 we'll just have to get started and we can let in the late comers. So just so you know that I've got Maddie with me today from Creative Bloom and she's being my lovely assistant. So she'll be keeping an eye on the chat for questions and she will also be letting people in like if you get checked out for any reason or any late comers etc. So if you've got any problems then just drop her a note in the chat and she will help you out. If you don't mind muting yourselves all for now and then I will take some questions at the end if you have any. So just to introduce the series if you haven't been to any of these four this is the Recovery Remind SME Digital Accelerator Programme. We have a whole bunch of more than 25 different webinars that are being run to help small businesses get up to speed with their digital, marketing and all sorts of things like technology and productivity and systems etc. This is the beginning of series two. So this topic today is all about brand and branding and I will just run through the next few so that you know what's coming up in the next few weeks of the series. So we've got next we've got two we've got one on customer marketing strategy and also the first of the digital focus which is on search engine marketing and then after that we've got sessions on social media which is me again and data security in GDPR always an area that people need a bit more information on measuring marketing ROI, a special master pass for the visitor economy sector and then a nice networking Q&A like panel session at the end of the series and then obviously that's not it they're the series three and series four so do log on to Eventbrite and have a look at the whole lot it might be something else that you want to and book a space for. So to begin on today's topic we are just going to run a quick poll about your understanding of branding at the moment I'm hoping by the end of this then your choices will be a bit different but if you could just take part in this poll and say how confident you are with your brand understanding of branding at the current time that'd be great. Thank you so lots of lovely answers coming in well that's good to say because if you're all confident then I'll be one of them while you're here today so could be better as it is a bit of answer. So a few more so can I want to see the poll we're just waiting for a few more to take part in that if it's a show if you can okay well ends it there thank you very much for that I'll share the results for you and we can see that more than half of you would like to have a better understanding of our brand so hopefully we can we can get that sorted for you today right. So this explanation I really like is from a renowned London marketing agency called Interbrand and I think it really does sum up what a brand really is and that is not actually just one thing but it's more of a collection and some of those things are actually intangible things as well. So a brand is a combination of properties within and outside an offering that gives it my identity and makes it distinct from others. The modern practice of branding started in the late 1800s when Coca-Cola decided to differentiate its products from other generic products by painting everything in its brand color, developing the patented designs of its bottles and printing logos on company-owned products. Now given the fact that most of the markets today are saturated with companies offering similar products and services, developing a brand has become imperative to develop a favorable perception and stand out in that crowd. So to explain this further let's just have a quick look at Costa versus Starbucks. Now we know that they are different visually of course but Costa is the UK leader and why is that? Both coffee companies sell coffee, tea, cold drinks, snacks and lunch items. Both brands have casual and familiar in-store environments and both have charitable foundations. So what is it that sets them apart? Well one thing is a coffee itself of course the taste but also the science behind it. Starbucks brothers does understand the differences between copy types and they have to become certified following extensive training to make drinks in a Starbucks location. Another is the customer serving time. Starbucks staff have to get every customer served within three minutes or up to five for peak times whereas us Brits well you know we almost enjoy hearing don't we? So Costa staff are not quite in such a hurry. Now some consumers don't like the way that Starbucks have muscled their way into highly independent shopping areas of the UK and others believe that Costa just care so much more about the environment but as you can see each brand comes with a set of identifiers but also perceptions based on its behavior and its products. While there is one definition of brand the concepts application differs for different aspects so generally a brand is categorized into three overall types. These are personal branding which applies to famous personalities, CEOs of companies that perhaps have other interests and actions such as other companies or politics thought leadership work etc and it's about developing a brand of their own so differentiating them from other people. An offering brand is when an identity is built around a tangible or intangible offering and it's referred to as an offering brand so this offer or offering could be anything from a product service to a place event or a cause and then there's the corporate brand so this is the brand of the parent company that deals with the offering usually a large single company offers more than just one branded offering so in these cases a corporate brand is also developed to differentiate the corporate identity from the brand identity. Now the vision values personality and positioning approach is a clear way to form a brand so even if you already have a company you can revisit each section above and see if you have any gaps or can strengthen in a particular area so in my experience is often the positioning that is lacking and as I've explained creating a brand does involve far more than designing