Branding Guru: Ways To Improve Your Brand

Jake’s Café owner and nationally recognized branding expert, Tryg Jacobson, presented ways to improve Chamber members’ brands on Wednesday, January 18^th. He stressed the value of a brand and how it’s directly proportional to the uniqueness and meaningfulness of the promise and our ability to keep it.

Starting with the typical example of Mac versus PCs, Jacobson compared the value of different brands. He moved on to the example of Tim Horton’s and Starbucks proving businesses serve two distinct customers. Starbucks serves the independent, youthful coffee lover while Tim Horton’s has built its brand on the idea that its customers are validated by togetherness. In all of these brands, Jacobson explained how their success stems from their comprehensive tactics and attention to detail, especially considering the five senses.

All five senses impact a brand tremendously. Illustrating the power of sight, a yellow outlined box was shown and was easily recognizable to everyone in the meeting room as the National Geographic logo. The Geico gecko icon was also recognized within seconds by all. Even the power of sound affects a brand. Who doesn’t recognize the Droid sound as the phone is powered on? He also touched on the power of smell- a realtor may put a pie in a house trying to sell because people associate “home” feelings with comfort food such as pies.

The most popular example of the power of touch was Jim Gilbert, Canada’s “most huggable car dealer.” Traditionally used cars salesmen are given what Jacobson said was a stigma of being untrustworthy. However, Gilbert aims to redefine the image of a used car salesman. Jacobson was blown away by how he incorporated the power of the senses and how much his business has grown because of that.

Next, Jacobson stressed the importance of businesses developing a positioning statement. This is drawn from values and deep self- assessment to identify a target audience and specify a mission. It represents one of the most important things a business can do to succeed in branding, Jacobson added. Businesses are successful when trust is created. Building trust goes hand-in-hand with building brand and in order to build trust, Jacobson said that a promise should be made and kept.

“Never change your logo unless you have intentions of changing your promise,” Jacobson said.

When changing a promise, it is important to keep in mind the message a company is trying to communicate. The overall message may be detailed and lengthy but a key part of branding is being able to distill a company message into a “tagline” of about seven words that thread everything together.

Ultimately, six different branding principles that hold true to every company must be used wisely to find success. Brands should be unique, “smashable” (meaning that if someone were to smash a brand on the sidewalk, it would still be recognizable, meaningful, consistent, simple and clear.

Jacobson has given over 100 presentations on branding. Contact Tryg Jacobson at 920-694-1741 for further information or John Rogers at 920-457-9491 for more information on Focal Point.

-Anna Moegenburg and Hannah Geise

2012 Focal Point sponsored by our friends at