There’s an old saying: you can’t read the label from inside the jar.
However most of us are inside our own jar. We’re all working IN our business every day. But your customers are on the outside, peering in, trying to work out exactly what you do, why they should care?
And there will always this gap between what you’re saying and what they’re hearing?
The discovery phase of a brand exercise forces you to listen to what your customers are saying, what confuses them about your product? What are they actually looking for?
This may be uncomfortable home truths, but that is where the clarity lies. And once you’re clear about what your customers want, you can build your brand around that.
So before decide to get a new logo or website, understand who it’s for and what they they really care about. Because it’s probably not what you think it is.
I’m Scott from Bentley Creative
🧱 Brand Builder and Creative Director 🔔 Follow for more tips on branding and brand strategy ♻️ Repost this if you think it can help someone else
Have you heard of reverse benchmarking? It’s a strategy any business can steal, let me explain.
Coined by Rory Sutherland, it comes from Will Guidara’s book “Unreasonable Hospitality”. Guidara took his restaurant, 11 Madison Park from the 50th to the best one in the world.
He did this by obsessing over things his competition ignored. He noticed most Michelin starred restaurants have a pretty bad selection of beer, he also noticed the coffee is usually pretty terrible too. So he made sure these things were amazing.
See, You’re not trying to go toe-to-toe with your competition, you’re outperforming where they’re weakest.
Think about your sector. What does everyone do that’s just “good enough”?
Pick one. Make it exceptional. Then shout about it. Make it your USP.
That’s how you win in a crowded market. Not by being 5% cheaper.
By turning those ‘mid’ moments into something magical for your customers.
I’m Scott from Bentley Creative
🧱 Brand Builder and Creative Director
🔔 Follow for more tips on branding and brand strategy
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This Black Friday we’ll see billions in brand equity going up in flames.
But who doesn’t love a deal EH? Your customers definitely do, but discounting signals weakness, it screams “We’re desperate. Please buy our stuff.” which in turn degrades your brand equity. The data shows people who buy during promotions have probably bought before, and loyal customers who paid full price last month now feel mugged off when they see it 20% cheaper. So you’re not winning new customers, you’re just teaching current ones to wait.. Discounting can work but you also have to sell so much more to keep your profitability Binet & Field’s research proved that 84% of price promotions are unprofitable for companies.
So what to do instead?
Take that discount money and build your brand. Yes, it has subtler, delayed effect. But it pushes up perceived value and reaches less frequent buyers and get your brand to stick in people’s minds.
So, Stop setting fire to your margins and build your brand instead.
I’m Scott from Bentley Creative
I lost a client by asking too many questions, but I wouldn’t have changed a thing.
Earlier this year, I found myself working with a founder across two projects. The first one was quite straightforward, but the second one was less so.
Every meeting, I’d try to articulate the problem we were solving. I’d push back, ask probing questions and I could feel his frustration.
See, He wanted action, to bring his creature to life.
But there was this gap between what customers needed and what he wanted to build.
I finished the first project and we parted ways. A year later, that second project still isn’t off the ground.
I do understand, talking about problems can feel negative. When you’re paying someone, you want progression, not pondering. But that is the work that matters. Einstein said it best: “If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes defining it and 5 minutes solving it.”
Most businesses do the opposite. Be more Einstein
I’m Scott from Bentley Creative
🧱 Brand Builder and Creative Director
🔔 Follow for more tips on branding and brand strategy
♻️ Repost this if you think it can help someone else
If you think branding is just about logos, here’s a wake up call.
It’s actually the most brutal economic equation in business.
This comes from Bruce Buchanan professor of marketing at Stern
Every business operates on these three lines.
The bottom line is your cost, the middle line is your price and the top line is the customers perceived value - what they think it’s worth.
People buy things when the perceived value is greater than the price they’re paying.
Branding gives you the ability to play with these lines like a mixing desk.
Through branding and storytelling we can push up the perceived value which allows you to do some interesting things.
You can now raise prices without losing market share, because the value gap is still the same, however it gives you more margin.
Or you could keep your prices the same and take more market share because of the increased delta between price and perceived value.
None of this is fluff. This is hard economics
I’m Scott from Bentley Creative
🧱 Brand Builder and Creative Director
🔔 Follow for more tips on branding and brand strategy
♻️ Repost this if you think it can help someone else
So there have been a lot of rebrands getting a lot of attention recently and not for the right reasons. Everything from the City of Austin, Cracker Barrel to the Gov.uk brand refresh.
But I wanted to talk about one that seems to be getting a lot of love on the internet right now.
And that’s the new Crocs logo.
The soft rounded friendly typography stays, but the logo is transformed into a the shoe silhouette. The holes in the shoes that Crocs is are known are cleverly used to create a crocodile portrait. Gone is the awkward cartoon crocodile – now we have a mark that speaks to both adults and kids, full of subtle yet delightful design touches.
Except it’s not real.
This is not an official crocs rebrand, It was a concept design by designer Stephen Kelleher back in 2019 who has no affiliation with Crocs. And yet it seems to be doing the rounds on the internet again - have you seen it?
However, I think it’s got real charm to it. Whereas most companies that try to simplify their logo just look bland, this hits a great note.
Do you think Crocs should adopt this logo?
I’m Scott from Bentley Creative
🧱 Brand Builder and Creative Director
🔔 Follow for more tips on branding and brand strategy
♻️ Repost this if you think it can help someone else
I’ve recently become the Art Director of Elite Traveler and the first issue is back from the printers. And I honestly thought I escaped publishing, but it pulled me back in.
