the dangling carrot
cultivating your business vision
Branding
How Big Does My Logo Need to Be?
Jun 3rd
By “Big” we mean, how big is the job does that your logo needs to perform? In addition to what a brand needs to be – memorable, targeted, etc – If your logo needs to:
- Be on the red carpet and compete with major brands – can your logo stand up against Coca Cola and not look small?
- Be able to stand alone without your company name – if your logo is the only the representative “image” of your company, will that image be powerful enough to be identified and remembered?
- Be recognizable without your company colors – is the image strong enough to be black and white if your colors are green, yellow and pink?
Depending on your answers to the above, your logo, may need to be BIG or small, and the cost of the logo will most likely correlate to the logo size because of the research and creative time that will need to go into development process.
How to Not Be Your Own Company’s Worst Enemy
Mar 1st
In these times of economic turmoil, people are taking comfort in many things – food, meditation, family, and in what they know in business– even if it is bad for them. Since we started our company, we found that our prospects and customers have been emotionally tied to their company name, logo, processes, system of bookkeeping, etc. But, in the last few months, we have seen these emotional ties turned to unbreakable bonds that are not making good business sense. Some people are becoming their own worst enemy in business.
When making business decisions, we recommend that your choices reflect what your customers want/need – not what you feel “connected to.” This is not easy – it took a few weeks for us to decide on “Creative Carrot Studios” as a company name as we were emotionally tied to it! Unless YOU represent your target market, put yourself in your customers’ shoes – what would they want, like and remember and use this information when making marketing, pricing, distribution, etc decisions.
To Link or Not to Link, That is the Question?
Dec 14th
Most of our clients ask us about having links to other sites (and having the client’s website link on others’ sites) and what affect it will have. Links to other sites provide the following functions: increase your search engine rankings, advertise your association with the “linked” websites, and possibly have a financial return if there is an agreement between the linked companies (affiliate link). At CCS we recommend the following.
- Always consider you brand first. Does the company you are linking “to” or “from” represent the same quality message, product/service, and are they targeting a similar market niche. If they are of equal or better quality, but not the same market – it may still be worthwhile because you could receive unexpected interest from another market niche. If less than the same quality level, we recommend that you do not link as this could reflect poorly on your brand.
- There are new liability issues if you directly link to a site that is doing something illegal. For example – if you directly link to a site where they are fraudulently using credit card numbers, your company might be implicated (though this may legally be difficult to prove). Like in all business situations, know with whom you are doing business.
- If you have an affiliate agreement, determine what audits are in place to make sure that your company receives accurate payment for any sales received from traffic that originated at your site.