Posted by Kris Colvin | Sep 21st, 2009

How to Wreck Your Brand in a Single Weekend

I witnessed a train wreck this weekend. Not a physical one, but an online version involving a social media company, a respected business consultant, an advice video, blog comments and a Twitter battle that led to harassment via direct messages and support tickets being filed. I don’t want to call out the particular players in this incident and add fuel to the fire, but I do want to talk about this because the...

Posted by Kris Colvin | Apr 21st, 2009

Are You Getting To the Heart of Your Brand?

Two well-known brand strategists engaged in a conversation on Twitter yesterday that caught my attention. Olivier Blanchard, The BrandBuilder and Gabriel Rossi were discussing some of the problems companies have, in their opinion, with marketing and branding. Gabriel said “People who criticize Marketing & Branding need to learn to see the value of brands as a powerful socio-economic force“,...

Posted by Kris Colvin | Sep 28th, 2008

Promotion for Users… How Handbag Planet Hooked Me Without a Site

I was blessed to get a simple link today on Twitter asking if I wanted to win a free handbag from Handbag Planet. Being the clothes and accessory horse that I am, the answer was naturally yes, but what I am now excited about is the approach they are using to launch their site. A true pro must be behind this, because it is the most well-done launch I can remember seeing in a long time. It made me think of the...

Posted by Kris Colvin | Sep 8th, 2008

How to Launch a Product 101 (for Tech Startups)

The focus was thrown onto the tech startups attending DEMOfall08 and TC50 this past weekend because of a post Robert Scoble wrote that pointed out many marketing weaknesses of the startup sites he visited. I have already added my comments to the fray about the problems he found, and now I’m going to address what you can specifically do, if you’re new to the aspects of the business that involve launching...

Posted by Kris Colvin | Sep 6th, 2008

Do Tech Startups Know How To Launch Products?

Robert Scoble, outspoken but respected geek extraordinaire, is talking about the startups launching new products at Demo this weekend and has touched on a subject near and dear to my heart, which is the promotion and marketing of a tech product and company. He has visited the Demo finalists sites, and made the unpleasant-to-hear proclamation that they suck. As a person entrenched in the tech industry and Managing...

Posted by Kris Colvin | Jul 15th, 2008

Web 2.0 is not a Brand

I can’t say definitively what Web 2.0 is, in fact, experts often disagree about the precise meaning of this ubiquitous term, including Tim O’Reilly, the man who coined it in 2004. O’Reilly’s latest definition of the term seems to be this: Web 2.0 is a transformative force that’s propelling companies across all industries towards a new way of doing business characterized by harnessing...

Posted by Kris Colvin | Jul 1st, 2008

The Universal Experience: A Roadmap for Brands, Users & Customers

At least three distinct, but related components must work together to create a great user experience… the “brand experience” and the “customer experience” are phrases that may be less used than the term “user experience” but they are indelibly intertwined and must be designed together. A user experience specialist must therefore be able to look at the universal experience...

Posted by Kris Colvin | Jun 12th, 2008

Branding Yourself in Small Spaces

I recently had the opportunity to get together with a brilliant woman named Barbara Ballard, who specializes in mobile application design… in fact, she wrote the book on it! As someone who wants to break into this field, the gears in my brain couldn’t help turning as we looked at some real live apps on several of her different devices and discussed the ramifications of designing for these small...

Posted by Kris Colvin | May 22nd, 2008

Can a company “own” a color?

Having been a brand designer for many years, I have gone to great lengths at time to differentiate or do something unique so that a brand will be noticed in the busy world of imagery we are daily bombarded with. But this time, I think a company has gone too far. Duetsche Telekom, who own the worldwide T-Mobile brand, have told a blog site called Engadget Mobile that they must stop using the color magenta, because...

Posted by Kris Colvin | May 22nd, 2008

Can a company “own” a color?

Having been a brand designer for many years, I have gone to great lengths at time to differentiate or do something unique so that a brand will be noticed in the busy world of imagery we are daily bombarded with. But this time, I think a company has gone too far. Duetsche Telekom, who own the worldwide T-Mobile brand, have told a blog site called Engadget Mobile that they must stop using the color magenta, because...