Creating Brands that Stick

Today we're continuing our posts on branding and slogans, and I thought I would get the creative juices flowing with some examples, since there seems to be much anxiety and wailing and gnashing of teeth involved in the process (mine included). Now, don't peek, but try to guess which products these slogans represent without looking at the answers below:


Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh what a relief it is
The San Francisco treat
Breakfast of Champions
You're gonna like the way you look
The quicker picker upper
Reach out and touch someone
Finger lickin' good
Betcha can't eat just one
It takes a licking, and keeps on ticking
You're in good hands with _______
It's _____ time
The ultimate driving machine
Invent
Just do it
It's the real thing
Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don't
A ______ moment

I was struck by the use of strong verbs and the references to the senses (mostly taste) used to make the above slogans or brands memorable. People who are successful in business today often create personal branding statements to include in resumes and they use key verbs. Examples of strong key verbs would be: created, established, organized, revitalized, championed, dominated, leveraged. These are strong verbs rather than passive ones, such as helped, assisted, and maintained. Some slogans are easier to remember because they rhyme, or are just plain fun to say (quicker picker upper!). It's even more memorable if it's put to music. Remember the jingle J - e -l - l - o? Some incorporate the name of the product, and some leave you with a visual instead.

It's probably easier to come up with a slogan or brand for a tangible product rather than an idea, but there are some great examples here. You probably know the last one - 'A Kodak moment.' Kodak is referring to the experience created with their product, not the camera itself. And you probably recognize 'reach out and touch someone.' It humanizes their electronics by recalling friends and family from whom you are separated. These engage the senses and emotions.

Once you have decided on a brand or slogan, it is important to carry the ideas through into the design of your website. Check out these authors' brands and visit their websites:
Rugged faith, radiant God - Karen Ball
Tales of wonder - Marlo Schalesky
Catch the wave - Julie Carobini
Sharing His heart, one page at a time - Pamela Dowd
Honor the past, embrace the future - Tricia Goyer
Seatbelt suspense - Brandilyn Collins (one look at her head shot and you know what she writes!)
And also non-fiction - "Mother of 12 lives to write about it" - Barbara Curtis

Some of the brands are very specific to a genre or topic and some allow for a more liberal interpretation. What are the concrete things or ideas about your writing that could be included in a slogan or brand?

(answers: Alka Seltzer, Rice-a-Roni, Wheaties, The Men's Wearhouse, Bounty, AT&T, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Lays, Timex, Allstate, Miller (time), BMW, Hewlett Packard, Nike, Coca Cola, Almond Joy/Mounds, Kodak)

Adrift in the Branding Sea

Writing a book is so much easier than promoting one. Put me in my office where I can see the sky through my windows, and hear the birds, my wind chimes and the clacking of my keyboard, and I'm a happy woman.

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But navigating the promotional waters of the books I create, now that's a different story. I don't mind going along for the ride, but steering the whole darn ship is another matter. I'd so rather not. But since I don't have the luxury of floating through the process, I'm going to call on all of you to help as I make my way through the (n)oceans of branding, and try to create one of my own.

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Latayne got us out of port and into the open seas of the branding issue, and there have been good comments to keep the boat afloat, but here are two questions: What is Branding? What is a Tagline? And are they synonomous? Okay, that's three. In my mind a tagline is like a teaser, for, say, a Steven Spielberg movie. "Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water" for Jaws. "He is afraid. He is alone. He is 3 million miles from home" for E.T. "It's about life. It's about love. It's about us" for The Color Purple.

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Taglines, right? That define individual films? But it takes a brand to define the combined works of Steven Spielberg. Something like The Storyteller's Storyteller. Am I right? Oh, I hope I've got it.

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Author Randy Ingermanson wrote in his Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine: "...the world of publishing has split into two armed camps. One camp insists that branding is vital to the health of an author's career. The other camp says that the whole brandwagon is a load of hooey ... ask six people to define branding, you get about eight different answers." He goes on to state his definition of branding, which I think is very helpful. "Your brand is what other people think when they hear your name."

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So, assuming we're successfully navigating the waters of branding here, I'd like to launch my own lifeboat and see how far I get. I write contemporary novels about issues that cause women pain. Using Latayne's lighthouse points, I covered Time and Genre with one pull of the oar, as well as indicating my Audience. Every Good & Perfect Gift is about infertility and catastrophic illness. Lying on Sunday is about infidelity. These are my Topics. (The tagline for Gift is: True friendship is invaluable, but for Gabby Whitaker the cost could be too much; for Lying on Sunday the tagline is: For Abbie Torrington, betrayal and truth are about to collide.) Then like the labor of childbirth, I push through the pain to the point of deliverance. In the process I do all I can to cause laughter. And there is my Unique Tone or Flavor. Combined, this creates my Branding Statement. Have I got it right so far?

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To put a fine point on it, I write Heart-of-the-Matter Fiction. Did I just create my Brand? If so, what do you think of it? From my branding statement in bold type in the above paragraph, can you suggest a better brand? If so, I invite you to share it. And for those readers who are not also writers, what does branding mean to you? Is it important? Does it help you decide whether or not to read an author's writing? Or is it, as one camp suggests, just so much hooey?

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Award-winning novelist Randy Ingermanson, "theSnowflake Guy," publishes the Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine, with more than 15,000 readers, every month. If you want to learn the craft and marketing of fiction, AND make your writing more valuable to editors, AND have FUN doing it, visit http://www.AdvancedFictionWriting.com.