AW in Review - Addison Whitney Brand Salsa Recap 3.24.17
Welcome to our almost-Halloween edition of the AW in Review, our roundup of our latest brand salsa and Addison Whitney news and posts!
Don’t forget, you can stay up-to-date with everything from Addison Whitney by joining the conversation with us on our social media channels – Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+.
How Do You Know If You’ve Achieved True Brand Loyalty?
True brand loyalty supersedes these traditional purchase drivers, revealing itself as a force upon the consumer to which typical purchase-driving factors do not apply.
How can you really know if you’ve achieved brand loyalty? Here are three indicators. Read More...
March Madness: When Even The Floor Is Branded
There’s one branded element that may hold the title as the most watched and most overlooked branding of the entire event – the actual floors on which the games are played.
Yes, March Madness branding is so all-encompassing that even the very playing surfaces are incorporated into the overall brand profile and given a high level of attention to ensure they are both brand compliant but also provide their own unique addition to the visual branding. Read More...
The Key To Ensuring Smooth Sailing When Creating Your Brand
There you are. Right in the middle of building your brand, and things couldn’t be going any better. It’s been smooth sailing the whole time – you have created a name that you love, your visual brand development process has produced logos, color palates and collateral that are aesthetically appealing and have you sure they are on the fast track to iconic status.
But don’t start printing the “best new brand” certificates quite yet. Read More...
AW in Review - Addison Whitney Brand Salsa Recap 10.21.16
Welcome to our almost-Halloween edition of the AW in Review, our roundup of our latest brand salsa and Addison Whitney news and posts!
Don’t forget, you can stay up-to-date with everything from Addison Whitney by joining the conversation with us on our social media channels – Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+.
Why You Should Keep The Focus In Your Brand Development
When it comes to brand building, this constant starting over and relying on chance-based efforts take up time and money, two crucial components to successfully build and create a brand.
On the contrary, a focused, targeted and well-strategized brand building campaign will yield results at a much higher rate, and will provide the necessary data of what works and what doesn’t works to help build the road map moving forward. Read More...
Age Is Just A Number: 5 Ways Established Brands Can Stay Young
There are few things worse for a company’s image than to be seen as one that believes they can connect with today’s consumers, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
So how do you ensure that your brand takes the right path to stay relevant and modern? Here are five ways that established brands can prove that age is just a number. Read More...
The Big Transition: What To Do With Your Brand Following A Merger Or Acquisition
Far too often a brand strategy is overlooked in the M&A process, or brought to the table too late to have an impact in anything except final implementation. Whenever it happens, it is important to develop a communication plan that addresses both internal and external audiences.
This plan should break down the individual audiences in detail and outline what they should know and when, including the appropriate verbal and visual brand implementation for each instance. Read More...
Iconic Logo Timeline Shows There’s No One Way To Evolve
Logo evolution is a natural part of the branding process. In fact, the evolution of the overall brand is common, and often necessary, in order to keep up with the latest advancements in the marketplace and ever-changing consumer mindset.
But how a logo “should” evolve is still up for debate. Read More...
How To Use Brand Positioning To Start Your Brand Development
That is why creating a strong positioning statement is such an important starting point.
It will lay out some of the key aspects of the brand building process, pointing out the end goal, the basic characteristics or big idea, and some of the steps to get the brand to the top. Read More...
AW in Review - Addison Whitney Brand Salsa Recap 9.23.16
Welcome to our fall-is-finally-here edition of the AW in Review, our roundup of our latest brand salsa and Addison Whitney news and posts!
Don’t forget, you can stay up-to-date with everything from Addison Whitney by joining the conversation with us on our social media channels – Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+.
Function Or Feeling – How Will You Position Your Brand?
Successful brands have purpose. They have pre-determined areas of differentiation and a target audience. They have a brand position. With this sense of direction, they can focus their branding efforts in the same direction, allowing for the full effectiveness to shine through.
When creating your positioning strategy, there are two main aspects to use as starting points – function or feeling. But which one’s right for your brand? Read More...
Brand Loyalty – How Easy Is It To Achieve?
We all value loyalty – it’s one of the main reasons people get dogs as pets. It’s also why brand loyalty is such a prized accomplishment when brand building.
Fear not, brand creators. Achieving brand loyalty can be done. The first step is to believe that it can be done, and be done with the brand you will have – take the aforementioned reasons for dismissing and take them out of the equation. Read More...
When Less Is More In Logo Design And Visual Branding
As brands and logos have evolved over the last several years, it’s become evident that simplicity and minimalistic design is a key new direction for modern brand marketing.
Even the most iconic brands and logos are following the mindset of “less is more” when it comes to their designs. From less detailed images to geometrically-inspired outlines, brands are embracing a clutter less existence. Read More...
