Colours, Brand and PR.

The human mind is highly responsive to visual stimuli, and colour is one of the major defining factors in that response. On both a conscious and subconscious level, colours convey meaning – not only in the natural world but also within the artifice of our culture. Graphic designers need to harness the power of colour psychology to bring resonance to their designs – and in no field is this more important than that of logo design.

The use of colour can bring multiple layers of meaning, from primitive responses based on millions of years of evolved instinct to the complex associations we make based on learned assumptions. Companies can use these responses to underline and accent their branding messages. And your success as a logo designer will be boosted if you have a thorough understanding of colour psychology.

What different colours mean

Every colour, including black and white, has implications for logo design. As a designer you need to pick your colours carefully to enhance specific elements of the logo and bring nuance to your message with the use of shade and tone.

In general terms, bright and bold colours are attention-grabbing but can appear brash. Muted tones convey a more sophisticated image, but run the risk of being overlooked. More specifically, particular meanings are ascribed to different colours in society...

·         Red implies passion, energy, danger or aggression; warmth and heat. It has also been found to stimulate appetite, which explains why it is used in so many restaurants and food product logos. Choosing red for your logo can make it feel more dynamic.

·         Orange is often seen as the colour of innovation and modern thinking. It also carries connotations of youth, fun, affordability and approachability.

·         Yellow requires cautious use as it has some negative connotations including its signifying of cowardice and its use in warning signs. However it is sunny, warm and friendly and is another colour that is believed to stimulate appetite.

·         Green is commonly used when a company wishes to emphasise their natural and ethical credentials, especially with such products as organic and vegetarian foods. Other meanings ascribed to it include growth and freshness, and it's popular with financial products too.

• Purple speaks to us of royalty and luxury. It has long been associated with the church, implying wisdom and dignity, and throughout history it has been the colour of wealth and riches.
• Black is a colour with a split personality. On the one hand it implies power and sophistication, but on the other hand it is associated with villainy and death. More mundanely, most logos will need a black and white version for use in media in which colour is not available – and there is currently a trend for bold monochrome logos and word marks.
• White is generally associated with purity, cleanliness, simplicity and naivety. In practical terms, a white logo will always need to stand in a coloured field to make it show up on a white background. Many companies will choose to have a coloured version and a white version of their logos; for example, the Coca-Cola word mark appears in white on its red tins and brown bottles but is used in red when needed on a white background.
• Brown has masculine connotations and is often used for products associated with rural life and the outdoors.
• Pink can be fun and flirty, but its feminine associations means it is often avoided for products not specifically targeted at women.

These associations are not rigid rules, of course, but they're worth keeping in mind as you make your colour choices. Remember that the overall impact of your logo design will depend not on the colours themselves but upon how these interact with the shapes and text.

To get the maximum impact of your chosen colour's coded message, I normally stick with a single colour when creating a logo design. That said, there are some very successful multi-coloured logos – think of Google, Windows or eBay.

The implication of multiple colours is that these companies are offering a wide choice of products and services. The multiple colours used for the Olympic rings carry a message of diversity and inclusivity.

A newly emergent trend in logo design is the use of mosaic patterns and tessellation. These naturally require several colours, ranging from contrasting brights to multiple shades of a single colour.

Start Small, Think global.

If your client is a global corporation, choose your logo colour with care. There are cultural differences in the way colours are interpreted. For example, red is considered lucky in China, while white is the colour of death and mourning in India. There's a good round up of the cultural connotations of different colours here.

Finally, don't put too much focus on colour choice. Consider that one in 12 of us suffer from colour blindness. Plus there's always the likelihood that any logo you produce for a client will end up be reproduced in monochrome, or even in different colours, as they see fit. So make sure your colour choice reinforces and enhances the design of your logo – but doesn't define it.

In Projecting your brand with colours, you need to be able to know what you represent. Make it worthy of acceptance.

I am still your PR Strategist.

Damilola Oladehin

@damioladehin

#thePRman stunts

There are times I try to coordinate or add my own flavour to any gathering, just to make it great. 

#greatgathering #teamwork #thePRman #colleagues

Hindrances Of Bad Publicity On Your Brand

Earning and maintaining a good reputation is challenging for new and established businesses. When bad publicity emerges, businesses could be portrayed as irresponsible, dishonest or appear to be only looking out for their best interests. Although it is possible to make a good name for your business on a local or national scale, doing so can be an uphill battle, especially in the face of bad publicity.

Loss of Trust

Bad publicity can come in the wake of an exposed lie or inaccuracy. Sometimes advertising is used to pump up businesses' capabilities and consumers' expectations. Expectations can be carelessly overblown, revealed as false in the form of bad publicity and lead to disappointment and a loss of trust. When an organization fails to follow through with promises, customers, employees and partners are more likely to question the truthfulness of all the organization's current and future messages. Regaining trust can be difficult and time-consuming. Mistrust expressed by word of mouth and through social media can take years to repair and often can only be remedied by the number of vocal supporters eventually outnumbering the critics.

