Graphic designers know them well: the professionals needing a corporate identity yesterday and thinking that it should cost less than a dinner for two. In response, there is no shortage of web sites meeting this demand with next day “custom logo designs” for the low, low price of $99. But purchasing a preexisting logo template from an online logo factory is a big mistake. Investing in a quality logo is just good business. Here are three reasons why:

I went to the Masters Golf Tournament this week in Augusta, GA. I could go on and on about the tournament itself, but I'll just talk about branding for the purposes of this blog. We can talk golf in another blog elsewhere.

A merger acquisition is fraught with all kinds of difficulties, from operations to HR, to finance. There's lots to figure out, even about how to do delivery. Not until all of this is taken care of do people usually begin to think about marketing, and then eventually, branding. I'd like to suggest that it should be done the other way around. Branding should come first. And then worry about your marketing, your advertising, your finance, operations and HR.

Do you own the compelling content on your web site? One of the key things that you want to make sure of when developing a site is that the most interesting information on your site lives on your site. That is, don't have lots of links from your site to other sites. Chances are that you'll never get them back to your site once they leave.

Last time, we covered 2 main reasons that communications fails in execution. This time, we will wrap up the series with discussion of 2 more reasons.

I recently overheard a conversation between neighbors chatting about a local mechanic's shop. The people were complaining about how this particular local mechanic tried to upsell them on additional services and charged them $100 just to turn off their engine light without even fixing the issue. It seems that this mechanic is known in the area for this type of "customer service".

Last time, we considered that it's hard to execute a communications strategy. This time, we'll examine 4 detailed reasons that this execution fails.

With most of our clients, we see a considerable gap between their communications goals and communications results. And, almost all of these clients immediately identify the primary solution to be a new strategy. The question is, however, whether this is the right choice.