branding

Running a business is no easy task. On any given day, you’ve got a hundred things to manage. And yet, in order to keep your business successful and growing, you always need to bring in new business, new sales and new orders.

Earlier this year, we posted about trade show giveaways and the need to strike the right note with audiences. For example, if you are a business exhibiting at a trade show some place where the sun shines year round, like Miami or Albuquerque, don’t pack the logoed ice scrapers and winter items for the show. That’s just common sense marketing.
 

Fairly or unfairly, insurance agents get typecast by the public and by the media, sometimes to hilarious effect. If you’ve ever seen the 1990s hit film “Groundhog Day” starring Bill Murray, you may remember the moment that Murray’s character (the snooty local news reporter named Phil Connors) bumps into an old high school classmate.
 

The American idea of DIY — short for “do it yourself” — is something that has long been considered one of the cornerstones of success in enterprise. Entrepreneurs use their own wits and personal drive to make small businesses and startups work. While self-reliance and perseverance are essential ingredients to making any business idea work, often the entrepreneur with a revolutionary product idea needs help with the elements of building a brand.

Sometimes people outside the business world have some of the best insight on business. One of those voices comes from the world-renowned fiction writer. Milan Kundera, the Czech author of Immortality and The Unbearable Lightness of Being once said that “Business has only two functions — marketing and innovation.”
 
These words call to mind a few ideas about some of the companies whose products have greatly changed the way we live and exist daily. Some easy first impressions include:

Marshall McLuhan, the author and visionary philosopher of communication theory, once categorized advertising in a remarkable new light. McLuhan stated, “Advertising is the greatest art form of the 20th century.” While McLuhan knew plenty about modern communication, he was one of the first to point out advertising’s ability to captivate consumers and use creative ideas to motivate their everyday decisions.

Last summer, business blogger Andy Johnston dared to make a pretty shocking recommendation regarding promotional items for SMBs. In The Event Manager, he said that just handing out promotional items without a strategy isn’t a great move.
 
“Just giving people . . . office supplies is a wasted opportunity,” Johnston wrote. This goes for trade shows, client visits or any other event.
 

Inc., the most well-known magazine for small business and entrepreneurship, posted some insight this week about the ever growing small business sector. As a follow-up to their news earlier in the year about the good economy and the fact that businesses are revving their engines, Inc. staff writer Jeremy Quittner shared some profiles on where new firms and growing SMBs are getting startup cash.

Earlier this month, we made mention of just one of many news blurbs about how much the economy has not only rebounded, but grown. According to economists, things are good now and looking equally good for the next year.