Over the last few months I’ve realised how making magazines and brand building are similar. To build trust with your audience, you really need to know what they aspire to and what keeps them up at night.
The best brands know this and through storytelling, they create a relationship that goes deeper than a simple transaction.
Secondly as a brand you also need to understand what you want to be known for. Not just the business you’re in, but what makes you different from your competitors?
For example, the person that buys Vogue wants different things from their magazine than the person that buys Cosmopolitan. They serve completely different audiences with different values and aspirations.
So, 25 years of magazines has really taught me to be a better brand strategist
I’m Scott from Bentley Creative
🧱 Brand Builder and Creative Director
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Congratulations!! 🎉 Your business is 10 years old and to celebrate you give everyone 𝟭𝟬% 𝗢𝗙𝗙…
Is such a 𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙢𝙤𝙣 𝙢𝙖𝙧𝙠𝙚𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙢𝙞𝙨𝙩𝙖𝙠𝙚, especially with big ticket items.
But, I had this exact conversation this week with a roofing company owner I know.
Here are three better ideas to leverage your anniversary for marketing that won’t cost tens of thousands of pounds:
🟢 Partner with 10 local charities for free repairs throughout the year. Document each project to create PR and social content. Schedule these during quiet periods when your team has capacity.
🟢 Extend warranties by 10 years for free for jobs booked that month. Costs nothing upfront. Shows confidence in your quality and most customers will never claim.
🟢 Offer free soffits and fascias with every new roof. Research from the University of Minnesota found shoppers much prefer getting something free to getting something cheaper, even when the discount saves them more money.
Make your anniversary a marketing asset not a discount trap.
I’m Scott from Bentley Creative
🧱 Brand Builder and Creative Director
🔔 Follow for more tips on branding and brand strategy
♻️ Repost this if you think it can help someone else. #marketingmistake #marketingfail #marketing #marketingstrategy #anniversary #businessmindset
I got the ROI question again.
I was at a mastermind session earlier this week (thank you Chris Daems for organising) and a CFO mentioned he’d want to know the ROI of a proposed branding exercise.
And of course the question was thrown to me.
And I get it, CFOs LOVE putting numbers in spreadsheets.
But let’s do this. We’ll use the business’s roof as an analogy.
Like a roof not every asset directly generates profit. But without it your workforce gets drenched, your machinery rusts and your product spoils.
A branding exercise doesn’t instantly generate profit, but it makes hiring easier, it makes your marketing more efficient, and it stops you competing on price like some desperate market trader.
The question comes from a conflation of performance marketing and branding building. These are separate functions but work in tandem.
So what’s the ROI of branding? Lower Customer acquisition costs. Increased Pricing power and increased Employee confidence and retention.
I hope that helps
I’m Scott from Bentley Creative
🧱 Brand Builder and Creative Director
🔔 Follow for more tips on branding and brand strategy
♻️ Repost this if you think it can help someone else. #Branding #brandstrategy #brandingROI #roi
I watched a brilliant founder kill his own pitch in real time
It was at the London Chamber of Commerce a couple of months ago. A founder stood up, very passionate explaining his technological thingamabob. For 5 minutes, he rattled off features and technical specifications and he couldn’t understand why no one was buying it.
I raised my hand. “I might dumb, but I don’t get it. What does this actually do?”
You could feel the room relax, he said what I was thinking
He tried again, and the penny dropped - “So are you saying this turns any big piece of glass into a screen?”
“Exactly. He said
That simple positioning statement I did on the hoof explained what took him nearly 10 minutes to explain. And this isn’t uncommon, having a clear brand position is so important and yet most companies find it difficult to explain what they do an why they do it
If you need help with yours, I’m Scott from Bentley Creative
#brandstrategy #positioning #branding #strategicthinking
What is an Insight?
I usually talk conceptually about what branding IS but I rarely give examples of HOW it works.
Branding is the foundation for all marketing.
If you haven’t done this foundational work then your marketing has to start from scratch each time, which is expensive and time consuming.
During the branding process we uncover our customer avatars, which are groups of people/customers bound by similar demographics, wants or needs.
From these avatars we uncover human truths or relatable moments. These are our insights that we can build marketing content around.
An example: An avatar for a makeup brand might be busy professional women in their 30s juggling work and family life.
Now An insight might be that to save time on their way to work, they put their makeup on in the car with the rear view mirror.
The tension might be them worried about having an accident or slamming the brakes on and getting lipstick across their face or poking themselves in the eye with a mascara brush.
We can use this insight and tension to build an ad or a social media post or campaign or some other piece of marketing
So without the initial branding work we can’t get the insight which leads to the campaign.
This is one reason why branding is so important for your business.
I’m Scott from Bentley Creative
🧱 Brand Builder and Creative Director
🔔 Follow for more tips on branding and brand strategy
♻️ Repost this if you think it can help someone else
What the purpose of a logo? well, firstly Let’s start with what it is not. A logo’s purpose is NOT to describe what the business does.
The primary purpose of a logo is to be remembered
Customers should see it and think - Huh, I’ve seen that before.
This can only happen though when it is memorable, and we only remember things that are different. and then when we’ve seen it enough times that triggers a degree of trust.
Here are a few brands and I’m sure you can recognise these without their names. Now notice none of these describe the business they’re in.
Secondly, A good logo should also evoke a feeling, it could be fun or reliable or premium or value or young or traditional.
And yet most SMEs still fall into the trap of describing the business with the logo, plumbers with taps and pipes, builders with roof lines,
So if you don’t want to look small fry, and be remembered, stop describing your business with your logo.
I’m Scott From Bentley Creative
