Welcome to our branding and marketing blog
This is the best place to learn how we think as creative and strategic communicators. You’ll find various observations and best practices about branding, design, client relations, and communications, in general. We try to keep things instructive and advisory. However, we can’t guarantee that there won’t be a rant or rave once in a while. So, please cut us some slack.
FEATURED BLOG POST
15 marketing reality checks (Don’t let #9 hurt your feelings.)
by Step2 Branding & Design
Over the years, we’ve been offering helpful tips and best practices advice through our branding blog. Here, we’ve collected a number of the more salient points and are presenting them as a marketing reality check. A good number of these apply to new or small businesses. But you’ll also find that some of the largest corporations in the world take many of the same missteps.
Branding and marketing blog posts
Unclutter your marketing view
To succeed in marketing, we need to avoid the distractions and focus on the fundamentals. We need to pull ourselves out of the bubble in which we live to see ourselves the way others see us. It’s this uncluttered view that helps bring the clarity and objectivity that lead us to a sound strategy.
The stifling of corporate communications
Marketing communications is not a democracy. It’s purely strategic. It’s based on research, data and even philosophy. It relies on experience, best practices and, oh yeah, talent. It is not something to be trivialized.
Three major hurdles of business naming
Business naming is one of the more difficult things we do. Aside from the creative challenges, there are three major hurdles we have to leap. For every name we present, there are, literally, dozens of candidates that never make the cut. The client never sees any of those.
Bringing out the best.
Greatness cannot be achieved within a vacuum. It takes vision, perseverance and a team of experts to make it happen. It requires an understanding of what your audience wants, even if it’s something that doesn’t quite exist. You aim high, learn from your failures and never say, “It can’t be done.”
Making a living … and a difference
Jeff Brown proved that success is found when you engage your audience, make them part of the experience and deliver on your promise. Whether your business is in a highly competitive or under-served market, the lessons he learned are the same.
“Good enough” Is no longer good enough.
Those who can harness the benefits of new technology without losing sight of the basics, like branding, creativity and targeted outreach, will be poised for greater success than those who find contentment with what they consider, “Good enough.”