Picture
courtesy of Velo Restaurants Ltd, Tooley Street, London,
displaying its digital menu board with
Repeat Signage
Media Wall software
I belong to a local business networking group who meet monthly over breakfast and listen to key speakers. One speaker talked about brands and immediately immersed us in his talk by displaying a number of brand logos and asking us what our gut reaction was to each.
I thought this was an interesting exercise as it brought home the fact that what you may think about your brand - after all its your baby and you're passionate about it - may not be others see, feel and think. To illustrate the point, the speaker projected the brand local of a high street store and this brought forth comments from 'loathe the shop, never shop there', to 'it's okay, its cheap and convenient'. His next brand logo had a totally different response as we were asked what we felt the brand portrayed. 'High end department store, quality goods, knowledgeable staff always willing to help, pay a bit more but their customer service is great and goods are reliable.'
Our speaker then worked his way through a few car manufacturers logos before moving onto pictures of people, who essentially are their own brand. Sir Richard Branson and Jamie Oliver, to mention a few.
It would have been interesting to have a follow up
session, where each of the attendees could have
projected their own brand, be that their Company logo,
their product or service or themselves, and gain
feedback of how others viewed their brand.
Obviously, companies have their own target customers and
there is a place for bargain shopping and top of the
range. But where it can fall down is when a company
feels their brand projects a particular image and the
majority of their customers disagree. Your staff too,
are important to your brand, and they need to share your
vision and passion, otherwise your reputation can easily
be damaged. Picture courtesy of Velo
Restaurants Ltd., London who use Repeat Signage software
on their digital menu board
Social media is very powerful, and instead of meeting
people face to face, you're meeting different people
online. You wouldn't dream of going up to a complete
stranger who you'd only just met and say, 'hey, we have
a 20% sale this week, here's my card, ring me tell me
how many you'd like to order'. Yet some people seem to
think it is okay to do so online, in a social media
environment, to complete strangers.
I don't know
about you, but when people approach me in that way, I
don't like it and that instantly puts me off their
brand, even if what they are offering may have been of
interest. Likewise, I get hundreds of emails a day,
trying to sell me something, from companies and people
I've never heard of, and certainly haven't subscribed to
be on their mailing list.
To put this to the
test, I used a unique email address in the contact area
on one of my social media sites. Within days, I was
receiving multiple emails, with 'buy now' type messages.
I'd never do business with them.
It is important
to protect your brand and image, and all your social
media should contain your brand logo and brand
background image and photo where applicable. So when
people visit your pages, they get the same brand
experience whether on a social media page or your
website.
When we meet and introduce ourselves face to face in
a business setting or meet online via your website or
social media, I think we have to tell a little of our
story to contacts we meet for the first time, so they
get to know you and your brand and what you stand for.
Only then will they do business with you. The old adage
of 'people do business with people they like and trust'
still holds true. So here is our story.
As an ex-teacher, we often had new equipment
delivered into school, with little or no knowledge
of how to use the new technology. Having worked over
20 years in the audio visual industry, I wanted to
give something back into education, and I contacted
leading brand
manufacturers, such as BenQ, Clevertouch, iiyama,
NEC Displays, Panasonic, Sharp, Sony and
Unicol for information and case studies on
using their audio visual and ICT technology. Thus
the idea for Teaching Technology was born and
launched in January 2011 as a hard copy printed
magazine and then as an online downloaded PDF.
Due to its success, and downloaded in
over 60 countries, I decided to change it from PDF
editions to an online website publication and extend the
content to cover education, leisure and hospitality,
retail and signage, and corporate applications.
I am passionate about privacy of data, and my pet
hate is the growing number of spam emails I receive
daily. Although I welcome emails and newsletter from
companies who've information I've subscribed to.
Therefore, we never, ever spam, nor do we pass on
your details to anyone.
To
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Kind regards, Linda Adams (Editor)