Share | |
Mr. Javed

Sales & Marketing

Free Branding Services?

By Naseem Javed, Founder, ABC Namebank International

The Internet has removed the cumbersome overhead costs and linked very talented people to handle the real issues in real time without the fancy decorum and the super fulvous big time fanfare.

Enter the street fighter, a savvy marketer with some teeth and a friendly smile. The freelance nations have far too many operators on the marketing and branding circuit that all are chipping away the armor of the giant branding companies who until now sold more on their posh addresses and furniture than raw talent. Million dollar logos with a matching spin to thousand of others, million dollar-slogans, confusing sentences as branding miracles. Suddenly, such services are now available for free as an incentive to get a new client for print and related packaging services.

Recently, logos have seriously slipped in power, impact and originality. Outside the famous and overly used examples of Coca Cola, Nike, Mercedes, most customers can't visualize a logo of a major corporation. Like, AT&T or GM. Also a lot of companies simply resorted to a word marks, the use of a simple typeface and that's all. Like Microsoft or Rolex. Currently of the millions of logos in use today a very large number are just almost identical copies of others.

Losing Distinction

Before the web corporations, big or small easily got away with that as no one bothered to check a logo of an American company for similarities in Korea or India or vice versa. Today with a simple search, hundreds of countries are all lined up with their spinning logos. The similarities are far too obvious and hurt the image by not offering any creative distinction. On the web logos have lost their power.

All enterprising design logo shops are offering free logos in hope to get new clients. Nothing wrong here. The same design exercises, which took months and millions to justify a circle over a triangle, accompanied by psychological studies and fanfare to select a color. For example "blue " is for the sky, therefore, it is open versus "green" for grass, which is flat? There were further national studies to find a matching tagline. This is now done in a few hour turn around. Is this any different than the a fully air conditioned room with a raised floor, called the data center to house a large cabinet-sized computer system with a power no greater than a fancy electronic gadget now on your desk.

If all these services become so easily accessible and so massively applied to everything big and small then where lies the distinction, the differentiation and the uniqueness? Furthermore, what is the future of such services including the gatekeepers of image and identity? It is dark. If branding is really supposed to be a logo, a distinct color and a tagline then it is now available for free, all as a small introductory service from print shops all over the world. Look for free logos and creative branding on the web; the quality and the services are at par with any top major agency, minus the fanfare. The issue here is that e-commerce has taken the punch form design side and opened some new frontiers. Web site performance is more important than the logos or colors, the search engine positioning is more important than the tagline and the domain name is more important than the entire website itself.

New Frontiers

Corporate branding is now divided into two distinct areas, acquire a name identity that will work on global e-commerce and design a real web site that will deliver the message. All the other things in between which took months and years of expensive teams to mull over are now replaced by quick creative services. The magic is now in the cheapest and the fasted deliveries of creative ideas and the boardroom style branding think tanks are being booted out.

Corporate image and the naming of products and services are still the most critical issues for any serious player. The fact that most of these services are not capital intense any longer, the issues of distinction will always remain on the forefront.

Customer hungry corporations are putting more emphasis on correct global name identities as a key to play in this new name-economy and ride the fast tide of cyber branding...almost for free. Why not?

Naseem Javed founded ABC Namebank International. ABC operates from a sophisticated, custom built, multi-million dollar facility north of Toronto, with a branch office in New York. He is the author of 'Naming for Power', and is recognized as a world authority on global image positioning and name identities. He advises CEOs of Fortune 500 and other leading corporations on all matters of complex global naming in the e-commerce. He is currently lecturing at major conferences on cutting-edge ideas on image building. Mr. Javed can be contacted at 212-697-7700 or nj@njabc.com Extended Bio...

HotelExecutive.com retains the copyright to the articles published in the Hotel Business Review. Articles cannot be republished without prior written consent by HotelExecutive.com.

