branding - TheWayoftheWeb

I can haz new logo

February 15, 2012 By Dan Thornton 1 Comment

I’ve been running a personal blog for about 6 years, including early experiments on Blogger. Prior to that I’d had a simple homepage, along with some other static websites to play around with.

Over time I’ve managed to attract a reasonably large audience every month with a range of articles mainly covering writing and content, marketing, social media, SEO, and technology. But until 18 months ago, it was very much still a passion for my spare time, along with the videogame sites I’ve launched.

But after starting a freelance business, and with the ambition of growing, it was time to get things more organised – and about 18 months later I finally made use of a talented and friendly designer who was foolish enough to agree to provide a logo (I won’t say who as I don’t know if he’s accepting any more business at the moment).

So here it is, the logo for TheWayoftheWeb – your friendly content marketing, SEO and Social Media company.

It’s pretty simple, but I think it’s effective. Trying to come up with something to illustrate Content + Social Media + SEO was a challenge, particularly as I picked such a vague name years ago, and didn’t just want a name and strapline until I’ve done a bit more work on the exact proposition, as you could also have it as Writing/Content Marketing/Social Media/SEO/Training and a bit of Community Management/Affiliate Management as needed.

The Facebook Page and G+ pages already look massively improved. There’s still a bit of design work to do here, but I’m working on it. One of the great things about a self-hosted blog is that it forces me to actually get involved in the HTML and CSS myself on occasion, and I still feel smug when I manage to get something right first time without breaking everything!

What’s going to be interesting is seeing if there’s any increase in traffic/business to back up the horror designer friends have shown when I’ve launched and run sites without having a logo or branding in place first…

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Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: branding, content markeitng, journalism, logo, peterborough, seo, social media, thewayoftheweb, Writing

Misunderstanding cigarette branding…

November 22, 2010 By Dan Thornton 2 Comments

The UK Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley has suggested cigarettes should be sold in plain packaging, as ‘the evidence is clear that packaging helps to recruit smokers’.

Sadly for those who want to prevent smoking, he appears to be talking cobblers – as suggested by the fact the previous Government ditched the same plan two years ago due to a lack of evidence to that effect.

What’s happened is that there’s a misunderstanding of the role of branding in cigarette smokers.

People encourage other people to start smoking.
Branding and People influence which particular product someone smokes.

Removing branding won’t make any difference to the amount of people trying smoking. It might make a difference in the number of cigarette companies, but the spread of cigarette smoking is largely spread by encountering other people that smoke and being influenced by them in some way. There’s a handy chapter in The Tipping Point on the triggers for smoking, quoting examples of being influenced by people who were seen as cool, and also smoked. The basic hypothesis is that some people who smoke happen to be cool, and therefore smoking is perceived as cool (Rather than smoking making someone cool – the reality is that it makes people smell of tobacco, wheeze when they’re running, and end up dying earlier more often than if they hadn’t smoked – but as a smoker for over 10 years, I already know this).

Cigarette by SuperFantastic on Flickr (CC Licence)

So why do tobacco companies spend so much on marketing, and finding ways to place their brands in your eye, despite cigarette advertising bans?

The first cigarette I ever tried was a Silk Cut Ultra Light – and yet for 10 years I’ve smoked Marlboro. I’m not sure it’s a coincidence that Ayrton Senna drove a Marlboro McLaren, Wayne Rainey rode a Marlboro Yamaha, and I actually suffered through the feature film ‘Harley-Davidson and the Marlboro Man‘. Given the choice, I’ll pay a slight premium for the familiar taste and amount of nicotine, plus the branding and image etc. But if that brand vanished tomorrow, I’d find another one in the time it took to run out of cigarettes. The fact is that in the past I’ve bought John Player Specials (JPS Lotus, JPS Norton), and Rothmans (Rothman Honda in the Wayne Gardner era) as fall-backs which have no relation in taste or nicotine levels.

Image via Wikipedia

I’d reveal a more effective way to tackle smoking, but unfortunately there’s a limit to how long I can write about the topic without nipping outside for a cigarette…

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Filed Under: Advertising, Branding, marketing Tagged With: Advertising, branding, brands, cigarettes, marketing, restrictions, smoking, teens, unbranded packs

Do UK businesses really value Twitter?

