Direct Response
The importance of branding
Feb 24th
What is Branding?
Branding can be seen from many angles as a few different things. In general it all boils down to what people see, hear and think of when they are viewing or thinking about your company. It is up to you as a corporate entity to shape the way people think about you and your products or services. Cadillac and Toyota are both “Car companies” but both are thought of or “BRANDED” differently. The same could be said of Wal-mart brand coffee and Starbuck Brand coffee. Its all in the branding. Branding usually is defined on the surface with simple things like Logo, color schemes, and general advertising keys. In reality it goes much deeper to encompass things like corporate values, customer service and general product or service quality. Hence, we get the term, “The Cadillac of (insert item name type here)!
An illustration of hidden branding at work
Recently my father in-law and I went for a quick trip to Wal-mart. As we walked in he made the funny statement, that if you had been to one wal-mart you had been to pretty much all of them. At first it didn’t really hit me the implications of this statement from a branding perspective. I, loving a good laugh and feeling like leaving this daily dread of another trip to Wal-mart, just laughed it off and didn’t think twice about it. About ten minutes into this trip, I noticed something different about one of the isles that I had been down probably hundreds of times before. The endcaps looked different. They looked… WRONG! Then I noticed they looked wrong because the isle spacing was much larger. Then I noticed why this was the case. The endcaps were simply missing. As we wnt on down the isle it actually discturbed me to see something so out of place in Wal-mart. When we hit the end of the isle things went really wrong. Instead of being able to see to the next set of isles, I merely could see another wall going in the wrong direction. At this point it started to feel like the world had changed. Why was something so trivial upsetting me so much?
As we went on to finish our trip we ended making our way through a maze of moved and adjusted isles that were unlike any Wal-mart I had been to before. The isles were narrow and about 3 times longer than usual. Not to mention the fact that were were headed in the wrong direction. I suddenly felt very out of place. This didn’t “FEEL” like Wal-mart anymore. It felt like one of the old one of a kind grocery stores or hardware stores that I had been to as a kid. Suddenly it dawned on me. The Wal-mart store clone idea had been a good one. As much as I love to make fun of the Wal-mart cloning idea, where all the stores are basically alike, it works. It had actually made me upset to see things out of place in such a grand way. I felt anxious and out of place even being there.
So,… What is my point?
My point is this, “Branding goes further than skin deep. In Wal-mart’s case it goes as far as isle spacing, placement and configuration.” The Wal-mart idea that I had made fun of fifteen minutes earlier was actually one that in my case gave me peace of mind even when I didn’t realize it. You know a Corvette when you see one because they are all alike (sort of). You know a wal-mart because they are all alike (usually). This is branding at a deeper level.
What should you take from all of this?
You should learn to incorprate branding a little deeper into your company. It should be more than just a logo or just a color scheme. It should go all the way to your customer service or packaging design or even to your store layout design. Great company’s have proven time and time again that consistency is the key to success. Branding is yet another name for that consistency. Think twice next time that you are deciding on anything that is visual with your company. Its, layout, color and function will help define your branding whether you realize it or not.
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Most Popular man in Google
Nov 29th
Most popular man in google? You are probably wondering why I would ever care to talk about such a thing. This is why.
The most popular man in Google idea
For those out there that know me, you’ll think this is typical Jared. I had the idea one day in the car to become the most popular man alive. I didn’t have the idea because I actually wanted or cared to be popular. I was actually just thinking about all of the other people that are out there and are popular just because they are popular. That started me to thinking that those people have more power than a low IQ person should be allowed to have. That being thought, I decided to overtake their position in the world or atleast test the system to see how feasible something like that could be for an unpopular nobody like myself. Would it be possible to overtake the world just by making the effort to do so? As I would soon find out, its not really as hard as it seems. Good old fashioned effort goes a long way as it turns out.
Starting an empire
So the first step in taking over the world as the most popular man alive is to buy the domain name “mostpopularmanalive.com“. Seems a little too simple, but that is what I did. I bought the domain name and started a blog on a 15 dollar hosting account. What followed is probably not typical, but it is amazing none the less. After buying the name, applying the hosting and clicking install on the blog structure, I went back and wrote my first blog about my idea on my professional website design website. The post was simple and to the point. I simply wrote out what I was doing and how I was going to do it. At this point I also decided to go ahead and blog about it on my personal website to add a little initial juice to the process. Once the blog structure was installed on mostpopularmanalive.com I went to the blog and did a little css styling to make it an appealing looking blog. While there I went ahead and did a quick blog about the prcess so far.
My amazement
It only took 11 minutes to become 5th in google!!!
At this point. I decided to check out the competition in google and starting my plan making process to someday make a run for the front page in google. To my amazement my initial website design news archive post had already grabbed ahold of the number five position in google for the most popular man alive.
I couldn’t believe it. Was it really that easy? I was so impressed that I took a snapshot of the google page to show my post with an impressive 11 minutes old tag at the bottom of it to prove how fast the accomplishment had been made.
6 hours into fame
After the first hour in I checked again to see if my new found fame was a fluke or had really happened like i saw earlier. To my further amazement I now had two out of the top five placements in google for the most popular man alive. Yes, two in the top five. Now fueled by the prospect of making an actual name for myself in the top ten I made a renewed and concerted effort at conquering this beast of a list. I went a little overboard and started linking and posting to everything that I could think of to post to. Apparently my efforts were not in vain. After about six hours I checked back to find that I now three of the top five placements in google for the most popular man alive. Yes, three now. Of course you know what I did next. Yes, another snapshot for proof on of my bragging rights. I had officially conquered a list that usually is toppled by the Matthew McConougheys and Brad Pitts of the world. IT really felt good that, if only in theory, to be more popular that even Barak Obama.
I am the most popular man alive!
So its now a few weeks later and I have a few new unexpected surprises to add to my joyous new status. The sexiest man alive! No, I did not get that award that was Johnny Depp, good for him. I did however, manage to find a few surprises for myslf in the ranks of many a google search. The following extremely hard and high ranks are ones that I have recently myself holding in the magical Google!
- I have the number one image in google for “Most popular man alive“
- I have the number one image in google for “Most popular man in the world“
- I have the number 2,3,4,5,6 image in google for “Most popular man“
- I have 6 of the top ten pages in google for “Most popular man alive“
- I have the “most popular pic in google“
- I have the top placement for “most popular man on facebook“
- I have the top placements for the “most popular man on twitter“
The findings don’t even come close to stopping there. There are a dozen or so more that are just amazing but you get the point.
So why the most popular man?
The long point of this entire process has not been to brag about being the most popular man in google. It is in fact an experiment that went astronomically better than planned. I wanted something to show just how good at SEO and public relations that I really was. I wanted a good case study to show the potential of everything that I do as a working individual and that was exactly the payoff that I got. If you would like for me to do something like this for you, I can. In the words of the second most popular man alive, “Yes, I can”.
This picture shows my number 3 rank in the world on google for Most Popular Man out of 2.3 BILLION
Just as a sidenote as of right now I have the top six placements in google for “the most popular man in google” right now out of 148,000,000 competing pages for that same term! here is the live google search check for yourself where I am at right now
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