Effects on Sales

In general, bad publicity negatively affects sales. Companies that are virtually unknown can at times experience a boom in business after bad publicity, but they are the exception. In general, bad publicity damages the long-term success of larger established businesses. Product accessibility can also decrease with bad publicity, and potential consumers might have fewer opportunities to purchase products. When buyers and store owners have negative opinions, their choices ultimately affect their customers' options.

Damaged Brand Equity

Brand equity can suffer long-term damage as a result of bad publicity. This is especially evident for companies that must recall their products because of safety or health hazards. In such cases, even if only a portion of a product's supply is recalled, buyers are likely to avoid the brand altogether for a period. Rumors, even those with no merit, can affect sales just as strongly. There is some hope. A study conducted at the Wharton Marketing Department at University of Pennsylvania in 2011, showed that audiences experience something called the "sleeper effect" when recalling details about a company, message or brand. The sleeper effect refers to a person's tendency to retain an awareness of a product or company without necessarily retaining negative memories or attitudes once associated with it. For this reason, bad publicity can sometimes be healed simply with time.

Damaged Brand Association

Brand association refers to the deep-seeded attitudes and feelings a customer has toward a product or company. When brand association is negative, negative attitudes are more likely to come into a consumer's mind before positive ones. Bad publicity can contribute to negative brand association, which can in turn reduce sales over time. Changing attitudes and brand associations can take a great deal of time and can also be costly, as a company might be forced to invest in additional advertising and campaigns to correct negative attitudes. Damaged brand association also leaves room for competition to move in on a customer base, which can also reduce sales

CORPORATE IDENTITY IS ESSENTIAL FOR YOUR BRAND.

The change in mentality has caused former types to become obsolete. Previously, for example, you could
market the founder of the company: The great inventor or the great entrepreneur. Today, it is common
knowledge that management consists of hired people who might move to another company. So what is it that characterizes the specific company? It is not the people who work there right now, but the culture, the principles and values they use as basis for their work.

An important factor is also the competition for getting and keeping the best employees. It is no longer wages alone that attract people. The culture and identity of the company is mentioned more frequently when students discuss where they want to get a job. I hear this every day at the universities and business schools around.

Today, psychology, sociology, anthropology and semiotics have added new insights to it.
The part of marketing that refers to “brand management” is occupied by:
• drawing attention
• cultivating the image
• inspiring trust
• creating recognition
• making a difference
• raising milestones and totems


Identify and Name:
The company must assure that its surroundings are aware of its existence. Symbols must represent and establish the company’s identity on the market.

Stay to your identity as you create a niche for your brand. Corporate identity is essential for you.

Cheers.

#thePRman
Follow on twitter @damioladehin
Whatsapp +234 813 529 6062

HOW I STARTED #HOUSEOFINNOVA

HOW I STARTED #HOUSEOFINNOVA.

In year 2011 in the city of Ibadan the Oyo State capital, I went to drop a proposal of an upcoming event in a new world-class fashion store that just opened. While we were talking, with my friend and the manager of this newly opened store, he mentioned that he employed a vendor to distribute 10,000 copies of flyers, and to his surprise, he found almost half of the quantity under a staircase of a building not far from him.

I was concerned about the investment that had gone into that process, from design to print, to money paid to the vendor, and how this guy was complaining about no return on the investment made on the publicity.

I told him to give me the flyers and that I would distribute for him Free of charge. He asked if he could trust me, and I said yes. I told him to ask people when they patronize him “Please, how did you hear about us?”

After four days, he called me and said “I am grateful for the help you have rendered, please let us meet on Saturday”. I met him, and he told me how the feedback from the flyers had been tremendously positive. Before I came, he dropped our proposal at the headquarters in Lagos, and it was already approved, he also gave me money to say thank you.

I looked at it and I made a decision to start a business of helping people in that way. Now, I have a team of more than a dozen young and energetic guys that can deliver in any state of Nigeria.

House Of Innova is a company poised for effectiveness, and that’s what we always make our watchword. We basically solve problems to make you happy.

Damilola Oladehin

Twitter: @damioladehin

7 Signs Of A Bad Brand Consultant

I had a long and eventful evening last Friday in Soho with an old University friend, who had just been stung for one of the worst bits of brand consulting I have ever seen.

Then it was my turn to feel the pain as he admitted how much he had paid out for the worthless report and consulting advice. Many beverages and an incendiary curry later, we had hashed out a foolproof seven-point system for identifying bad brand consultants before they can take/burn through your money and/or lead you astray.

First, any mention of millennials means you are dealing with a marketing moron and should lead to immediate cessation of all discussions. I’m serious about the “moron” tag. Anyone dumb enough to think that millennials qualify as a segment needs their head examined. They fail every possible test of segmentation and anyone who refers to them in any context other than to point out that they are a total load of clichéd crap should not be trusted.

