Tokii.com selected by BizSpark as Startup of the Day
On May 16, Tokii was nominated by BizSpark as the Startup of the Day! Here’s the link to the posting that includes an interview with the CEO of Tokii, Karla Stephens Tolstoy:
The Great Ideaz team is proud to be a stategic partner for Tokii.
Congrats!
Rob Halasz
Co-CEO, Great Ideaz On Demand Inc.
Great Ideaz Helps Launch Tokii.com!
Tokii is the world’s first social media relationship management platform. The site recently launched at the SXSW (South by South West) conference in Austin, Texas, and was voted the best new Canadian startup! Check out their site at tokii.com
We are proud to say that the entire back end of the site was built using our code generation framework which dramatically accelerated their time to market, performance, and scalability. This site is very unique for many reasons and pioneers a new kind of social media, where it needs to handle both open information sharing and following concepts as well as highly secure and sensitive relationship information. Needless to say, there is a very sophisticated security model and architecture behind the scenes!
Karla Stephens Tolstoy, CEO of Tokii, said this about working with us: “Great Ideaz has consistently gone above and beyond to ensure the best, simplest solution for a very complex platform. They truly partnered with us in this effort and worked to meet our commitment to absolute privacy and security to our customers.”
How to Use Storyboards and Scenarios
Scenarios and storyboards are used to describe how a consumer will interact with a brand, allowing the company to determine what aspects of the brand, if any, should be changed to enhance the user experience. Scenarios use words to describe the user experience, while storyboards use pictures. They are useful to describe different situations, based on the complexity of the interaction. Before the company makes a scenario or storyboard, however, they must develop a persona.
A persona is a representative of the typical consumer. The company should consider what they are using their product for, what age they are, and all the other different things that are included in the target audience. However, the company should also consider likes and dislikes and descriptions. It is also helpful to give the persona a name and a picture, so that employees can imagine interacting with them more easily. Companies can take this information from consumer surveys, and should include some quotes to make the personas seem more life-like. If there are several target audiences for the brand, or the target audience is complex, the company should create two or three personas. It is important that the persona seem like a real person because the brand must be able to interact with them, and so the company’s employees should consider how the persona would react to changes and developments in the brand.
The persona can interact with the brand through scenarios or storyboards. They are designed to show how the consumer would interact with the brand or product in a certain situation, and describe the consumer’s reaction and the quality of the interaction. For example, a brand of facial cream, targeted towards teenagers, might make a scenario for an interaction between their facial cleanser, and their persona, Jade. Jade is a 15-year old who is looking for a boyfriend. She also wants to impress her friends. She has had some problems with spots on her face in the past, and one of her friends recommended that she try the brand. Jade bought it because she was going to a party the next day, and a boy she liked would be there. She read the instructions, understood what to do immediately, and tried the facial cleanser overnight. Once she woke up in the morning, she checked her face in the mirror and found out that her spots had faded noticeably. This increased her self-confidence, and she went to the party ready to have a fun time.
Jade’s story was an example of a scenario. Notice how Jade has been described – this would normally be a part of the persona. The scenario describes a situation that Jade and the product would be interacting in – Jade needs a fast-acting facial cleanser. The scenario also describes some aspects of the interaction. The descriptions on the packaging must be simple, and the words should be easy to understand. The cream should do as it was intended to, and work quickly, if not overnight. These are the main aspects that Jade was looking for in the product. If the company wanted to create a storyboard based around this, they would have pictures of Jade looking sceptical as she purchased the product, looking pleased as she read the instructions, and looking surprised and happy as she saw her spots were gone. Other personas might want other things from the product, or interact with it in a different way, and alternate scenarios should be done for them.
Scenarios and storyboards should be simple and focus on a specific situation. They should not try to examine more than one persona’s interaction with the product, or more than one situation, at a time. The simpler they are, the easier it is to create them and get information out of them. They should examine problems that the consumer might have, to try and find solutions.
Once a company has created one or more personas for your brand, they should use them to ‘test’ their product with fictional interactions through scenarios and storyboards. The personas should point out what consumers want from their products, or problematic areas, enabling the company to design their product according to what the consumer wants from it, and adapt the product to their evolving needs.
Resources:
Great Ideaz provides secure online collaboration workspaces where you can create personas and scenarios. To see how we can help you, visit greatideaz.com.
