Creating the Visible Brand in a multi-channel world — web, retail, print and electronic media. We send these brand "bites" monthly to give you insights and tips on building value, uniqueness and loyalty for your brand. Your brand's critical differentiation helps your customers find you, remember you and come back to you.

In this issue:

1. Sensory Branding: Smell and Sound Become the Brand: Brands are connecting to customers in surprising ways, according to the Economist Magazine.


2. The Value of Customer Touchpoints: A powerful extension of the brand that builds and sustains the customer/company relationship.


3. BGDi: Brands at Work: The Clean River Foundation — An Identity and Campaigns to keep the LA River clean.

SENSORY BRANDING: Are you smelling or hearing your favorite brand?

The experience we have with familiar brands is typically a visual one — the logo, the store look and feel, the experience of the packaging. All these reference points affirm that this is "the brand" I know and trust. Now, these familiar touchpoints are expanding into a broader range of references and recognition points in the realms of smell and sound.

We're now all familiar with the little sound signature of the Inside Intel ad campaigns that ran more than 10 years ago. It became a familiar "reminder" of the cool little chip that might make this PC better than others. Most of us never saw the chip, only the logo on the PC, and we always heard the sound signature at the end of every radio or tv spot featuring a PC brand with the Intel processor inside it.

"Brand sound consultants", such as Muzak (once known for "elevator music"), are now creating sounds for Old Navy, Ghirardelli Chocolate and others to deliver a branded sound experience. On its website Musak claims "Musak translates your brand into a language that speaks to the heart". The power of branding must now speak to touchpoints the consumer experiences internally and references as having meaning attached to the products they love.

According to the Economist Magazine this auditory awareness has expanded to whole sound environments that create associations for consumers, environments that say it's okay to shop or this is a good place to spend time in as you shop. A shopping mall at the Glasgow airport in Scotland specifically shaped its sound environment around natural, slow moving sounds and found a distinct increase in sales of up to 10% for many shops.

Many brands are also using familiar smells that say "this is the right place for me." Perfumes and food scents are becoming trademarks of specific store environments. And some brands are developing unique smells just for their brands. A company called ScentAir focuses on developing specific "branded" scents for its clients.

Really "branding" a brand in the senses — having it stand out through memorable sensory experiences — has gone to whole new levels and will only become more refined over the years. The only question I have: how do you do this on the web with an e-commerce shopping experience? We'll have to wait and see.

THE INCREDIBLE VALUE OF "TOUCHPONTS"

Delivering the Brand Promise is about shaping customer experience through EVERY contact. Good ads, packaging, a typeface, words, sounds, phone conversations — they all become the "reinforcing" components that build the brand experience. Just seeing that beach or palm tree, you wonder, Is that for Corona? The phone call to your cell phone provider, the format and the words used in the bill you get with the Visa logo on it, simple packaging colors such as the orange circles for Tide, how you are treated by service representatives — these are all touchpoints that reinforce and build the experience of the brand.

We are all looking for information that will allow us to define the value and relevance of a brand to us. Every touchpoint with the customer is an opportunity to build and reinforce their experience.

The Power of Integrated Marketing in Connecting the Customer Experience
The faster and more intuitive these touchpoints are, the more connected we feel. The successful brand has the power to give us an experience and then reinforce our connection to that experience. This is where a well-developed integrated marketing campaign can excel — connecting with customers over time and in different media/venues to build their experience of the brand.

Here are some key areas you can build into a powerful integrated branding/marketing effort:

1. DEFINE THE ESSENCE OF YOUR BRAND EXPERIENCE — NO MORE THAN 10 KEY POINTS
2. GIVE THE CUSTOMER MULTIPLE EXPERIENCES OF THE BRAND
3. FOCUS ON THREE SIMPLE BRAND ELEMENTS THAT REFLECT YOUR UNIQUENESS
4. CONSISTENTLY REPEAT THE BRAND'S SIGNATURE — COLOR, TYPE AND MESSAGE
5. USE SENSORY EXPERIENCES THAT REMIND THE CUSTOMER WHO YOU ARE
6. STRUCTURE ALL MEDIA INTERACTIONS — WEB, PRINT, PHONE — WITH THE SAME POSITIVE BRAND EXPERIENCE, THE SAME REWARD FOR THE CUSTOMER
7. BUILD CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS AROUND PERSONALIZATION

BGDi: BRANDS AT WORK

An Identity and Campaigns for the Clean River Foundation
BGDi worked closely with public relations agency Manning Selvage & Lee to develop a new identity and branded informational materials for the Clean River Foundation, which is focused on keeping the watercourses of the immense Los Angeles basin clean and free of trash such as plastic shopping bags, and other pollutants. It's the largest foundation of its kind and its goal is to coordinate other non-profit organizations in ongoing cleanup and restoration efforts. This work is being coordinated with 2 city-wide recycling and anti-trash campaigns, also branded and designed by BGDi and sponsored by this foundation and the City of Los Angeles.