiple business categories and even in different industries

Brand Structure
Smaller|Younger Organization: Usually one brand
Larger|Older Organization: Often very complex including multiple brands, sub-brands, endorsed brands, etc.

Organization Infrastructure
Smaller|Younger Organization: Rapidly being built to support the entrepreneur's vision
Larger|Older Organization: Many assets, systems, processes, organizational levels, etc. Very difficult to change.

Corporate Culture
Smaller|Younger Organization: Usually strong based upon the entrepreneur's personality.
Larger|Older Organization: May evolve as new top managers are added. May be very strong based upon the legacy of a strong founder or a current strong leader. Companies that have long and rich histories often have entrenched cultures.

Marketplace
Smaller|Younger Organization: The business category is often in its infancy with many positioning possibilities for a new company.
Larger|Older Organization: Industry is often mature or maturing. Sometimes declining. Competitors are much more entrenched with few, if any, viable marketplace positions not taken. (Recently deregulated industries provide notable exceptions.)

Decision Making
Smaller|Younger Organization: Usually very quick with fewer decision-makers.
Larger|Older Organization: Depending on the organization design, the decision making process can be very cumbersome.

Financial Resources
Smaller|Younger Organization: Often scarce as the organization is growing rapidly and reinvesting all available cash flow. May be less scarce after an IPO.
Larger|Older Organization: Usually substantial including cash flow and borrowing capacity.

Primary Marketing Method
Smaller|Younger Organization: Publicity
Larger|Older Organization: Advertising

Brand Identity
Smaller|Younger Organization: Often evolving, but easier to encode in standards and systems (because the organization is starting with "a clean slate").
Larger|Older Organization: Often strong and entrenched, but more difficult to codify due to the scope and complexity of the enterprise and the inconsistencies that have arisen over time.

Brand Awareness and Esteem
Smaller|Younger Organization: Usually low or non-existent
Larger|Older Organization: Often high

Brand Differentiation
Smaller|Younger Organization: Usually very high
Larger|Older Organization: Usually declines over time as more and more competitors enter the market

The first two laws of branding in Al Reis and Laura Reis' book, The 22 Immutable Laws of BRANDING are as follows:

* "The Law of Expansion: The power of a brand is inversely proportional to its scope"
* "The Law of Contradiction: A brand becomes stronger when you narrow its focus"

Clearly these first two laws favor smaller, younger organizations.

Brand identity firms will tell you that often they can create much stronger brand identities for smaller, younger companies because those companies have fewer constraints (existing logos, store décor and signing), more focused businesses and stronger business visions. They also have a more coordinated marketing function (often a department of just a few people). Conversely, large organizations usually have separate product development, advertising, promotion, public relations, sales and marketing research departments (to name a few).

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The Importance of Color

Color is an important consideration in your brand identity system. Colors have a significant impact on people’s emotional state. They also have been shown to impact people’s ability to concentrate and learn. They have a wide variety of specific mental associations. In fact, the effects are physiological, psychological, and sociological.
For instance:
•Non-primary colors are more calming than primary colors.
•Blue is the most calming of the primary colors, followed closely by a lighter red.
•Test takers score higher and weight lifters lift more in blue rooms. •Blue text increases reading retention.

•Yellow evokes cheerfulness. Houses with yellow trim or flower gardens sell faster.
•Reds and oranges encourage diners to eat quickly and leave. Red also makes food more appealing and influences people to eat more. (It is no coincidence that fast food restaurants almost always use these colors.)
•Pink enhances appetites and has been shown to calm prison inmates.
•Blue and black suppress appetites.
•Children prefer primary colors. (Notice that children’s toys and books often use these colors.)
•Forest green and burgundy appeals to the wealthiest 3 percent of Americans and often raises the perceived price of an item.
•Orange is often used to make an expensive item seem less expensive.
•Red clothing can convey power.
•Red trim is used in bars and casinos because it can cause people to lose track of time.
•White is typically associated with cool, clean and fresh.
•Red is often associated with Christmas and orange with Halloween and Thanksgiving.
•Red and black are often associated with sexy and seductive and are favored by porn sites.
•Black clothes make people look thinner.
•Black is also associated with elegance and sophistication. It also seems mysterious.
•Black is the favorite color of Goths.

