M>Pact | Fall 2003
Saturday, November 15th, 2003 | Archive.
As we are fast approaching Thanksgiving, all of us here at MCG would like to take this opportunity to thank all of our clients and vendors. Thank you so much for your business and hard work!
— MCG Staff
The “Right” Formula
Right Message + Right Time + Right People = More Business
Morris Creative Group LLC is a marketing, branding and corporate communications firm that works with companies that want to increase their business by delivering the right message at the right time to the right people.
We do this using the tools of graphic design, advertising, the Internet, radio, television, and multimedia. We do this by trying to listen more than we speak. We do this by establishing long-term partnerships friendships with those we have the privilege of serving.
Were translators, taking the intangible qualities of your business and packaging those in new ways so that people understand what youre about. We believe that ideas and knowledge are the most valuable commodities of the new economy and of the future. We understand how to articulate those ideas in unique ways to make a lasting impression on your target audience, amidst an increasingly cluttered sea of information.
The Right Formula has worked for others. We can make it work for you, too.
Measuring brand equity: its in the eye of the beholder
By Jaques Palin
It seems like brand equity still is in the eye of the beholder – especially if you look at how marketers try to measure it. Euclid would be proud to see how they have been trying to use geometry to try to quantify brand equity. Just leaf through various brand books and youll see brand triangles, quadrangles, cubes, hexagons and even a diagonal. Everything except a rhomboid, and Id bet its coming. All these devices are used to give tangibility to an inanimate object, no matter how you treat it.
Treating an inanimate object, like a brand, as a living thing is not all that unusual. Just look at how we treat the stock market. “The market felt a low today.” “The market is happy about the news of higher employment rates” etc. The question is, why do we do it? Well, it would be hard to explain and quantify branding without using analogies like those.
So are marketers right about brand equity? Most of them are, it would seem. It just depends on who you’re looking at. You will find a group at one end of the spectrum that believes that the customer decides whether a brand will last or not. This is a fairly widely held view in the industry. After all, customers give brands meaning in their minds. They’re the ones who “buy” brands in the end.
On the other end of the spectrum are the more financially-oriented individuals – like accountants – who say that the brand is formed by financials (dollars and cents), and that the brand is an asset to the organization. That is, the brand is the financial value an external entity would pay for ownership of whatever makes up the brand.
So there it is perception of brand equity comes down to feelings vs. dollars.
But in the end, whats most important is that your company measures its own brand equity. It can be from any perspective, be it attitudinal, financial, or any other. This will help you understand your firm and its customers before converting its special message into a look, tagline or logo that, over time, will activate the publics perception or value of the traits that best represent the brand.
Some web resources of interest
Both useful & fun
CreativeClass.org
Articles and books about the importance of the creative industry in today’s society.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0205.florida.html
The Greeking Machine
Makes flowing in copy simple and fun. Choose from Latin, Hillbilly, etc.
http://www.duckisland.com/GreekMachine.asp
Phonetic
Helpful for choosing a memorable toll-free number for your business.
http://www.phonetic.com/
New & noteworthy clients
Exciting stuff going on.
SiO2 LLC is a business development consulting group. Their name is based on the chemical formula for flint (silicon dioxide) with the concept being that they are “the spark to get business going.” MCG designed their logo and is now helping to develop their corporate branding and collateral materials.
Read Window Products Inc. is an area distributor of high-end window products, including the new “Cordless” blinds by Kirsch™. MCG developed an advertising campaign across television and printed media.
Quote of the month
“Business is like riding a bicycle. Either you keep moving or you fall down.”
— Frank Lloyd Wright
News bits
Things you should know
You’ve probably noticed the gate at the L&N Station. Do not fear the gate. Press 24 to phone us on the intercom and we’ll buzz you in. That’s all there is to it.
