The Squared Root - FG Squared's Blog

While FG SQUARED is certainly capable of creating a visually exciting and appropriate logo, we believe that a good brand does not start or end there. There are many elements of the brand, of which the logo is just one visual representation of. Think of the brand as the personality of your company, and how you want the marketplace to perceive you when they make buying decisions.

If I am shopping for a new car, and safety is my biggest concern, VOLVO is the first company that comes to mind. Luxury: Lexus. Urban/Cool: Scion. Cute/Youthful: Volkswagen. Tough: (used to be) Ford. Classy: Cadillac. Etc.

My impression about these companies came from somewhere. Where? Advertising (and lots of it). Past experience. Word of mouth. Each of those companies has carved themselves a niche in the automobile ecosystem and protects it aggressively.

Those personalities, those niches, ARE the brand of those companies. The logo is nothing more than an extension of that brand.

BUILDING THE BRAND

To set itself apart from the competition, a company may choose to create a new niche in the ecosystem and “move in” so to speak. That company collectively now has to live, breathe, speak and wear that niche. That’s what the brand is: the set of guidelines the company follows to protect that niche.

Once a company has identified a new niche, it is a good idea to validate the viability of that niche in the marketplace. Is this something that customers want? What is the likelihood they would change from a loyal brand to get the benefits this new company offers? If this is re-branding, are customers willing to move with you? Is this truly a differentiator in the minds of customers? Is it enough of a differentiator? Is what the company is promising in its mission important to customers? Do they even care?

If a company is going to re-brand itself as the “higher-priced, higher-quality” company, and 80% of their potential customer base is more interested in “low-cost regardless of quality”, is the remaining 20% of the customer base enough to make this niche viable? How much market share of that 20% would you need to have to be profitable?

This is why we feel it’s important to ask the market for their opinions on the new position of the company. If you hired us to paint your portrait for you to hang on your wall, we will find out what you like, what your preferences are, give you our recommendations, and start painting a portrait that we know you’ll be happy with. But if you want to sell millions of those portraits to your customers, we would find out what you want in your portrait and go see if it matches up with what the customers want before we start painting, so we’ll know that they will be happy with it as well. It basically comes down to ‘who does this need to appeal to?’ or ‘who is this for?’

That market research is very valuable, and can save a company a lot of money in the long run. It raises the likelihood of launching a successful brand that will be strong and appeal to customers.

That said, you can absolutely achieve a successful brand launch without doing research. It’s not essential but it is very useful and can illuminate problems in the strategy that the company may have missed. In 2000, before the Dot Bomb, a group of investors came to us with a bunch of money and an idea for a website and a name for the company. We were concerned because they did not know their target market and their name was (to be frank) terrible. We convinced them to spend a not insubstantial amount of money on market research before we started building this company’s brand. The research showed that the market despised the name, and didn’t have much use for the website regardless of what it was called. This saved the investors from wasting a lot of money on an idea that wasn’t viable.

WHAT DO CUSTOMERS WANT ... TODAY?

Without insightful research into the mind of the end customer, there is always a small element of risk involved. It’s not throwing darts with a blindfold on; you can make a lot of assumptions—some obvious, some not—that makes branding success more likely. And even with research, there’s never a sure thing. Market tastes evolve and change constantly.

Fortunately, a company can stay ahead of, and even influence, these changes by implementing Web 2.0 practices. It’s doing the market research I’m talking about on your own simply by putting some straightforward technologies in place that allow an open and constant line of communication between the company and customers. If companies start doing this, they’ll have better knowledge of their customers and can react to what their customers need more quickly.

If this were the case, I can imagine that market research wouldn’t reveal much that was a surprise, and would probably not be necessary. Of course, re-branding would probably also not be necessary. Knowing what customers want, when what they want can be ever changing, by necessity means evolving the brand incrementally over time. This is a natural progression; it might not be intentional, and it might even be out of a company’s control! Customers change how they consider a company depending on how the company—or a company’s competition—treats them. In large numbers this can have a transformative influence on the brand—positive or negative.

One of the best attributes a company can have in today’s climate is “they are open and responsive to my needs.” Branding can promise that but the company has to deliver and stay on that message. The logo can’t do it for you.