Dan Saffer’s Designing for Interaction, 2nd Edition
John Soellner’s ‘Storyboards, Scenarios, Design Personas’ – http://www.designcrux.netfirms.com/designex_storyboard.html
The Yahoo! Style Guide
How to Calculate a Brand’s Equity
The equity of a brand is its monetary value. The monetary value includes the entire brand, including tangible and intangible assets.
It is important to know the equity of a brand for three reasons:
- To provide information for shareholders. Shareholders or investors may want a way to keep track of how their investment is doing. Keeping track of the brand’s equity will allow them to measure trends over time, and determine if the brand should change track.
- To determine value when the brand is bought or sold. Sellers will want to know what their brand is worth, and buyers will want to know approximately how much they should be paying.
- To attract investors. If someone is thinking about investing money in a brand, they will want to know how much it is worth, and preferably, how much it has been worth over the past few years. Investors will want to be able to see that the brand is growing in value, because then it is likely that they will see a return in their investment. If a brand’s equity is decreasing, or there is no information about it, then most investors will not want to invest in it because it will not be likely to increase their capital.
To determine the brand’s equity, the company must calculate the value of the different segments of the brand. There are many segments that must be considered, some of which may not be immediately obvious.
- Assets. These are the tangible objects that belong to a brand, and include its impact on the company.
- Associations. These are the business associations with the brand. They are important because other companies may use the company as a supplier, or be affiliated with it in another way that brings in revenue or business.
- Perceptions. These are the things that consumers associate with the brand. They are important because positive perceptions make people more likely to buy a brand, and negative perceptions make people less likely to buy a brand.
- Brand Awareness. This is how many people recognize a brand. It is important because it measures how much a brand is differentiated from its competitors. If brand awareness is high, then people know a brand from its competitors.
- Consumer Loyalty. This is how loyal a brand’s consumers are, or how likely they are to buy your brand over a competitor’s. In some cases, this is based on pricing differences, but some consumers prefer a more expensive brand based on quality, habit, or because it is their favourite. Consumer loyalty is important because it is a combination of perception and brand awareness with how much consumers are willing to do to purchase a brand over its competitor’s.
The non-monetary assets can be given monetary values, or evaluated separately. Once the business’s equity has been calculated, it can be used for buying, selling, and determining how well the company is developing over time.
Resources:
Great Ideaz provides secure online collaboration workspaces where you can calculate your brand’s equity. To see how we can help you, visit greatideaz.com.
Melissa Davis’s The Fundamentals of Branding
NetMBA’s ‘Brand Equity’ – http://www.netmba.com/marketing/brand/equity/
How to Determine a Brand’s Impacts
The impacts of a brand are the ways in which it affects various areas connected with it. The impacts can be measured in a monetary manner using brand equity, or can be measured based on how much, and in what way, the connected areas are affected. A brand that changes its field has a large impact, whether the change is positive or negative; in a monetary evaluation, this may reduce the brand’s value, but a non-monetary evaluation would determine the size of the change and the effectiveness of the change.
There are many areas connected to brands, and many ways that the brand can affect them. The main areas to consider are:
- Consumers. The brand can impact the way consumers perceive the brand and the category the brand is in. The perceptions could equate the product with certain values, such as hybrids being equated with environmental responsibility, or equate the product with an age group or another consumer group, such as MP3 players being equated with teenagers. Although anybody can use the product, people that do are assumed to belong to that group or have those values.
- Innovations. The brand can impact the way in which the field does things. This change does not have to be real, as long as it is perceived by the consumer – for example, tablet PCs existed before the iPad, but the iPad appeared as an innovation in the field.
- Advertising. If the brand advertises in a new way, or is effective in getting its message to consumers, it impacts the field of advertising. Successful campaigns may be copied or emulated by other brands or companies, such as the 2010(?) Old Spice commercials. Advertising may also change the way consumers think about the brand, or about other things in their everyday lives – this is a way in which the brand can impact areas outside of their normal influence.
- Sustainability. The brand’s sustainability impacts the environment and everything in it. If the brand produces less greenhouse gases, then it impacts the weather, and through the weather, people, plants, and animals. If the brand uses less paper, it impacts trees, the logging industry, and recycling plants. Communicating the message of sustainability will extend the impact to consumers, and might change the way they consider sustainability and environmental responsibility.
- Differentiation. How different the brand is from its competitor impacts the consumer and the company. If the brand is too similar to the competitor’s brand, the consumer might confuse the brands, which could result in increased or decreased sales for the brand or the competitor, depending on advertising and pricing.
