via Comanescu.

Where's Obama (source: The Next Web)

Branding yourself as an individual is not an easy thing, the main reason being the fact that you don’t have a choice when it comes to choosing your name. Your parents and their ancestral line are the main influencers on your name and there isn’t much you can do about. While this might not have a huge effect on you if you are not a well known individual or a public figure, it can have significant impact if you have already built your brand only to find it somehow diminished by factors that are outside your control.

The other day I was reading in The Next Web about Barack Obama’s “luck” in this respect. How cruel can life be to allow two branding symbols representing opposite values and ideals be named so strikingly similar. And how cruel can the “human error” be to make the mistakes that CNN and Yahoo (two of the most popular media channels in the world) made by mixing the name of the current US President, Barack Obama, with the name of the most sought after terrorist, Osama Bin Laden.

Well, I guess that for us individuals this is a lesson about resignation, since we do not control one of the most important elements of our personal brand. For companies though, this should be a lesson about awareness and care for when they want to create, name or translate a brand, especially when they go to foreign markets.

To end this in a more positive way, I’ll tell you a Romanian joke about personal branding:

One day, an individual goes to the court with an appeal to change his name. The judge receives the appeal and interviews the individual.

Judge: Why do you want to change your name?

Plaintiff: I have a very ugly name, Your Honor, and I really need to change it.

Judge: How ugly can your name be to require a change?

Plaintiff: Well, my name is John Shithead.

Judge: Uhm… indeed, that’s quite an unfortunate name. I understand now, how would you like your new name to sound like?

Plaintiff: George Shithead.

iPhone 4G

Yes, I would!

Steve Jobs (source: Wikipedia)

TheNextWeb recently published a piece that explores the implications of Steve Jobs stepping down from Apple’s steer, even if just temporarily, as Steve Jobs announced recently in an internal email. TheNextWeb’s theory states that this is just the first step in what will actually be in fact an actual change of top leadership at Apple.

Haunted by a pancreatic cancer he fought with in the past several years, Steve Jobs recently announced his staff that he is taking a medical leave of absence of six months in order to better take care of his personal health. Meanwhile, Apple’s COO, Tim Cook, will take over the reigns of Apple.

TheNextWeb states that since Apple is a public company and since Steve Jobs has the power to move markets (his keynote speeches and Apple’s new product launches have always boosted the Apple stock price dramatically), having him step down from his top leadership position at Apple might cause the company stocks to plummet. To prevent this financial disaster, the company is trying to slowly go through this crucial transition and thus try to minimize the potential harmful impact on the company stock valuation.

Based on this assumption, TheNextWeb opinionates that Steve Jobs will not return to the steer of Apple and, based on this situation, Apple will have to prove to the world that it can remain the same innovative and cool company as it was under Steve Jobs’ leadership as well.

A brand tightly connected with its leadership (actually gravitating around Steve Jobs in terms of definition of success), Apple will most probably suffer an important brand value loss by losing its most powerful associative image. Similar to Jack Welch’s retirement from the General Electric leadership, Steve Jobs’ departure from Apple will leave the company without the limitless resources of his innovative mind. If GE was a market leader and the largest company in the world when Jack Welch retired, Apple, although a market leader in some of his product lines, is still a challenger in a few market segments.

This type of loss for a company of Apple’s stature brings into light the real problem of succession planning. Identifying a company brand with an individual brand in the customers’ minds through can cause an important brand loss when a part of the perceived brand value is lost through the departure of an individual. How important is it then for a company to embark on this train towards success having a powerful individual as its engine and are the wins during the trip worth the losses at the end of it?

(originally published at: blog.ceubusiness.ro)

iPhone - Most Desired Smartphone? (source: www.journaldugeek.com)

In my last post I was referring to some of the reasons why Apple is not a exclusivist company anymore, but rather a mainstream one (as mentioned by Wired). Today, I’ve ran into a funny picture that was used as a signature by someone posting on a video games forum. The image reflects exactly the feelings expressed in the third comment of the previous post:

“I just bought a few weeks an iPhone 3G and I don’t understand why I have paid a price for it as for a SmartPhone and all I have got from them is a crippled phone with [almost no] functionality. There is no basic functionality that other smart phones on the market have.”

If we look at the picture to the left, an important number of standard features of today’s smartphones, or even regular multimedia phones, for that matter, are missing in the iPhone. Despite not having what we call costs of entry for this type of phones (their product category), the iPhone is still one of the best selling smart phones out there. If we still had any doubts, this should probably confirm to us that customers do purchase on emotional impulses rather than rational choices among alternatives.