December 11, 2009 By Dan Thornton Leave a Comment

Techcrunch recently picked up on a poll by Accredited Supplier of 1200 UK businesses who are currently using Twitter, and echoed the findings that ‘UK Business bullish in Twitter’.

Besides the caveat that the UK businesses that are so bullish are the ones that are actually already using it, there’s a little bit of interesting info in it.

Apparently 62% of UK businesses are using Twitter purely as a branding exercise, with 33% combining branding and sales, and 15% using it purely for sales (They might want to take a look at Dell making millions on Twitter for starters).

But then it goes on to reveal that just 14% of the businesses are tweeting daily, and 21% weekly. Which leaves 65% posting a monthly message or less – should that even count as a business using Twitter?

So there’s no surprise that 84% don’t think they’ve achieved a return on investment so far – but strangely more businesses would be willing to pay for ‘additional business functionality’ at 22%, than have actually claimed a return on investment (16%).

So maybe a better headline and summary would be that UK businesses are still mightily confused when it comes to Twitter. Some of them want more functionality despite not seeing any returns, and many of them claim they’re using it when they might log in less than 12 times a year.

They haven’t so much missed the point as built a dual carriageway bypass around it.

If you’re starting to use Twitter on behalf of your business, you need to have a quick think about what it is you’re looking to achieve and how it benefits your business – getting messages out there is somewhat useful in itself, but generally it’s expected that you might look at the rate of acquisition from a source, and the investment of resource it’s taken, and then weigh that against other sources of visitors/buyers/purchases.

Then you can not only determine the true level of ROI, but also potentially justify actually engaging on a regular basis and utilising Twitter as both a customer acquisition channel – but also as a customer retention channel. While new customers are great, it’s more cost effective to retain a current customer by increasing loyalty – and although you might need to interact and ask questions on at least a weekly basis, the amount of loyalty and customer service you can action can be measured as a definite return.

I suspect you could perform the same poll with most of the common tools – email, Facebook, Myspace etc, and you’d probably get similar results, because the same people have signed up without a plan after seeing the buzz, dabbled a little, and have no idea what they’re doing next.

Which means that there are big opportunities if you’re reading blogs like this, using Twitter on a regular basis and developing or following a clear plan with a decent amount of ROI.

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Filed Under: Monetising, twitter Tagged With: branding, Business, monetising, revenue, twitter

Even Christmas drinks show something about branding

December 25, 2008 By Dan Thornton Leave a Comment

Firstly, Merry Christmas to everyone!

Secondly, my love of marketing means that I couldn’t help but comment on a micro-brewery I discovered when I stocked up on alcohol for Christmas (in moderation, obviously!).

I’m still coming to terms with getting older – and discovering a taste for ‘real beer’ rather than massmarket lager, so I always like to try a couple of new beers on ever shopping trip.

Which is how I spotted Punk IPA from Brewdog.

Punk IPA from Brewdog - interesting beer brand and microbrewery

It’s definitely an example of a business, brand and product with the marketing built in!

From their site:

‘Beer was never meant to be bland, tasteless and apathetic.
At BrewDog we are setting the record straight.
We are committed to making the highest quality beers with the finest fresh natural ingredients.
Our beers are in no way commercial or mainstream.
We do not merely aspire to the proclaimed heady heights of conformity through neutrality and blandness.
We are unique and individual.’
A beacon of non-conformity in a increasingly monotone corporate desert.
We are proud to be an intrepid David in a desperate ocean of insipid Goliaths.
We are proud to be an alternative.’

Interestingly, they’ve just been successful in a battle with the industry-backed Portman Group over the language on some of the labels on their beer – for instance describing Punk IPA as an aggresive beer, which the group original claimed would ‘encourage anti-social behaviour’.

You can read more about the battle in a great post on the Brewdog blog. Meanwhile, I’m hopeful about trying some of their other produce, particularly the Hop Rocker, The Physics, and the Hardcore IPA!

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