A question that people often ask me is: Is it fair ro link marketing to sales?

My answer is always, “Yes.”

Many branding and marketing books will try to tell you that there’s some secret formula to making your market feel confident in your company’s ability to deliver, but it’s really rather straight-forward.

There’s a guy named Scott Ginsberg and I don’t know if you’ve ever seen him, but he has his website called nametagHelloMyNameIsScott.com and for the past 2,900+ days, he’s worn a nametag. Which means, he’s been wearing a nametag everyday for the past 8 years. Scott wears his nametag every single day no matter where he is going. If he’s doing laundry, he’s wearing the nametag that says, “Hello, my name is Scott”.

Whatever happened to Ronald McDonald? Where is he? And, the Hamburgler? Where is he? Did you notice when they left?

Let’s say you have a new company. It’s got all the elements of a good brand, but no one knows about it. What’s the best way to break into the market – advertising or PR?

Just do it.

Quality is job #1.

We try harder.

Healthy fast food.

It is entirely possible to “own” a phrase or a word in the mind of consumers. The above examples prove that – and it’s not just an option for big companies.

Your brand must evolve.

Apple still has tremendous market share and even though you might hear about a bunch of new, start-up companies making computers but, no matter what, they just can’t seem to measure up to Apple.

The use of symbols in logos is not as important as many people think it is. Most businesses think they absolutely NEED to have a symbol in their logo. They just HAVE to have some symbol. What they don’t realize is that the symbol is actually a small part of a logo (until your company gets to be a certain size). What’s more important is selecting the right company name.

People always ask me how long a brand should be around before it’s safe to change brand elements like corporate colors, logo shape or the company name.

In my book, Branding Insights for Small Businsses, I used the example of Exxon, the oil company…