- The Internet. Brands have an impact on the internet, whether or not they have a website. A brand’s commercials may be available on video websites, such as YouTube. Social networking sites, such as Facebook, may have groups that approve or disapprove of the brand. Discussion boards on many websites may have discussions about the brand, or compare it to another brand. If the brand has a website, that is another place for it to impact consumers.
- Internally. The brand will impact people within the company, especially those working on it. The company’s employees must understand the brand values, and know how to demonstrate them through advertising and other communications. They must understand where the brand is going, and how it is differentiated. Employees may internalize the brand’s values, or work on the brand could lead them to information they consider interesting or important. Finally, the brand could impact employees in the same way that it impacts consumers.
- Field-Specific Areas. Specific fields have specific areas that they can impact. A manufacturing company impacts its suppliers and any stores it sells the products to. A supplying company impacts manufacturers and the refining or recycling factories
When a company is assessing its impact, it should consider these areas. Departments of the company associated with the brand must work together to determine all the different impacts. Once it has been determined that there is an impact, the brand must discover exactly how the brand is impacting the area, and whether it is a positive or negative impact.
Resources:
Great Ideaz provides secure online collaboration workspaces where you can determine your brand’s impacts. To see how we can help you, visit greatideaz.com.
Melissa Davis’s The Fundamentals of Branding
How to Determine a Brand’s Target Audience
A brand’s audience is who the brand is targeted at. A brand should have a clearly defined audience so that it can communicate with them effectively. The brand must also be consistent with its advertising, even when it is advertising to different audience segments.
There are several things that a company should think about before defining their target audience:
- Product Suitability. Some products will suit one audience better than another. For example, if the product is baby food, the target audience will be parents; a company would not market baby food to children or the elderly. Some products, such as computers or cars, may have multiple target audiences. In these cases, the company may have to adjust the brand and product appearance so that it appeals more to the group that they want.
- Size. A company may want a large target audience, or several segmented audiences. Alternatively, they may want to focus their advertising on one segmented audience, and deepen the brand experience. The second method will involve trying to get more sales from a smaller group of people, but may be more successful if the company immerses the group in the brand identity, or if the product is uniquely suited for the group.
- Disposable Income. If the brand is trying to sell a product, the company must make sure that the audience can buy it. Marketing a sports car to children may make sense, because they would enjoy the ride, but they do not have the money to pay for it themselves, and sports cars are likely to cost more than a parent would like. Sports cars are marketed towards young adults, who have the money to pay for them.
- Perceived Value. The perceived value is how much the brand appears to be worth. If the brand is a luxury brand, its products will appear to have more value than if the brand is a necessity. Similarly, a higher quality brand will have a higher perceived value.
If the product is suited to multiple audiences, the company may want to consider the different audiences before deciding on one or two to market to. The company should research the different target audiences they are considering, and decide which ones suit them best. The company may need to create a different brand for each audience, if they are diverse audiences.
Once the company has determined their target audience, they must determine what brand image would be best for the target audience, and adapt their advertising message and product appearance to match. The brand experience must be consistent, so that the audience is not confused by varying brand appearances. The advertising medium must be available to the target audience, and the advertisements should draw on their ethics and values.
Resources:
Great Ideaz provides secure online collaboration workspaces where you can determine your target audience. To see how we can help you, visit greatideaz.com.
Melissa Davis’s The Fundaments of Branding
How to Position a Brand
The position of a brand is its location in the consumer’s mind in relation to other products in the category. It is based on differentiating the brand from competing brands, creating a brand personality, and combining brand perceptions. The brand experience must remain consistent, combining these three concepts into an image of the brand as a whole.
Differentiating the brand is primarily the job of advertising and marketing departments. They must avoid using the same style of advertising as their competitors, because then one brand could be mistaken for the other, and consumers would not be able to remember which one was which. The brands should look different, such as using complementary colours or differently shaped packaging. A good example of brand differentiation is Coca Cola and Pepsi – they have very different colours and logos, and most people think of them as distinct. In a restaurant, if you ask for one and they serve the other, they will generally ask if the one they have will do. This is because they are well differentiated.
There must be an interesting brand personality. The brand personality should be appropriate to the audience, and be able to engage them on an emotional level. Emotional engagement creates consumer loyalty. A distinct personality can also help to differentiate the brand from a competing brand. The brand should have a concrete personality, without conflicting features. For more information, see ‘How to Create a Brand’s Personality.’