Brand Engagement In An Ever-Connected Marketplace
In the not-so-distant past, brand engagement was, like most media and advertising efforts, easily calculated, tracked and controlled. This is no longer the case.
Today, brands are faced with both the ease and the issues that come with online brand engagement opportunities, where measurement is tracked via software programs and engagement rates are dependent on the consumer. Read More...
AW in Review - Addison Whitney Brand Salsa Recap 9.9.16
Welcome to our initial September edition of the AW in Review, our roundup of our latest brand salsa and Addison Whitney news and posts!
Don’t forget, you can stay up-to-date with everything from Addison Whitney by joining the conversation with us on our social media channels – Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+.
A Cup Of Sugar And Branding Advice – Two Things You Can Get From Your Neighborhood
What if I told you that organizations and products across the marketplace could take branding advice from a collection of neighborhoods in Nashville?
In line with a recent trend in demographic identity, the residents are beginning to attach their neighborhood with their own personal brand. In doing so, they have hit a sweet spot in branding, achieving two foundational achievements in building a successful brand. Read More...
Patience Is A (Branding) Virtue
Simply put, brand development is a practice in patience and the ability to stay the course. When creating a brand, especially during the strategic development phase, the end goal may seem a million miles away.
Along those lines, there may be some bumps in the road on the way to success, which will undoubtedly cause some to begin wondering if and when the strategy should be abandoned. Read More...
How To Build Your Brand Portfolio Using A Flagship Brand Strategy
Some organizations are making a strategic brand decision to use elements of a flagship brand as “boosters” for its complementary branding.
For many brand portfolios, this strategy is a far-off dream, only available if and when their main brand achieves a level of notoriety and positive brand connotation where it can be enabled to carry over into the space of additional brands. So how can those without a global icon at the helm of the brand ship take advantage of whatever boost may come from its main brand? Read More...
Finding The Connection: How A Brand Name Can Help Tie Your Brand Together
Congratulations, you’re a parent! Bringing to life a pristine new entity created from scratch, it’s your brand. And like all things birthed into magnificence and destined to prosper, it needs a name.
But when namer’s block kicks in and you are staring at a trash can full of crumpled wads of fizzled ideas, it’s probably because you’re brainstorming too broadly. Read More...
AW in Review - Addison Whitney Brand Salsa Recap 5.13.16
Welcome to our initial May edition of the AW in Review, our roundup of our latest brand salsa and Addison Whitney news and posts!
Don’t forget, you can stay up-to-date with everything from Addison Whitney by joining the conversation with us on our social media channels – Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+.
Stick With What You Know: How To Achieve A Successful Brand Extension
When looking to expand a brand’s influence by introducing new products in different product categories, brand extensions can be a risky move.
It’s been said before on this very blog that when it comes to brand decisions, there’s no need to recreate the wheel. Sometimes, the brand extension that makes the most sense, or the one that comes to mind first, is there for a reason – it’s the best choice. Read More...
5 Ways To Begin Your Branding Before You Begin Your Branding
Sometimes, the work done prior to the project is just as important as the work done during. This same idea is in play during the branding process.
Jumping right into a new brand development or a rebrand is akin to jumping in a pool before finding out how deep it is. Those brands who begin their branding journey by following these five steps ensure they’re starting off on the right foot. Read More...
Looking Toward The Branding Future With An Eye On The Past
It’s a common misconception that a “rebrand” automatically means a brand new start – that when a rebrand occurs, the slate must be wiped clean and all subsequent branding elements must possess totally original characteristics.
In fact, the best rebrands take the opposite approach. They take the time beforehand to identify and research what brand aspects of the previous iteration carry the most weight and provide the most benefit, then find ways to incorporate or pay homage to these aspects in the new brand. Read More...
AW in Review - Addison Whitney Brand Salsa Recap 4.15.16
Welcome to a kick-off to April edition of the AW in Review! This is our roundup of our latest brand salsa and Addison Whitney news and posts!
Don’t forget, you can stay up-to-date with everything from Addison Whitney by joining the conversation with us on our social media channels – Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+.
The Importance Of Branding On A Community
Institutions in which the branding includes a place name often include this perspective in their branding efforts. Communities are built on commonality, and place-focused brands provide that on 
a large scale.
The most prominent examples of these are sports franchises, where the name is front and center and which serve as a uniting force for their home bases.
Consideration should exist across the brand portfolio, starting with the name. Although it can seem a minor part of the process, choosing which specific city, state, town or region to use in the brand name can have far-reaching impacts. Read More...
The Masters: A Brand Unlike Any Other
The calendar has turned to April, and (for some of us) spring has arrived. In the sports world, this is the time when all eyes are turned to Augusta, Georgia for the annual rite of spring and one of 
the most famous sporting events in the world: the Masters.
