Branding your business website through the use of video is another way of adding interactivity to your website. To help you understand how to use video for branding, I decided to share a few details that will help you as you build your brand using video.

Below are the details to keep in mind when using video to build your brand:

• Make sure your business message is stated clearly in your video
• Include your business logo and your image if possible in the video
• Make sure that the audio is noise-free
• If you add text, make sure the size of the text is not tiny
• Try creating a customer testimonial video that will have them sharing about why they like your services or products.
• When attending a special event like a seminar, make sure that you get recording of other attendees because you could use this as part of your video branding
• Create a virtual tour of your website

Below is a video that shares information and tips about business branding.

How to Brand Your Business

Today, on the TTC (the transit system in Toronto), I paid $6 for a small bouquet of white tulips. Proceeds of the sales were going to Parkinson’s.

The TTC platforms see all sorts of sales from pizza slices to eco-friendly bags, each supporting various charities. I often pass by and regret not spending a few dollars for a worthwhile cause. So today, when I heard Parkinson’s, and after my roommate told me she worried that her family was seeing the first signs of Parkinson’s in her father, I decided to take the time and the money.

The tulip is the flower that represents the Parkinson Society of Canada and a perfect flower to be handing out on a sunny spring day. Moreover, April is Parkinson Awareness Month.

Direct from the Parkinson Society of Canada’s Tulip factsheet,

The story of the Parkinson Tulip began in 1980 in the Netherlands when J.W.S. Van der Wereld, a Dutch horticulturalist who had Parkinson’s disease, developed a red and white tulip.

In 1981, Van der Wereld named his prized cultivar, the ‘Dr. James Parkinson’ tulip, to honour the man who first described his medical condition and to honour the International Year of the Disabled.

The tulip received the Award of Merit that same year from the Royal Horticultural Society in London England, and also received the Trial Garden Award from the Royal General Bulb Growers of Holland. It is described as a flower: ‘exterior, glowing cardinal red, small feathered white edge, outer base whitish; inside, currant-red to turkey-red, broad feathered white edge, anthers pale yellow’.

On April 11, 2005, the Red Tulip was launched as the Worldwide Symbol of Parkinson’s disease at the 9th World Parkinson’s disease Day Conference in Luxembourg.

What do you think of the tulip as the Parkinson Society’s  flower and branding image?

You can be doing great work, but a poor choice of name can really bring you down.

One of the international NGOs which has probably not received the attention it deserves is Green Cross International - established by Mikhail Gorbachev to create projects and advocate for sustainability issues.

Here’s the organisation’s logo:

But there’s a few other associations with the ‘green cross’ which are a bit different to what Green Cross International stands for…

In Europe a green cross symbol (often in neon) is used to show the location of a pharmacy. There is a strong association with safety issues, and it may also be used in construction sites.

There’s also a Green Cross Academy of Traumatology which has already taken out the www.greencross.org URL - not so good for Green Cross International, which was formed two years earlier than the academy.

Most interestingly, there is an American organisation called The Green Cross which advocates the use of medical marijuana as well as facilitating its delivery.

Definitely outside the realm of Green Cross International’s work.

In a religious context the name is also a bit mixed - a cross being seen widely as a Christian symbol while green is the official Islamic colour!

Green also has other meanings…

If you’ve read our color meanings primer you would know that green has many meanings, including indicating high-tech in Japan, or conversely death in many South American countries.

What’s in a name?

There’s a few lessons to be learned from this:

• If a name doesn’t make what you do obvious, you need to look at what other connotations there are.
• Symbols and names can have many different meanings and you may not want to be associated with all of these.
• When you are an international organisation you have to get an understanding of other cultures to know how they will see you.

Personally I believe it’s something the organisation will need to address before they hit the same level of awareness achieved by organisations like World Vision, Oxfam, Amnesty and MSF. Still, they have some very interesting work including a proposal to make water a universal right under international law, so you should check it out.

Images: Wikipedia and respective organisation websites

Car companies haven’t been having a good time: oil prices, environmental concerns and now recession are not helping the market.

More and more they need to stand out from the crowd, and one of the best ways to do this is to have a logo we recognise instantly when an interesting-looking car goes past.

So here’s the logos of some of the big names in motoring - reduced in size to how large you would see them in real life. (Click on the logo to see it full size.)

See which ones you can recognise and which stand out!

(It’s also interesting to note which brands use colours and which colours are used!)

I’m in the process of writing a book that has me thinking a lot about brands that have had enormous impacts on the business world and beyond. 

For example, The Beatles were a brand/product that changed the music industry from influencing musical genres to repeatecly breaking sales records.  Retailers, radio stations, record companies and more altered the way they marketed music after The Beatles launched the British Invasion. Read more

There are some products and brands that can create a character icon that grows to become synonymous with the brand itself.  Modern Drunkard Magazine compiled a list of the top ten alcohol icons they deemed to be the greatest of all time and the stories behind those iconic images.  Some go back as far as the 1800s.

Noticeably missing from the list is the St. Pauli Girl, but otherwise it’s an interesting, somewhat eclectic mix of alcohol icons.  Here’s a recap of Modern Drunkard Magazine’s top 10 list: Read more