Do Business Well

Suddenly, the old crowd was back. When he asked why they had not come a few kilometres down the road to Morningside, they all said it was too far.

In Australia, Thomas Cook had a busy office at the north end of Bankstown Shopping Centre. One day I analysed the postal codes of its clients and found they all came from the north — they drove into the shopping centre from that point, shopped at that end of the shopping centre and drove away.

If Thomas Cook had put in offices on the south, east and west sides they would have quadrupled their business.

The Mars Bar people found the same thing in New York. The city blocks are big enough to have multiple, multi-purpose corner stores, and analysis showed that different corner outlets sold different sweets, depending on the socio-economic standing of the people coming the quickest way down their ‘animal tracks’ for their newspapers, magazines, croissants, sweets and household goods. Continue Reading »

6 Comments »

Knox (2000) summarizes the potential rewards associated with successful branding.

Pickton and Broderick (2001) argue that commodity-type products such as metal tubing or screws, which in the past have been perceived as ‘non-branded‘, should be considered as branded through their packaging, labelling or logos.

Companies are creating brands through the consistent use of names, logos, a form of packaging, colours, shapes, typography, short descriptions or slogans. Branding can be provided through a variety of mechanisms, such as brand names, brand logos, trade names or trade marks.

Brand name

A brand name is the part of a brand that can be spoken and which includes letters, numbers or symbols, such as Coca-Cola, VW, or Yahoo. This might be different from the legal name of the company; think, for example, of the use of initials such as AA or RAC, or numbers such as 7-Up or 3M, which have created enduring brands. Brand names can be reinforced through the use of a distinctive colour or typography. The classic example is the Coca-Cola brand name, which has a strong visual appeal and is recognized anywhere in the world through the design rather than the words. Coca-Cola is easily identifiable whether the name is written in English, Arabic, Russian or Chinese because the look is always the same. Continue Reading »

5 Comments »