Play the word association game with your brand

If I say, 'Las Vegas', what comes to mind?

If you said gambling, casinos, the strip, Wayne Newton or Siegfried & Roy, you're in good company with the majority of folks (although when I asked one client, she responded "a new purse"!). While the Las Vegas brand is much more than these responses, they provide a strong indication of the city's position as a destination for fun, entertainment and excitement for adults. What happens in Vegas...

Now, can you describe the official logo for Las Vegas? No? The vast majority of people aren't aware of it, but you can see it at the top of this page: www.visitlasvegas.com. So after seeing the logo, tell me, how much did the logo influence the descriptions you came up with when you played the word association game? I'd bet the house that it's most likely not at all.

Often, when we talk to people about their brand, they think we mean their logo, their slogan, their colour scheme. Sure, those items all represent the brand, but they are not the brand. The word association game provides a closer description of the brand. At a recent conference, I heard Arlene Dickinson of CBC TV’s The Dragon’s Den define a brand succinctly as “Your organization as experienced by others”. That definition works for me.

So for Las Vegas, the brand could be shaped by past visits there, stories heard from a friend's visit, experiencing the city as a backdrop in movies or TV shows, seeing advertisements, reading articles, visiting their website, and on and on.

When you think about your brand, in what ways are your customers, employees or other stakeholders experiencing your organization? How are they treated when they call on the phone? What type of atmosphere do you have in your workspace? How are you handling complaints? All of these elements, and many more, shape the perception of your organization and form your brand.

So if you asked your customers or your employees to play the word association game with your organization, what would they say? Ask them...you may be enlightened with the results.

An online brand strategy fuels web visitation for Neuragen.com

Over the past few months, we at ICON worked with the marketing team at Origin BioMed to develop an online brand strategy for their flagship product, Neuragen. The strategy has helped to drive over 100,000 visitors to their new website in just three months since its launch, with 1 in 5 of those visitors requesting a coupon for Neuragen.

As stated by Jason R. Tutty, VP Marketing with Origin BioMed, "Growing North American demand for our product necessitated a strong web presence. We were starting from scratch and ICON guided us through an online brand strategy which served as the blueprint for Neuragen's online presence.

Together, we also built and launched the cornerstone of our online presence - an interactive, consumer-focused site. Since its launch, traffic and online consumer interaction continues to soar, translating directly into incremental revenue for the company."

A combination of organic and paid search, referrals from WebMD and direct requests from ads are driving traffic to the site and we're working on a new e-newsletter campaign that will enable the conversation with their customers to go to a deeper level.

So if you have diabetes, singles or fibromyalgia and suffer from nerve pain, you'll want to give Neuragen a try. Check out their site and request a coupon!

Halifax Biomedical launches fresh new look

Halifax Biomedical Inc., with its head office in Mabou, Nova Scotia, is an international biomedical engineering company that provides quality clinical research services and advanced research products for the orthopedics field. ICON helped this innovative company to revitalize their brand identity and communications tools to elevate them to their next level of success.

Chad Munro, CEO of Halifax Biomedical Inc., said these nice things about the experience of working with us:

"ICON is a trusted supplier for all our marketing and communication needs, I highly recommend this firm. From logo development and collateral materials to online branding and redesign of our website, ICON has exceeded our expectations and delivered in the time we needed and under budget.

Halifax Biomedical strives to lead in a niche sector of medical imaging. We achieve this leadership through our commitment to quality and excellence in everything we do. We have partnered with only the best organizations internationally. I happy to say that work ICON has done reflects our values of quality and excellence. We are pleased to have such world class talent available to our organization."

Great Plains College officially launched

Two community college systems in Saskatchewan, Cypress Hills College and Prairie West College, announced that they are merging to form a new college, Great Plains College. ICON worked with the management team of the new organization to develop an exciting brand strategy and identity for the college that focuses on “Education with ENERGY”.

Mark Frison, President and CEO of the new college said, “The branding process was critical in shaping the new identity and direction for Great Plains College. Enrollments are up for the next year and excitement continues to build for our ‘Education with Energy’ theme.”

All that's left to say is Go Sun Dogs! (That's their sports team.)

So why blog?

After thinking about starting a blog for a few years, we're finally jumping into the blogosphere and you may want to as well. Here are just a few reasons you should consider blogging:

1. Positioning your Brand
A blog provides a great opportunity for your organization to stand out from competitors by demonstrating your specific knowledge, providing useful insights and showing a glimpse of your personality. Done well and consistently, a blog can help reinforce our brand in the eyes of your ideal customer.

2. Leadership
A blog can establish you as a thought leader in your area of expertise, provided of course that you have some decent thoughts from time to time. It also gives you a soapbox to stand on and share your opinion.

3. Driving Traffic
Having a blog that is optimized for search engines can provide another means for your ideal customer to find you online. As well, links from the blog back to your site (like this one) will improve the search engine ranking of your site.

4. Evergreen Content
Developing a blog and then having the blog feed posted on your site can provide a steady stream of new content for your site and give visitors a reason to keep coming back for more info. Search engines like that too. And you won't have to wait for your webmaster to make content changes.

5. Conversations with Your Readers
Most blogs allow readers to post comments on a blog post and this can begin a dialogue between you and our ideal customer. Just be sure to check the blog regularly to monitor and respond to comments...you wouldn't want to leave someone hanging!

These are jut a few reasons we're blogging, but we hope this will give you some reasons to start your own.