So why is the consumer behavior such a strange animal? Why do we still buy products that we’re not really happy with or that we know that others are not happy with as customers? We call ourselves rational and social animals, yet we buy based on emotional reasons (most probably, our social aspect kicks in here, because we all like to be seen as cool). Have you ever rationally dissected your purchase behavior to see wether you’re exhibiting an emotional or a rational buying behavior? How does this differ depending on the type of products you’re buying?

Apple Logo (source: Wikipedia)

We probably all remember the times when owning an Apple device was something cool that we were dreaming of with a passion (some still do, and I find myself among this last category since I do not own any Apple device, but I desire a few of them). Well, it seems that being an Apple lover is not so hip anymore, simply because Apple developed so much in the past few years that it became mainstream.

The NextWeb mentioned today a Wired article that offered a few reasons why Apple is not so exquisite anymore simply because you can now find it almost everywhere you go.

Apple is big in Hollywood and this is pretty obvious in the nice product placement in Wall-E. However, this is no big surprise, since Steve Jobs was the CEO of Pixar. Apple is also skipping MacWorld because evangelizing is not needed anymore. Apple’s marketing machine has pretty much achieved its goal turning the brand into a lovemark.

Steve Jobs will no longer be the MC of the Apple keynotes at MacWorld, being substituted by one of his senior VPs (rumors say that this is mainly because of his health, but they also say that MacWorld is no longer so important to require Jobs’ presence either). Because it can, Apple is giving up on FireWire, the cool data transfer technology it invented and pushed onto the market, simply because USB is more ubiquitous, and thus, more mainstream.

Apple has become the laughing stock of the Simpsons, showing us that it’s culture is not so cult anymore, as it caught the attention of the general public. Even Obama uses Apple and has used Apple technology in his US Presidential campaign. Moreover, Wallmart is selling the iPhone in its retail chain, thus bringing the world’s coolest and most exclusive smartphone at the fingertip of the masses.

Sorry Apple user, you’re just a plain boring sheep now (source: thenextweb.com)

Ultimately, since Apple products are so loved, Digg.com has almost every day an Apple story on its top technology headlines page. Some people say that bloggers have even generated more than $400 million worth of free advertising for Apple. What more could you wish if you were Apple? Would you wish to go back to the small group of loyal customers you had 10 years ago?

Fortunately, Romania is still far away from becoming a mainstream Apple culture and thus you are still cool and hip if you own an Apple device. However, this won’t last for too long, since we, as a nation, seem to have the strong tendency to copy the Western world, especially the Americans.

The question for the future is: How would Apple position itself in the mainstream economy? Would cool still be its primary emotional hook on its customers? Would Apple be forced to become more competitive on the functional attributes of its products? How would Apple shepherd its fans if coolness would not be a differentiator anymore? God knows… or maybe Steve Jobs .

Congratulations Barack Obama! Congratulations America!

The origins of Google Chrome's Logo

Also seen at Pahomi & Orlando.

Okazii.ro logo before and after rebranding

The new logo looks much more modern and less crowded with visual elements not included in the typeface itslef, making it more clear and easier to read (the dart in the old logo was almost never used as a branding element outside the logo, at least not in the past couple of years). While the initial logo color set restricted in a way the brand’s colors to orange, black and blue, the current logo is introducing in a subtle way a larger color palette (the red, blue and green elements of the O letter).

However, although I like the current logo more than the previous one, I think they made one big mistake with the rebranding. They dropped the capital OK from their brand, which, in my opinion, is one of the most widely recognized symbol for approval (at least in non English native countries), mostly used in expressions such as “OK, that’s good” (source: Wikipedia). I have to give them the benefit of doubt, though, since OK can also be used in expressions that imply mediocrity, such as “The concert was OK” or “I think I did OK in the exams” (source: Wikipedia).

While we can agree that the rebranding part of Okazii.ro in terms of logo and front page redesign went quite OK (see what I did there?), the whole process was kind of faulty. The main problem with it is the fact that they only supported the rebranding by a partial web site face lift. A couple of weeks after the actual rebranding went live, a lot of other parts of the site are still unchanged, generating a big visual discrepancy and thus a lack of visual connection between various parts of the site for its visitors.

Okazii.ro Shops now and how it would have looked like if rebranded as well

I believe that the negative visual impact would have been lessened if at least the major parts of the site would have been rebranded as well (the Okazii Shops and the internal user interface), in order to preserve the visual impact throughout the customer’s main path through the site. I also believe that these sections could have been rebranded quite easily, since it only took me 5 minutes to create the “rebranded” Okazii Shops logo.