In the immortal (and trademarked) words of longtime broadcaster Jim Nance, the tournament is “A tradition unlike any other.” From a branding standpoint, this holds true as well. The Masters’ brand strength is the foundation of much of its notoriety and prestige.
It’s one of the entities that transcends the sports world and is known across the spectrum of golf fans, from the dedicated spectators who spend thousands of dollars and countless hours to witness it live to those who wouldn’t know a birdie from a driver. Read More...
Keeping The “Brand” In “Brand Name”
“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”
Wise words that touch on so many topics, and while it’s unclear whether Aristotle had brand name development and brand strategy on his mind when he uttered this well-known refrain, he definitely struck gold on a key point in a brand’s lifecycle.
Creating a brand name is an integral part of any branding effort, since the end result will become one of the most visible and widely used aspects of a brand. But its place of importance should not lead to a misguided sense of separation in the development process, where the name is created in a vacuum, far removed from the various brand elements that will surround and support it. Read More...
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AW in Review - Addison Whitney Brand Salsa Recap 4.1.16
Welcome to a kick-off to April edition of the AW in Review! This is our roundup of our latest brand salsa and Addison Whitney news and posts!
Don’t forget, you can stay up-to-date with everything from Addison Whitney by joining the conversation with us on our social media channels – Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+.
Branding Cinderella - How March Madness Success Grows Small School Brands
For smaller universities and colleges, national exposure comes along very rarely (if ever), often as an invite into the exposure behemoth that is March Madness. This inclusion provides a seat at the table and in the tens millions of brackets printed, researched, debated, analyzed, filled out and monitored by people around the world.
What better time to build your brand, especially if you are in the middle of a major rebrand and are looking to push your new name/logo forward into mainstream use? Read More...
Live Long And Prosper: The Secret To Brand Longevity
Everyone wants a brand that will live on for many years, basking in long-lasting success. But few brands actually reach old age, and those that do definitely have something going for them.
Enduring and successful brands have long-ago identified how they can differentiate themselves from the competition, and put that quality (or qualities) as the centerpiece of their branding. Read More...
5 Ways To Ease Social Media Branding Worries
The question whether or not to have a presence on at least one social media platform has become an easy one for brands – without any social media existence, a brand will be left out of one of the fastest-growing and increasingly vital aspect of a branding experience.
But now that it’s rightfully assumed that your brand will be a player in the social space, it’s also rightfully assumed there will be some trepidation. Here are five key points to include in your plan to help ease the worries when taking your brand into the social media realm. Read More...
How Important Is An Easily Pronounced Brand Name? [Infographic]
We all know them. The brands where the name has sounded one way as long as you can remember until one day, you are blindsided by the suggestion of a different pronunciation of the same brand. In this infographic from Made by Oomph! examines some of these famous brand names who wear the mark of commonly mispronounced.
Whether it be the incorrect dropping of a vowel or the addition of an extra syllable, these brands have been fighting the pronunciation battle for years, which varying levels of success. Read More...
Why Successfully Building A Brand Starts With Shutting Out The Noise
There are many aspects that go into developing and establishing a successful brand. But they really have nothing to do with it. That may sound confusing and close to oxymoronic, but it’s true.
One of the best moves a brand-building organization can take is to forget all of the substance that goes into building a brand. Once the auxiliary noise is quieted, then finding the perfect note to start the song becomes significantly easier. Read More...
AW in Review - Addison Whitney Brand Salsa Recap 3.4.16
Welcome to the first March edition of the AW in Review! This is our roundup of our latest brand salsa and Addison Whitney news and posts!
Don’t forget, you can stay up-to-date with everything from Addison Whitney by joining the conversation with us on our social media channels – Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+.
3 Ways Building a Brand is Like Working with Legos (Plus 1 Way it’s Not)
One of Lego's most appealing characteristics is the ability it gives users to flex their creative and engineering muscles, creating something out of nothing and ending up with a finished product they
can be proud of.
Building a brand can produce the same sense of accomplishment as placing the final brick on that perfect Lego creation, and the creation processes included in both are very similar. Here are three ways brand building and brand strategy creation are like working with Legos, plus one important difference. Read More...
Why You Should Never Close the Story on Your Brand
"A great brand is a story that's never completely told." – Scott Bedbury
Adaptability. It’s a word that has been used on this very blog to describe how logo design needs to include versatile elements to adapt to a digitally-focused media world, but the same concept can (and should) be tied back to the entirety of a brand. A great brand is one who never really reaches the end of their story – they are an ongoing manuscript, adding new pages as the world around them moves forward. Read More...
Getting the Thumbs Up: The Importance of Audience Buy-In for Your Brand
The immense amount of background behind a perfect brand strategy and brand implementation must be pared down into bite-sized pieces for consumption, with the hope that these “brand nuggets” will tell the brand story in a way that the audience buys into your brand as a whole. What you say doesn’t have any impact unless it aligns with how it makes your audience feel.