The brand experience should be consistent across the entire company. To keep the brand experience consistent, all areas and employees must demonstrate the values and perceptions of the brand. If the brand is a luxury brand, then its products must be high quality and expensive. Creating a lower quality product, or the image of lower quality in an advertisement or on a website, could damage the brand perceptions. Similarly, companies cannot ‘greenwash,’ or be environmentally friendly in some areas, but damage the environment in others. To learn more about avoiding greenwashing, see ‘How to Implement Ethical Branding.’
When these segments are combined into a clear and distinguishable idea, they will have a position in the mind of the consumer. The idea will differentiate the brand from any competing brands, and help the consumer connect with the brand. Once the brand is differentiated, if it is a good one, it will create consumer loyalty, spread to friends and family, and become a leader in its category.
Resources:
Great Ideaz provides secure online collaboration workspaces where you can determine the best way for your brand to engage with your target audience. To see how we can help you, visit greatideaz.com.
Barry Callen’s Manager’s Guide to Marketing, Advertising, and Publicity, Chapter 6 – http://cwlpub.com/images/Callen06.pdf
Melissa Davis’s The Fundamentals of Branding
How to Create a Brand Strategy
When creating a brand, it is a good idea to start by making a brand strategy. A brand strategy is like a template for the brand; it ensures that the brand is consistent, and keeps track of useful information about the brand. The main things a company should keep track of are heritage, future plans, target audience, brand equity, ethical stance, and impacts.
The heritage is how the brand was created, what the brand has done, and how the brand has changed. It is important to keep track of this because other people may have a different perception of the brand, and a company should be able to determine where they got their perception from. Additionally, past information about the brand could be useful in advertising in the present or planning for the future.
The future plans are any ideas the company might have for the further development of the brand. They include things such as target audience, advertising, new products, and ethics. These plans are important because they describe how the brand will change, and could lead to the success or failure of the brand.
The target audience is the group of consumers that the brand is designed for. It is important to develop the target audience and accommodate for its changes because they are normally the main source of revenue for the company. A company should keep track of the target audience and any changes to it, to make sure that the brand’s personality and engagement remain geared towards them.
The brand equity is the total value of the brand. It is important to keep track of this to determine if the brand is doing well, to attract investors, and to evaluate the brand if companies are buying or selling it. Equity can also be used to decide if a certain product line or business decision is viable.
The ethical stance is any statements the brand has about responsible practices. It can include things such as environmental responsibility and social responsibility, in areas like renewable energy use and fair trade goods. It is very important for the ethical stance to remain consistent, or the company might be accused of ‘greenwashing,’ or having ethical aspects incorporated into a company that is normally unethical.
The impacts are the ways in which the brand has influenced its surroundings. Impacts can be in many different areas, such as consumers, innovation, and differentiation. Keeping track of the different impacts will allow the company to modify them when necessary, maintaining a positive internal and external relationship between the brand and the people it engages with.
Creating and maintaining a brand strategy will provide an easy place for employees to find information about the company and the brand. It is important to keep this information accessible because the company must appear consistent to consumers and other companies. Remaining consistent will make it easier to differentiate the brand, and make it easier for consumers to engage with the brand.
Resources:
Great Ideaz provides secure online collaboration workspaces where you can create and maintain a brand strategy. To see how we can help you, visit greatideaz.com.
Melissa Davis’s The Fundamentals of Branding
Why Ethical Branding is Important
A company’s ethics are important because over time, people have become concerned about sustainability and environmental concerns. Companies should become ethical and environmentally responsible to differentiate themselves from their competitors, make extra money, and avoid boycotts. Furthermore, companies should stay away from ‘greenwashing’ (defined below), as it will have a negative impact on the company.
Environmental responsibility is a good way to differentiate your product from a competitors. You can claim that your product is better for the environment, uses less resources, or is manufactured in a better way. Claims like these make your product seem better than the competitor’s in the eyes of the consumer because consumers are concerned about these things. Some consumers are looking for ‘green’ products, and supplying this need will give you a new market. A product advertised as being most environmentally friendly will draw in consumers who are concerned about companies being socially responsible. Environmental or social campaigns also attract the consumer’s attention.
These campaigns make consumers more willing to buy the product because they show that the money being given to the company is used in a socially responsible way. Consumers are concerned about the ethics of the company they are giving money to because they do not want their money to support practices like child labour and environmentally unfriendly practices. Since Americans are willing to pay approximately 6.6% more for an environmentally friendly brand (Pelsmacker et al., Journal of Consumer Affairs, 2005), that allows the company to make extra money, despite increased costs in production.