a logo and the visual identity side a true brand is a shorthand way of expressing expressing a promise to a market and articulating this promise involves a series of steps. The key thing is to create a brand expression which is true to the nature of the business and to the founders of that business without this element of truth trust which is a cornerstone of any relationship it cannot be built. Now by following the VVPP pathway, I should be careful how I say that so I don't get it wrong, the result should be a clear articulation of what your brand stands for and how this translates for your customers it also informs many decisions and you can see there that the first couple of parts they are part of your planned identity and then the second and later two parts are how the brand is actually seen by consumers. Having a brand strategy is very important and here's why brand strategy becomes before brand design so without strategy backing your design any visual representation of your brand will likely be based on a whim something that's unsystematic decisions perhaps based on you know what's currently trending. Brand strategy is a foundation of brand design in this way and this way only your visual story becomes useful and engaging. Following a successful brand strategy you will then have to find your target audience how to reach them and how to speak to them now come the visual elements so all of which are informed by the brand strategy. A strong brand identity will set your part visually but also conveys what your company stands for. Whereas a company mission statement is about what you do, for who and how, what is your goal and also have a focus on today the vision is about what your company wants to become so it shapes the culture and describes what success looks like the focus there is on tomorrow. A vision statement describes what a company would like to achieve in the long term generally in a timeframe of five to ten years or sometimes it's even longer it depicts a vision of what the company will look like in the future and sets a defined direction for the planning and execution of business strategies. There's just a few examples on the screen there of different vision companies from well known brands. The main elements of an effective vision statement are that it is forward-looking, that it's motivating and inspirational, that it's reflective of a company's culture and core values, that it's aimed at bringing benefits and improvements to the organization in the future, but also that it defines a company's reason for existence and where it is heading. Brand values are guiding principles that drive both your brand's internal culture and is external connection. They are marks of how you act, what you stand for and against and how you communicate with your customers. Brand values are an integral part of a properly unified brand. Our values are what guide us to be who we are, how we act, act what you know sorry act how we draw the line when we feel something has gone perhaps too far and also continually influence our thoughts and actions. So it's no different for your brand that these core guiding principles are how you and your team should be when representing your brand. They should act as pillars that help you in how to act when working on your brand's mission towards your brand's vision and they should tie in directly with your brand's purpose and I will explain brand purpose a little bit later. It's this mix of internal principles thriving brand culture and aligned messaging that will go towards building a differentiated approach for your company in the marketplace that could not usually be authentically copied by competitors because you can't fake the culture and the relationships that brand values authentically build. Now how to develop brand values. So when you pick a word that truly resonates you should aim to use it in a short phrase that describes how the value is core to the brand. Your values should communicate to your clients what it will be like to work with you. So Airbnb is a great example of this and they've just updated them this year to connection and belonging creatively led and responsibility to our stakeholders which they communicate in a founder's letter on their website. You can avoid the mandatory values unless they add extra values so for example if you were a finance company handing people's money you would be expected to be trustworthy. So you might choose a value that's centered around integrity or transparency as this is really what the customer is looking for and that value of just being trustworthy is actually given. Don't include that, go for something that means a bit more. If we need help getting started then there is a list of 50 values on the jamesclear.com website and I know that Maddie's just going to post that link into the chat for you if you need it. Moving on to brand personality. A strong clear brand personality allows a brand to stand out from competing brands. So for example Apple make computers so do hundreds of other brands but Apple make themselves different because they differentiated from their competition by offering a brand with a creative, innovative, modern, passionate personality. The brand can set itself apart from the competition not in the product or the service offers but in its personality and this can be a key selling feature. You can't be liked by everyone of course but you can appeal to your core targets. Customers are much more likely to relate to your brand if they recognise their own characteristics in your brand personality. You know human traits are applied to a brand. Your brand personality will help customers understand what you're all about attracting a certain type of customer who relates to your business and your product. This leads to the customer feeling connected to the brand. When they think about the brand certain emotions will be evoked which will in turn create positive associations and long-term customer loyalty. In simple terms your brand allows you to make a personal connection with your audience and even make a consumer think certain things about your