But how is this done? Well, the entire process doesn’t lend itself too well for a blog post, but here are three main guidelines to keep in mind when creating a brand that correctly speaks and connects with your audience. Read More...
Addison Whitney is a global branding firm with a passion for building strong brands.
To learn more about Addison Whitney, visit our website at AddisonWhitney.com, or contact us here.
AW in Review - Addison Whitney Brand Salsa Recap 2.19.16
Welcome to the first February edition of the AW in Review! This is our roundup of our latest brand salsa and Addison Whitney news and posts!
Don’t forget, you can stay up-to-date with everything from Addison Whitney by joining the conversation with us on our social media channels – Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+.
7 Tips for Making Your Logo the Crown Jewel of Your Brand
As the saying goes, you never get a second chance to make a first impression. For brands, that first impression often comes when the audience initially sees its logo. Without a strong visual brand 
representation, any following movement toward branding success can be doomed to be an uphill climb.
So to help nail down a successful first impression, here are 7 tips to ensuring that your logo lives up to its place as the crown jewel of your brand’s image. Read More...
Addison Whitney Brand Fanatics Recap and Analyze Brand Impacts from Super Bowl Ads
The Super Bowl. Not only the biggest football game of the year, it’s also the biggest game in the advertising world. Many millions of dollars are spent on the annual event, which puts even more pressure on the created ads to push the needle for their brands.
And with a night full of high-profile brand decisions, we knew that time needed to be spent analyzing the commercials and the brands behind them – so on the Monday following the big game, our Addison Whitney brand fanatics gathered to do just that. Read More...
Long Term vs. Short Term Benefits of Rebranding
If the current visual brand is holding a company back from reaching its full potential, introducing a new direction (and absorbing the initial financial cost that comes with it) may be well worth it.
Regardless of the brand, consistency across the board is a vital component. Without it, much like the current state of highway signs, you may find yourself neither here nor there. Read More...
How to Keep Your Brand Update from Falling Short
A brand refresh or a complete rebrand are events in an organization’s life cycle that call for big investments and big planning, as they can shape an entire brand for many years to come. The real purpose of a brand refresh or rebrand can get lost without a strong change factor to back it up.
Your new brand elements and your brand story must align, or else it can seem like your big brand announcement is much ado about nothing. Read More...
Addison Whitney is a global branding firm with a passion for building strong brands.
To learn more about Addison Whitney, visit our website at AddisonWhitney.com, or contact us here.
AW in Review – Addison Whitney Brand Salsa Recap 1.15.16
Welcome to the first “AW in Review“ of 2016! This is our roundup of our latest brand salsa and Addison Whitney news and posts!
Don’t forget, you can stay up-to-date with everything from Addison Whitney by joining the conversation with us on our social media channels – Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+.
Welcome to Brands We Love Week 2015!
Welcome to the second edition of Brands We Love Week! All week, we will be revealing what brands our resident brand fanatics thought stood out this year.
Whether it was because of something they did, or a great experience they had with a brand, Brands We Love Week is a chance to tell our favorite brand stories! Read More...
Can New Visual Branding Strategies Make McDonald’s a “Modern, Progressive Burger Company”?
“Modern” and “progressive” may not be the first words you would associate with fast food titan McDonald’s, but company leadership is working to change that. Enter the latest packaging revamp, which will roll out during the course of 2016 and is intended to work hand-in-hand with restaurant design, digital marketing and other brand conduits to establish McDonald’s as “a modern, progressive burger company,” as CEO Steve Easterbrook described it.
Specifically, the new packaging introduces a bright, vibrant secondary color palette to pair with the traditional red and gold so closely associated with McDonald’s, in addition to simplifying and de-cluttering the overall look of the various bags, cups and containers. Read More...
Addison Whitney Volunteers with Operation Christmas Child 2015
Members of the Addison Whitney Charlotte office, as a part of the “AW Helping Hands” philanthropy efforts, volunteered their time with Operation Christmas Child, helping sort, inspect, pack and ship thousands of shoe boxes filled with toys and gifts for children in need around the world.
Their efforts helped Operation Christmas Child move closer to their goal of sending out 2.4 million shoe boxes from just the Charlotte center alone, and made a dent in the 11.2 million shoe boxes that will be shipped from around the world, with processing centers across the United States and Canada, in addition to locations in Europe and Australia. The boxes packed by the AW teams were then sent to children in Ghana, the Bahamas and Haiti. Read More...
Addison Whitney is a global branding firm with a passion for building strong brands.
To learn more about Addison Whitney, visit our website at AddisonWhitney.com, or contact us here.