Brand Management

Guest post by Dwight Santana (@slayerkun)

If you havent heard of Lady Gaga by now, you are living under a rock. This pop-star in the last Year has escalated into being one of the music industry’s most important celebrities. From the eyes of manyLady Gaga has exceeded their expectations.

Her first album, The Fame, is the best-selling debut album of 2009. Her single Just Dance has been viewed 87 million times on YouTube. Gaga’s tracks have clocked 20 million downloads this year. Poker Face, is the most downloaded track in the history of U.K. digital music.

With that stated, I’m no interested in giving you Lady Gaga’s background, I want to define what a “Monster” in Marketing she is.

After seeing footage and analyzing many of the stunts she gets away with, its necesary to remark that Lady Gaga directs and envisions every step of her life and career, before it is executed. Her understanding of marketing integrates well with her form of doing things making her effective in social media channels . A good example is the dress she used for the 2010 VMA Awards the infamous meat dress, she might have made it look conservative , but in reality she was literally wearing a meat dress. The meat dress became a #trending Topic online and generated a lot of buzz.

We also see why in 2010, 11,500 mainstream media articles mentioned her. This is impresive considering that she is still consider a new artist to many.

Her marketing is fueled by her fans, which have decided to fall in line with what she represents. Her fans or “Little Monsters” are responsible for carrying her brand. Last year in november Gaga posted a link to one of her own videos on fashion icon Alexander McQueen’s Web site.After a single tweet by Gaga, her rabid fans streamed in and crashed the site’s servers. Not many brands can acquire this influence over it’s fans in such a short period of time. Lady Gaga has manage to prove other that it can be done.

Her maketing translates into pure harvested loyalty, a few examples of how she does this are:

a) Give fans a name. Gaga actually doesn’t like the word fan so she calls them “little monsters” after her debut album “The Fame Monster” this way fans have a way to relate to each other, and feel special, like joining an exclusive club.

b) Making it something bigger than herself. Last year during a Tour, in the middle of a concert she stopped everything and recited a “Manifesto of Little Monsters” many of the fans see this as a dedication getting the point across that she is there because of them.

c) Establishing a connection. She connects with her “Little Monsters” with a signature stretch out “monster hand claw” its also the Little Monsters greeting.

d) She puts the spotlight on her fans making them feel like rock stars, one of the things she does on tour is to call a fan in the audience during the show, the fan screams out then cameras focus on him, and after being on the big screen, she invites him to have a drink after the show.

e) Social Media Influence , right now Gaga has around 7.5 million followers on her Twitter account and countless more on her requisite Facebook Page. She shares her personal life and connects with her fans, she tweeted before opening the Grammy Awards. She has also tweeted to her fans , about buying them pizza, for staying all night at line waiting for an alum signing.

These things show a good understanding in marketing. One great example is how she does not allow professional photographers to her concerts, but her fans are allow to capture pictures, and video so they can later upload via youtube. In my opinion that is just brilliant.

For the moment Gaga’s staying power is yet to be seen. But she is making a Tsunami in the music business, and showing a few the power of fandom, and how to sculpt a successful brand.

What other brands can we compare to Lady Gaga?

What can you do to get closer to your clients or fan base that would be unique to them?

Guest post by Dwight Santana (@slayerkun)

Many people think that a logo might not be that crucial for their, brand, individual, company, institution, or product. Are these people right?

Historically people have been using logos to brand their work. So is no coincidence they use logos to associate whatever they were “promoting”.

Right now we use logos with the same purpose we did before. The logo always has a direct relation with the concept of the brand and it’s promise. We use logos so we can communicate a message, so we can achieve an interpretation from the spectator.

Jörg Zintzmeyer affirms in his book “Logo Design” that:

“…the logo is a promise. The logo is not a brand in it self, it’s a form of expression of the brand or a condense image of the brand… The brand must offer what the logo promises…”

These are strong words but is exactly what you want to have in mind when you’re designing a logo. Because you should start working on a logo after you have outline all aspects of the business, product, or the individual you’re trying to represent. It’s not always a good choice to design a logo first if you don’t know what you are going to represent.

The most important feature of a logo, is recognition. This makes the logo a mnemonic device. A mnemonic device is a learning technique that helps memory. Usually it is use so people can remember easily a data that is to be remembered, or remembered the source from were the device came. i.e. The logo.

E.g. (insert de Mcdonal’s M) when you see it from a far you know, or at least your brains knows, that near that “M” there’s a place were you eat.

That example is the perfect representation of how a logo impacts those who perceive it, and why is important. The logo is the image representing an organization. This concept is represented with the example above, we imidiatly distinguish this example and recognize what it symbolizes. It is, ok, to take time a develop a good logo, because one thing we want to avoid is changing the logo frequently, if were to do that is gonna be counterproductive with what we want to achieve.

When designing a logo, you can take a lot into consideration, deciding what fits your logo needs, it’s hard work. Like I have said it is important that you reflect what your selling thru your logo. The logo is the vehicle of communication on the real world.

There are a lot of concepts and tips regarding construction and design, for the most part, for now, the most important thing when working with your logo is to remember some basic design principles:

The logo must be legible (at any size)
The logo must be scalable
The logo must be able to be reproduce in any material
The logo must be distinguishable (in any color)
THE LOGO MUST BE MEMORABLE

This process usually doesn’t happen imidiatly it takes time, and a lot of analyzing. Like building anything we could have 40 drafts, and after a process try and error we find one that fits, and decide on using that one.

Also one good last recommendation might be that we shouldn’t rush into deciding in a logo on the fly, take time analyze it, verify it and make sure it really represent the message your trying to deliver and if represents what you want to sell. But be sure it is what you want, you don’t want to be changing logos every time, as I said before changing it a lot is bad and it will ruin the purpose of a logo.

There’s a whole lot to cover in the logo subject but I’ll be addressing them as I develop each area.