Receive our daily newsletter with the latest breaking news and hotel management best practices.
Hotel Business Review on Facebook
RESOURCE CENTER - SEARCH ARCHIVES
General Search:

MAY: The Hotel Spa
High Value Marketing

Jason Guest

Wireless Internet is changing the way business gets done in the hotel industry. There's a tremendous demand for wireless access - for overnight guests and even for conferences and trade shows. It's not just for email and Web surfing anymore. Video streaming, audio streaming and voice-over-IP are all competing for the same Internet pipe. This is compounded by the growing trend for trade shows and conferences to offer high-speed wireless data service to their attendees, which can slow Internet traffic to a crawl. This demand means opportunities for new revenue streams. Wireless has also created new ways for hotels to connect with their guests to generate loyalty. READ MORE

Derek Wood

In today’s ever increasing ‘digital age’ the importance of providing a quality High Speed Internet Access system for your guests is more important than ever. The recent huge increase in mobile wi-fi devices has just added a new dimension to the problem. And yet to many hotels this service is seen as cumbersome, expensive non-revenue generating and does not rank highly at senior management level when increasing guest satisfaction is being discussed. This article examines some of the issues facing the hotelier today and suggests a few ways to overcome the problems. READ MORE

Roger Crellin

Much to the chagrin of property owners, free WiFi has become a guest expectation rather than a perk. Since the free WiFi model was introduced, hotel operators have faced the rapid adoption of bandwidth-hungry mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones. Not only do guests expect free WiFi, but they also expect ease of use and constant connectivity, similar to what they experience at home. What was once a means to improve satisfaction and engender loyalty, free WiFi that underperforms can actually have the opposite effect, causing dissatisfaction and frustration with a property that doesn’t provide a positive experience. READ MORE

Terence Ronson

As mentioned in a previous article, prior to the birth of IOS (Apple’s operating system), truthfully, we only scratched the surface and played around with implementing Wi-Fi in Hotels. But now, four years later with millions and millions of IOS devices in the hands of millions and millions of our loving guests, this has become the most disruptive of technologies in the modern era. That along with the creation of the smartphone and its Big Brother - the TAB – where there are sales predictions of 153 million units next year, and climbing to 232 million by 2016. This has set loose a tsunami of unparalleled demand - for a strangely invisible service! No wonder CIO’s call Wi-Fi a four-letter word. For the sake of repeating myself, today’s Hotel Wi-Fi network (and more critically tomorrow’s) is one of the principal areas in which your hotel will be judged. READ MORE

Coming Up In The June Online Hotel Business Review

"Hotel Business Review offers weekly articles for hotel management and operation and discussion on emerging growth markets."
Feature Focus
Hotel Sustainable Development: Principles and Best Practices
Sustainability is now a daily topic that affects every facet of hotel development and operations. As hotelier Hervé Houdré recently noted "The goal of Sustainable Development is clearly to secure economic development, social equity, and environmental protection. As much as they could work in harmony, these goals sometimes work against each other". In the June Hotel Business Review, some of the industry's most recognized sustainable development experts come together to identify emerging trends and discuss how sustainability is currently affecting the hotel industry. Each author presents the most important aspects of sustainable development of much interest to hotel owners, operators, investors and developers. We include perspectives and case studies on best practices from leading hotel groups and other industry players.
INSIGHTS FOR INDUSTRY LEADERS BY INDUSTRY LEADERS
"300,000 Rooms Complete, 15,700,000 to Go"
By Larry Mogelonsky, President and Founder, LMA Communications
"Destination Earth: A Customized Approach to Sustainability"
By Mark Hickey, Senior Vice President of U.S. Hotel Operations, Destination Hotels
"Why This New Standard is Going to change Hotel Energy Management Forever?"
By Robert Allender, Managing Director, Energy Resources Management
"How Two Major Hotel Companies are Turning Sustainability into Tangible Business Advantage"
By Christopher Wood, Director of Social Responsibility, ASAE Convene Green Alliance
PLUS: Green Certification - Development & Investment Outlook - Case Studies - Green Design – Sustainable Development Strategies - Green Luxury - CSR Programs - Green Facility Management