I figured “designed”, but this question really stuck with me, and I’ll admit that I changed my answer after my initial reaction once I really began to think about it.

See, in design school, we are taught about iconic designers such as Paul Rand, Milton Glaser and especially Ivan Chermayeff & Tom Geismar. Their work (in specific cases) is thought to be iconic, and it really is. IBM, I Love New York and the NBC logos are perfect examples of what it means to be “iconic”. They are easily recognizable and more importantly—identifiable.

These logos, and many more, are so well designed. They are all simple, clever and unique. These are obviously the reasons they are iconic. I thought.

So many times in design school, and my early years of professional design (it will be two years in August), I wanted to design a logo or a wordmark that could stand up against Apple, Nike, McDonald’s and FedEx to name a few, but I wasn’t hitting the mark I wanted to hit, and I never understood why. My designs shared the same qualities as the “iconic” logos, but they never had that instant “pop” or emotional connection that the big brands all had.

That’s the key – big brands. And once I got to this conclusion, that’s when I changed my answer.

A logo doesn’t sell the product. It only identifies it. The (important word to follow) BRAND sells the product. But what is a brand? A brand is nothing more than a promise. It’s that emotional connection a consumer has with a company or product. It is what they come to expect. It is how they differentiate company from company and product from product.

The logo only identifies these connections, it doesn’t create them.

The brands, and subsequently, the logos succeed only because the product has stood the test of time. It is desirable to consumers because they have had, or know somebody who has (look at the designer talking about Social Media), a positive connection with the company or product. More positive connections = more sales = more $$ = bigger advertising spend.

The more I see the logo, the more recognizable it is and finally the more identifiable it becomes with the product or company.

So, with all that said, here’s a question of my own:

Assuming that iconic logos seem to be more the result of a big wallet, can a brand succeed in evoking emotion and making a connection without an identity? Can you fall in love with a faceless person if he or she is saying all the right things? I think we have a little “chicken or egg” conundrum here, and thoughts are welcome…

Cheers!

Kyle

On the flip side, someone has to pick up the tab; when paying for the free ‘swag’ companies often find it difficult to see the value in giving things away for free (rightfully so). In the past, we could only assume that our message would get out there to increase brand awareness and visibility. What if you were able to measure the number of impressions you gained to truly gauge the value of the campaign? With the addition of online forums, social venues and blogs, it’s now easier than ever to measure success and ROI even when you’re giving it away for free.

An insightful article from Event Marketer: “The ROI of Free” http://www.eventmarketer.com/article/roi-free, points out a few examples of companies who were able to get a tangible return from their “free campaign.”

You remember Denny’s Grand Slam give-away during the Super Bowl, right? Last year they gave away 2 million Grand Slam breakfasts in 8 hours, and in return they received “$50 million in news coverage, 47 million hits on their website and thousands of emails.” Little Debbie gave away one million cupcakes and in three weeks their fan base on Facebook grew from 5,000 to 50,000!

Before you just start handing stuff out, there are a couple things you need to do first:

• Define your overall goal of the campaign as well as what will make it a success
• Make sure the appropriate channels (website, social, etc.) are set up and monitor and track the numbers!

Now, anyone know of any good freebies out there? Post them in comments!

jill

Global Brand – We are trying to understand how we can leverage your platform to create a consistent brand experience for our customers. How can we do this?

FB – Well we have a lot of great ideas cooking around unique brand experiences and here is an agency that we are working with who can help you create one.

Global Brand – Okay.. Agency, we’re not so much interested in creative however we are interested in designing a system that enables us to easily publish content across a myriad of markets in multiple languages. Have you done this before?

Agency – Well, we have a content publishing tool that we designed that enables us to “work around” the FB system design however we have never done this for more than 8 markets or have any language translation capabilities…

Me – FB / Agency, can you elaborate on your long range tech plans for addressing the issues around multiple countries and multiple languages?

Agency – We design future functionality around what our customers ask for (my interpretation – we don’t have any plans to develop a translation engine until we have a customer that wants one)…

FB – Our goal is to create a compelling user experience for the end user and we have developed an advertising model that enables you to “micro-target” consumers. The architecture and design work is being left up to our agencies…

Agency – Yes, this is where we come in…

Global Brand – Agency, do you have experience integrated your platform with our social media platforms (i.e. Orkut, Bebo…) or across YouTube and Twitter…

Agency – Yes we have worked with Twitter and can integrate this into the content publishing tool. No to the rest….

As I’m sure we can all agree, Facebook is an extremely compelling playground for brands. With over 300MM users spanning the globe it’s clear that it is not only the dominant player in the space but that it isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

This area is truly still a “white canvas” for Brands willing to take a risk and do something unique. With that being said, there are only a handful of agencies out there that have experience with it. When looking to evaluate an agency to launch your Facebook social strategy, make sure to consider the following questions.

1. How many brands have you launched FB initiatives with?

2. Do you currently have IP in the space? If so, what makes your IP (and solution) unqiue and compelling?

3. What experience do you have working across multiple Geos and multiple languages?

4. Do you have a content generation platform? If YES

5. Does your platform manage multiple permissions from multiple administrators?

6. Can it flag in-appropriate content?

7. What experience does your team have with cross integration of other US based and overseas based platforms?

8. Can you show me a functioning application that is more than a “hot link” to an outside URL?

9. Can you provide reporting and trends analysis beyond fan, friend, and links growth? How should my growth compare to other companies/competitors in my industry? What are the benchmarks?

10. Do you have a direct relationship with the social media platform? How is your development team structured?

11. After you install my solution, how much additional customization and support will be required for me to activate a campaign?

12. What business model are you working off of? If this is a license deal, what value is your technology providing me?

13. Can I get the same functionality through a free platform or another provider?

14. What makes your solution truly unique?

15. Who are your competitors?

Global Brands, like those before you who have charted new territory, have perseverance and patience.  Vet your agency partners carefully as you embark on creating a consistent brand experience across borders and languages.

Brian