While consumers are willing to spend extra money to buy a sustainable brand, they are also willing to avoid unsustainable or unethical brands. Boycotts can substantially harm a company, and they give negative publicity as well as decreased revenue. A Nike boycott forced them to change to more ethical manufacturing in 2005. Boycotting today is easier than it used to be, because consumers can organize themselves via the internet to take down offending brands. On the other hand, Starbucks markets themselves as an ethical company, and their revenues have increased. Consumers can change the way companies operate, and they will continue to do so in the future, especially with the internet as an easy way to organize and collect information.
Since information is so readily available, companies cannot greenwash their products. Greenwashing refers to a sustainable or ethical image appearing in one aspect of the company, such as the products or campaigns, while the majority of the company is not following sustainable or ethical practices. A promotion may claim that the product is environmentally friendly, but the consumer will be able to go online and determine if the company itself is environmentally friendly, or if it has just created the product to attract consumers who are concerned about the environment. If the company is not sustainable or ethical, the consumer will not buy the product, and may start a boycott of your product.
Sustainable and ethical practices are beneficial for a company, as long as they are applied properly and fully. Consumers will support these practices, as long as they are reflected in all aspects of the company. However, refusing to acknowledge these practices will not be an option for much longer. Consumers consider brands that are not sustainable or ethical to be uncaring, making the company lose engagement with the consumer, or outdated, leading the consumer to find a newer, better brand. Sustainability is the issue of the future, and companies should consider it, before they are forced to act.
Resources:
Great Ideaz provides secure online collaboration workspaces where you can determine the best way for your brand to engage with your target audience. To see how we can help you, visit greatideaz.com.
Melissa Davis’s The Fundamentals of Branding
Suzanne Bletcher’s ‘Consumers Want Socially Responsible Brands’ – http://www.brandchannel.com/home/post/2010/03/30/Consumers-Want-Socially-Responsible-Brands.aspx
Trendwaching.com’s ’11 Crucial Consumer Trends for 2011′ – trendwatching.com/briefing/
Patrick De Pelsmacker, Liesbeth Driesen, & Glenn Rayp’s ‘Do consumers care about ethics? Willingness to pay for fair-trade coffee’ – http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb3250/is_2_39/ai_n29239405/
How to Create a Brand’s Personality
The personality of a brand is how it connects emotionally with the consumer. Consumers choose different brands based on what values are associated with the brand, and what values they consider to be important. The personality of a brand is communicated in all ways that the consumer interacts with the company, and must be communicated clearly to employees so that it remains consistent.
A brand’s personality should be chosen based on its target audience. If the company is targeting teenagers, the personality should be causal and cool. If the target audience is parents, the personality should be reassuring and secure. This is because people want the brand to have values that are important to them, or that are important to their friends. People can use brands in public to show that they think the brand’s values are important, and associate themselves with other people that use the brand. By emulating the target audience’s important values, the brand will be able to make a secure emotional connection.
When a brand connects emotionally with its target audience, it inspires consumer loyalty because the consumer feels like they have some kind of relationship with the brand, and they work to preserve that relationship. If a brand treats people in a cold and detached way, then they will not feel obliged to continue buying the brand. However, if a brand treats people like they are friends, then they will want to continue with the brand because the brand will make them feel that it cares about them.
To make the consumers feel the brand cares about them, it must have an identifiable and concrete personality. It cannot be contradictory, because the brand’s personality must be like a person’s personality. A brand that is cheerful, friendly, and energetic gives the consumer a mental image of a person with those characteristics, while a brand that is interesting, calm, and energetic is not. That is because in the first brand, the characteristics go together, and are concrete. Consumers can look at a person and tell if they are cheerful, friendly, or energetic. The second brand is bad because ‘interesting’ is not identifiable, and ‘calm’ and ‘energetic’ are mutually exclusive – it is hard to imagine someone who is calm and energetic at the same time. Consumers will not work to imagine your brand as a person, you must make it obvious to them through advertising, packaging, and other interactions.
After the brand has a personality, companies must adapt the personality to changing trends in the target audience. The brand’s values must remain the same as the target audience’s values, and the brand’s personality must change to keep them engaged with it. If you can keep people emotionally engaged with your brand, they will be loyal to your brand and your company.
Resources:
Great Ideaz provides secure online collaboration workspaces where you can define and adapt your brand’s personality. To see how we can help you, visit greatideaz.com.
Barry Callen’s Manager’s Guide to Marketing, Advertising, and Publicity, Chapter 6 – http://cwlpub.com/images/Callen06.pdf
Melissa Davis’s The Fundamentals of Branding
