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How to make your small business brand 'cool'

By Piper Terrett | Yahoo! Finance UK – Mon, Sep 23, 2013 17:50 BST

Apple has topped an annual list of the ‘coolest brands’ in the UK,

with car maker Aston Martin making second place and luxury

watch brand Rolex third. Despite a subdued share price and

concerns from some quarters that its growth may be waning, the

tech giant made the top spot for the second year running.

Other well-established brands failed to maintain their 2012

position on the list, with Haagen-Dazs, Vogue and Ben & Jerry’s

slipping down the top 20, replaced by Chanel at 13, Prada at 14

and Alexander McQueen at 19. The CoolBrands list is voted for

by 3,000 shoppers and a panel of 38 ‘key influencers’, which this

year included Dragon’s Den star Kelly Hoppen, fashion designer

Julien MacDonald and actor David Harewood.

Of course, these major corporations can afford to invest heavily

in marketing their products to make them appeal to fashion

conscious consumers. So how can small businesses, often with

far fewer funds available, make their brands or products similarly

‘cool’ on a limited budget?

The language your firm uses to communicate with its customers,

whether on product packaging or your website is crucial, says

award-winning advertising copywriter, Victoria Crump, who has worked on many brands including

Adidas, Soap and Glory and Clearasil.

“It’s all about tone of voice,”she said. “Most businesses don’t want to be quirky as they’re worried

about alienating their audiences. But it’s about understanding what the customer wants and telling

them the benefits of their product without using jargon.

[How SMEs can stand out from the crowd]

“People think that jargon makes them look clever but it doesn’t. The way to be cool is to speak in

a really distinctive way. Apple is a tech brand so it could be saying things in a very complicated

way, but it says them in a simple way.

Victoria points to smoothies maker Innocent which has created significant buzz about the

humorous messages it uses in its packaging.

“Remember the cool kids at school,” she said. “They were happy to be themselves and maybe

even funny. Innocent, for example, has a sense of humour. Being cool is about being confident.

Innocent created that tone of voice themselves in-house [rather than paying an advertising firm to

come up with it] and everyone in the industry was really impressed.”

Small businesses should also beware of wasting their marketing budgets on expensive one-off

advertising or public relations campaigns, say London-based brand experience experts I-am

Associates.

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Associates.

“Putting all your budget in one great PR pot or spending out on an advertising campaign that isn’t

niche enough are some of the biggest mistakes SMEs can make,” says Mel Connell, Director of 'i-

am' Beyond, the firm’s experiential marketing arm.

[Don't be a shoddy business]

“SMEs need to think less about overarching brand awareness and more about generating brand

advocacy.”

Mel recommends that instead of building an community based around their brand, firms should

instead tap into existing communities or “influencer groups” to generate word of mouth interest in

their products, developing what she calls “advocacy soldiers” – individuals who will vouch for your

brand.

The firm, which works with Diageo as well as smaller companies, typically creates events around

client’s brands, such as pop up events and parties, to which it invites influential bloggers with the

aim of creating a ‘buzz’ about a product.

However, these events don’t have to be expensive, says Mel. “We’ve done lots of low cost guerilla

marketing events,” she said. “It could be at a music festival, it could be in the street, a flashmob,

projections onto something, etc. or even chalk spraying on the pavement,” she said.

To achieve ‘coolness’, it’s crucial to target the right audience, she says. “Gaining traction within a

target community is vital to gaining credibility,” Mel said.

Social media is another area which, while low cost, is where many firms – large or small – can

easily become unstuck. “There are a lot of brands trying to fabricate content online and a lot of

misconceptions about buying fans online,” said Mel.

“It’s important to sit and work out your online strategy before doing anything because you can’t

oversaturate. Oversaturation of your brand message can be off-putting [to consumers on Twitter,

etc.] and if you do so I can turn you off my filter.”

I-am also argues that small firms should concentrate on producing good quality content that is of

interest to their target audience and features the right ‘tone of voice’, rather than bombarding

users with sales messages.

[Why not crowd fund your business idea?]

Meanwhile, Iwoca, a small firm which provides funding to online sellers, which combines more

tradition direct marketing to clients with an online presence, reckons it’s possible for SMEs to

create a ‘cool’ brand on a small budget.

“You don’t need big budgets to do this,” says Tracy Waxman, the firm’s chief marketing officer

who previously worked at HSBC where her marketing spend was larger. “Surprise and delight

your customers. We used a ‘graze box’ [a box of snacks designed to fit through a mail box] as a

marketing tool around the theme ‘food for thought for your business’. That was a way to take a

marketing tool such as direct mail and make it interesting.”

She also recommends that companies put a friendly face to their brand name by organising

events and maintaining a dialogue with their customers.

“We have a blog and personal account managers for each of our customers,” she said. “Even as

a small business there are things you can do online that make you approachable and ‘cool’. Iwoca

holds presentations around the UK to help customers network, but instead of holding them in

hotels we hold them in bars. Small businesses can also get involved in their local communities.”

However, it’s not enough for your product simply to look ‘cool’ or for your company to have a ‘cool’

philosophy, your firm also has to walk the talk.

“Don’t just act cool, be cool in what you do,” said Tracy. “You can create a cool brand but you also

have to be cool. A lot of brands have a really good logo but it’s also about living up to your

philosophy and doing something different to other companies in your industry. Don’t just say but

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philosophy and doing something different to other companies in your industry. Don’t just say but

do.”

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