However, despite the shortcomings of the rebranding and face lifting process, I am glad that Okazii.ro is still up and in good shape, showing strong determination to focus on its customers rather than outside revenue streams (quite sizeable at 30%, as they recently declared to the press – Wall-Street.ro). The continuous developments introduced by the project team this year and their promises to do so in the future as well shows that they’re here to stay firm in their number one position in the Romanian online auctioning market.

As Paul Garrison was telling us, the CEU Business School MBA students who took his strategic marketing class, a brand is the container for the total experience consumers have with a product, a service and a company. People always buy for emotional reasons, but look for functional reasons to support or explain their emotional decisions. Thus, a brand is only meaningful and has an impact within the context of who the customer is.

A great brand is more than just the sum of its parts for a customer, because it makes and delivers a promise, provides an experience, develops a relationship and becomes a symbol or icon against which every other alternative is perceived. Branding is a creative and consistent long term process that makes use of all corporate communication vehicles to position a product or service in the mind of the customer, by creating value and meaning for that customer and thus making it the first choice in its respective category. 

Latham & Co defined three building blocks of a brand: graphics, content and style. The name of a brand is part of the content building block and in the entertainment industry plays a very significant role. It can often make it or break it, be it a movie, a show or a video game title. 

When we think about a product, we tend to first think of the name, and only afterwards mentally picture its graphical representation. A great brand is that which can easily substitute the name with the logo and vice versa (Nike or Coca Cola are good examples – you can picture the brand logo almost immediately as you think of the name).

A product name needs to convey a compelling and meaningful message about the product, as the name is what creates the customer’s first critical impression about that respective product. In the quick paced and high tech world of video games, product names are probably even more important, especially since there are usually several sequels following a successful initial product.

In 2004, Scott Miller, the creator of Wolfenstein-3D, Duke Nukem, Max Payne or Prey, talked about video games branding on his blog and made it pretty clear: name matters! The main points that Miller was touching upon were the following: short names are better than long names; avoid punctuation in the game title; avoid sequel numbers; avoid generic titles by having a meaningful title; and beware of names that leave you open to easy criticism.

In general, but in the gaming industry in particular, shorter brand names are always better. If we think about brands that have made it in this industry, the vast majority of them are not longer than three words while the most successful ones are usually just one word: Doom, Diablo, Starcraft, Quake, Eve Online, The Sims, Tomb Raider, Far Cry, Guild Wars, Halo: Combat Evolved, Grand Theft Auto or World of Warcraft. If we think about the brands listed above, most of the two or three words names have always been abbreviated by the gaming community. Halo: Combat Evolved was always referred to just as Halo. Guild Wars, Grand Theft Auto and World of Warcraft were always abbreviated as GW, GTA and WoW by their hard core gamer community.

Game names should be neither generic nor meaningless because if they are, they can fall in the trap of easily forgettable brands. Shadow, Revelation, Syphon Filter, and Darkness are all generic game names that do not differentiate themselves from the mass because they do not have a unique identity. Good, easily identifiable and memorable examples of game names are those like Diablo, Baldur’s Gate, Starcraft or Warcraft.

Game names should be easy to pronounce, because otherwise your customers might have problems remembering them properly. Xenosaga or Anachronox are both possible examples of hardly pronounceable game names that haven’t really made it in the video game industry because they aren’t easily memorable.

If a game brand is already established on the market, it is important to avoid numbering the sequels. The problem with sequel numbers is that they don’t add almost any differentiation in comparison with the initial release. If we think about Final Fantasy 1 to 10, or Heroes of Might and Magic 1 to 5, there isn’t much novelty in just adding a different increment after the game’s name. However, if you feel compelled to use a sequel number, you could get creative like in this example: Duke Nukem, Duke Nukem 2, Duke Nukem 3D and Duke Nukem Forever (4ever).

One of the best branding/naming example is also a game that I like a lot and I also play a lot. Despite the potential bias I might suffer from, the Guild Wars series offers a complete brand experience, mostly defined through the names of the games in the series: Guild Wars Prophecies (foretelling the start of an interesting war adventure), Guild Wars Factions (suggesting a conflict, the peak of the story), Guild Wars Nightfall (portraying the upcoming closure of the story – a full, 360 degrees experience), and Guild Wars Eye of the North (exploiting the game’s GW abbreviation in the community and promoting the last sequel as GWEN, because it linked to a character named Gwen from the original release).