Blog : branding

What's in a Name?
Wendy Baird

What's in a Name?

Ten “can’t miss” dos and don’ts when naming a business.

Choosing a business name is one of the most important tasks when starting, growing or changing a business. Not only is it part of that first impression you make among your audience, but it, along with your logo, is the heart of your brand. Your brand is all about how you connect and then are perceived – so your name needs to be descriptive, inspiring, and relatable, and needs to evoke positive feelings, or at least curiosity.

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Simply A Bird
Bethany Howell

Simply A Bird

Last Wednesday, Twitter abandoned its many recognizable icons and adopted the little blue bird mascot as the “universally recognizable symbol of twitter.” This means there will be no more logo text or the lowercase ‘t’ icon to represent twitter. Instead, the social network will simply be using just the bird as their new trademark.

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Questions to address in your website.
insight180 team

Questions to address in your website.

There are certain common questions that those who buy advisory services tend to ask themselves. Many are questions they will be too hesitant to ask directly. If you are not addressing these questions in your website, you might want to consider doing so. If you have an editable site built in a CMS like WordPress or Drupal, the fix is easy. Add content that addresses these concerns. One of the first things we do, when evaluating the effectiveness of a potential client’s website, is to ask these questions to determine a list of new content that might need to be developed.

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The business shift.
Wendy Baird

The business shift.

I’ve been reading some great books on entrepreneurship, business consulting, and the new rules of PR, marketing and social media in this incredibly connected world we’re in. Business is different. The climate has shifted. One really can start a business on a shoe string, or invest hundreds of thousands of dollars to help it grow. Both are viable. Some of the smaller companies are even doing it better than their larger, more established counterparts within the same space.

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Who is Ron Johnson and what is he doing to JCPenney?
Bethany Howell

Who is Ron Johnson and what is he doing to JCPenney?

At the beginning of this year, 110-year-old retailer, JCPenney began making changes to its brand in an effort to restore it’s integrity and transform the way shoppers feel about the experience of retail stores. Their aim is to get rid of the frustration and make shopping “simpler” and it is all part of a brand overhaul planned by Apple exec turned new JCPenney CEO Ron Johnson. Johnson plans to completely revamp JCPenney’s image by 2015 and his plan is to do that by taking big risks. Johnson draws his inspiration from his former boss, the late Steve Jobs. His new marketing strategy will all be about product, place, price, and promotion – the 4 P’s of marketing. But he will also add in presentation and personality to increase curiosity and interest in JCPenney.

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Branding is like an on/off switch for business.
insight180 team

Branding is like an on/off switch for business.

We recently met with a potential client and had an interesting conversation about how marketing and branding work and differ from one another. He was a very smart guy who had a good handle on what he was trying to do with his website and overall brand, but as is nearly always the case, he was too close to it to be able to articulate it clearly, and uniquely, and needed a little help with how to make it look and sound the best it could.

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