Second, look out for brand consultants that are happy to advise without any data or with just qualitative or quantitative data and not both. Any decent consultant should be asking for or generating significant amounts of qual and quant data to understand your brand from the target consumer’s point of view and avoiding the naïve ‘expert’ approach of giving you their personal experience of your packaging, pricing, store layout and new ad campaign. One of the signals of a bad consultant is a comfort with making big decisions with no data and one of the most reassuring things you can experience from a good consulting firm is a resolute refusal to avoid knee-jerk recommendations without data first being collected.

You can also judge the quality of brand consulting advice by the number of concepts the consultant tries to sell you. There is no one accepted term for what most call brand positioning. You can call it brand values, brand attributes, value proposition and so on. But a decent brand consultant will focus you on one concept to represent what you want to stand for in the market. The worse the brand consulting firm the more concepts they try and sell you. Circles atop circles, concepts upon concepts, and before you know it you have a brand essence that looks like the D-Day launch strategy and your staff need a PhD to work out what it all means. You can rely on some brand consultant in the comments section below to explain why brand attributes are distinct from brand emotions or how a value proposition is different from a positioning statement but ignore them. They are, by definition, useless.

Next, look out for certain trigger words, which, if your brand consultant proposes them, mean he or she is unworthy. Innovation is a product-orientated word and worthless as a result. For every customer who tells you they bought your brand because it was the most “innovative one” I will give you a thousand bucks. Remember as well that thousands of brands, badly advised by an army of unworthy consultants, have already claimed innovation as their own differentiating value, so the only way to be innovative is not to use the word. Words like “lifestyle” and “aspirational” mean absolutely nothing too and should tell you volumes about your consultant’s abilities to guide your brand. And if anyone from your consulting firm even starts to utter the dreaded words ‘integrity’ or ‘trusted partner’ stand up and run for the nearest exit.

If they even say the magic words ‘Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs’, throw something heavy at them and ask them to leave. Ditto, if they have a picture of a cow being branded in their slide deck or a quote about reputations taking decades to build, you know what you have to do.

If your consulting firm has a trademark attached to their special branding methodology or they have an approach named after an acronym that spells something sexy like “RESULTZ” or “PERFORM” you should immediately stand up and write CRAP on the nearest whiteboard and exit the meeting room stage left.

A separate but equally indicative failing is to incessantly cite Apple and Steve Jobs to any and all clients as a paragon of excellence and instruction for brand building. If you find yourself sitting through a ninety-minute sermon on the power of Apple’s branding and its relevance for your portable toilet business it may be time to press the escape button.

It’s not a magical list but, in my experience and that of my slightly depressed marketing mate, it could just save you a six-figure sum and a report that is literally not worth the paper its written on.

This thought piece is featured courtesy of Marketing Week, the United Kingdom’s leading marketing publication.

 Source: Mark Ritson

Why is Public Relations Important for a Start-Up Company?

Why is Public Relations Important for a Start-Up Company?

“Public relations” is a form of communication that is directed towards gaining public understanding and acceptance.  The primary objective for a public relations program is to establish and maintain relationships and credibility with the people who create and/or communicate the news.  The end result is ultimately media coverage that provides third party validation of your business which could directly and positively impact your bottom line.  A simple news story on your product or service could open the door to new sales opportunities, business partnerships, or investor interest and that is why you should consider adding public relations to your start-up company marketing strategy.

If you haven’t already thought about implementing a public relations strategy into your integrated marketing plan, now is a great time to get started.  It’s a cost-effective approach to marketing, and companies that do it well typically see an immediate return even if minimal time and budget is invested.  A solid public relations foundation relies on support in three specific areas to achieve success:

*Commitment to a proactive approach to obtaining positive exposure.

*Relationship building to gain public understanding and acceptance.

*Consistency of communication via messaging and positioning.

Outlining the Strategy

The goal of your start-up public relations program should be to obtain maximum positive exposure for your company by creating awareness and understanding of the business both within and outside of the industry.  To support this, you must develop and deliver clear, consistent, and concise communications to all audiences.  Sub-goals that fall under the category of gaining exposure for the company are as follows:

*Leverage awareness and acceptance with targeted media, industry analysts, financial analysts, and end users.

*Increase and maximize exposure through events, articles, white papers, success stories,   sponsorships, award nominations, industry reports, etc.

*Disseminate knowledge of business model within and outside of your specific industry

*Promote company benefits that express differentiation from the competition

*Generate future editorial opportunities including industry expert interviews

*Build and maintain national media presence.

*Produce partnership interest.

The goal will be reached by implementing a steady stream of media relations activities targeted to editors, industry analysts, and financial analysts. 

You are ready for the best as you take this important role in a more serious note. Take the actions, meet the people, and if there is any detailed information(s) you need, don’t hesitate to consult a PR Expert or Organization as needed.