Brands
Brands are a hobby of mine. I like to analyse brands, how they influence us, how we relate to them, the power they have. I have a good collection of books on branding on my bookshelf, three by Al Reis, a nice read if you get the chance..
Nobody comes close to Nike. They wrote the book. They created their own world. People tattoo the Nike logo on themselves.
The really good brands are first in a category and they own a simple word in the mind of the customer. My little list of attributes of good brands:
- Short
- 'Proper Name' Brand
- Fairly simple
- Suggestive of category, (visual and sound)
- Alliterative
- Easily speakable
- A bit different and unique
- Own the .com domain
- If you hear it on the radio, there is a good chance you will spell it correctly
Some brands and logos that popped out of my head.
| Year | Brand | Logo | Desc | Status | Word |
| 1996 | Entropy |
|
entropy.co.za: Infotainment Website | Failed | |
| 1999 | Vino |
|
vino.co.za: An Ecommerce Company for the Wine Industry | Failed / Dormant | |
| 2000 | Fireblue | lost :-( | fireblue.com: IT Consulting Company | Failed | |
| 2000 | Blio |
|
blio.com: Embedded Systems Company | Alive | "practical" or "managed" |
| 2000 | Frogfoot |
|
frogfoot.net/.com: Internet Service Provider | Alive | attention to detail |
| 2001 | Hub |
|
hub.org.za: Peering Point | Dormant | guerrilla networking |
| 2001 | Netphibious |
|
netphibious.com: Ecommerce Company | Dormant | |
| 2003 | MetaMera |
|
metamera.com: Food Industry Company | Dead | |
| 2003 | Amobia |
|
amobia.com: Internet Service Provider | Alive | access |
| 2003 | Mailticker |
|
mailticker.com Mail stats device. | Dead | |
| 2004 | Clug, Just the new Logo (actually, Naulene did a sketch of my idea, then I created the vector version) |
|
Cape Linux User Group | Alive | |
| 2006 | swimgeek.com |
swimgeek.com My personal homepage |
Alive | swim | |
| 2007 | schoolwan.org.za | schoolwan.org.za Schools Network | Alive | WAN | |
| 2007 |
Teraco Data Environments, I think Matt came up with the name I added the "data environments" part. |
teraco.co.za Vendor Neutral DCs. |
Alive | ||
| 2009 | TrustFabric |
|
trustfabric.com VRM network |
Alive | Trust |
Action without a name, without a "who" attached to it, is meaning less. -- Hannah Arendt
With the strongest brands, the CEO owns the brand. It must be owned by someone, the higher in the company the better. -- Shelly Lazarus
I think it's quite clear that in the information age, the brand is what you compete on. -- Andrew Niel
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