Colors also have a functional impact on readability, eye-strain, ability to attract attention, ability to be seen at night, etc. This is important in choosing colors for signing, website pages, prints ads, and other marketing media.

•The most visible color is yellow.
•The most legible of all color combinations are black on yellow and green on white followed by red on white.
•It is no surprise that most traffic signs use these color combinations.
•Black on white is the easiest to read, on paper, and on computer screens.
•Hard colors (red, orange and yellow) are more visible and tend to make objects look larger and closer. They are easier to focus upon. They create excitement and cause people to over-estimate time.
•Soft colors (violet, blue and green) are less visible and tend to make objects look smaller and further away. They aren’t as easy to focus upon. They have a calming effect, increase concentration, and cause people to under-estimate time.

Usually, it is advantageous for a brand to consistently “own” certain colors, which provide an additional recognition cue. The George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film in Rochester, New York has taken a different, but equally effective approach. They intended to communicate that they are a fun and vibrant organization that features much more than artistic black and white photography. So, the “e” icon in their logo appears in a rainbow of colors. Each business card features the logo with a different color. The name itself always only appears in black and white.

Obviously, colors are an important part of any brand identity system. Testing the affect of a new brand identity system’s colors is well advised. It is important to consider that color associations will vary by individual, and especially culture, due to the cultural context and previous experiences with the colors. All of the impacts of colors are equally true of music, scents and sounds. For instance, studies have identified that music has an impact on supermarket sales, mental concentration, achievement on standardized tests, factory productivity, clerical performance and staff turnover, among other things.

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The Branding Of Language

"Do you Yahoo?"

"Did you Xerox the report?"

"Did you FedEx it?"

"Did you see the messenger Rollerblading?"

It's the branding of language.

Once upon a time, using a brand name as a verb was anathema. It was behavior that would drive a trademark lawyer crazy.
But more and more marketers are deciding that the grand slam of branding is to become part of the language - in effect, having your trademark substitute in everyday usage for the type of action or service that your mark identifies. Could there be, they argue, any clearer expression of a leadership position?

We saw a restaurant review recently which mentioned a purveyor who "FedExes her Maine lobsters" to a top chef. The appearance of that ersatz verb does not necessarily mean the purveyor is actually using the services of the FedEx Corporation. (The lobsters could be coming via UPS or DHL.) The point is, they're being shipped overnight - and to say "to FedEx" is to darn near say the same thing.

"Have you Windexed your windows?"

"Did you get your house Terminexed?"

"The drains were Roto-Rootered."

When brand names enter mainstream language, they often "lend an air of reality to a story," to quote the stylebook of the Associated Press. ("He fished a Camel from his shirt pocket may be preferable to the less specific cigarette," says the style guide.)

Why?

Because fishing a Camel from a shirt pocket - instead of a Newport Light - or wearing Nikes into the lecture hall - instead of Keds -- tells you something about the protagonist. Such is the scope and impact of brand associations.

The internet generation, increasingly casual about the protectability of names, is leading the way in the branding of language. "Do you Yahoo?" is not the rallying cry of users; it's the clarion call of the company itself, in mass media messages costing hundreds of millions of dollars.

Similarly, you hear talk now about "googling" (using the popular search engine google.com) to get a line on something or somebody.

"MountainDew me," kids will say at a party.

Once upon a time, this sort of trademark flippancy would turn trademark lawyers apoplectic. Use the brand name generically, they would warn, and you lose - over time - your trademark rights. 'Tis true. Look up common words such as "aspirin" or "escalator" in the dictionary and you'll realize they were once registered trademarks.

But that transition takes time. Decades. And in today's hyperactive world, marketers are more concerned about getting known now, today, immediately -- than losing their naming rights later on.

Which is why they often encourage the use of their precious brand names as everyday words.

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