business even before they step through the doors or call you. The consistency is key throughout all marketing activity and brand understanding helps your messages get heard. The brand personality system is built off of the 12 personality archetypes developed in the mid 20th century by Swiss psychiatrist and philosopher Carl Young. He determined that these 12 personalities make up the collective unconscious. This means that we intrinsically already know these personalities. We don't have to be taught them. So for example your brand might be the creator which is naturally expressive, original and imaginative or it might be the jester living in the moment, always the life of the party, impulsive and unrestrained and not afraid to sound out. Of course there are nuances and traits that cross over from one archetype to another just like people and I would say that shake it up creative my company is a sage creator a bit of a hybrid of the two. So which brand definition is closest to where you want to be? What is your personality archetype? If you were a type of animal or other brand what would you be and why? There are all questions that you can ask yourself to try and determine your brand personality. And once you know your brand personality it does give you clarity about how your brand looks, sounds and connects with your audience. It helps to create a language and tone that would resonate with them. You're keeping customers coming back and turning them into raving fans because they not only love what you do they love how you do it and how you make them feel. Positioning is the image that a product produces in the mind of customers in comparison to competitors products and other products from the same company. Positioning also gives product or service a context. So you can position based on product characteristics or benefits that are beneficial to customers. So for example in the car industry Toyota's position in the market is reliability. Porsche's position is performance and Volvo's position is safety. Brands consistently communicate the most unique benefit or characteristic of the product with their consumers. You can position on price or quality you might even position on use or application. Another example is where meal replacement supplements can be of use to anyone lacking time or wanting a quick convenient meal. There are also meal replacements designed specifically for people who want performance in the gym so high in calories and added vitamins and minerals. Other meal replacements are for people on a diet so they are low in calories and would not provide much energy for somebody's workouts. Often the former meal replacement targets males and the diet low calorie option targets females. Both are meal meal replacements but they both have different positioning. Positioning statement is part of the positioning strategy. Customs will understand whether a brand is competing on price or quality or something else and if you look at the graphic on the screen that will just help you understand the areas where there's overlap and where it's risky and where actually you're ideal positioning which is between what you have to offer but also what the customers actually want. Your value proposition is something that should be derived from your positioning. It explains how your product solves customers problems or improves their situation which is relevancy. How it delivers specific benefits, quantified value. It tells the ideal customer why they should buy from you and not from the competition which is unique differentiation. Ideally you should present your value proposition on your website homepage because it should be among the first things website visitors to see when they interact your business. There is no hard and fast way to write this statement but answering these questions will help you to cover everything and then you can reduce it down into something more impactful. So I'm just going to give you a couple of minutes now to just make some notes and go through those questions and start to form your value proposition statement before I move on to the next section. Now normally people find that the first few parts are the easy bits and then it gets a little bit more tricky when you're trying to decipher actually what's actually your parts. That's normal so you know just make a start and then you can work on it a little bit later and we're fine and then. So moving on I'm going to talk to you about purpose. Now the mission statement vision and value are traditionally the three most common descriptions of the business that explains why a company exists but in recent years another type of statement has also emerged in the business world and it's gaining more and more popularity. This type of statement is called the purpose statement. A purpose statement can raise a company's reason for existence just as the mission statement and vision do but it also shows the connection between the brand identity and the workplace culture of the company. It combines the components of a mission statement vision and values into one single statement and it's the essence of who you are as a company. A great example of this is the body shop. So as they say themselves they've got a lot to say and further down on this page of their website they actually do have a complete manifesto but at the core of everything they do is their purpose of existing to fight for a fairer more beautiful world. Now at a deeper level it encompasses their beliefs that businesses can be a force for good, that everyone is beautiful and that equality is worth fighting for and they do a lot of work to empower women and girls to actually back up their statement. On the visual branding and brand identity side a business can set itself apart from its competitors so with a carefully crafted brand identity you can grow your influence and ultimately generate revenue. Now there are some basic questions that you can ask yourself just to get the basics right and that is what's your brand logo and how will it be used? Do you have variations for certain usage and I've just put an example on the screen there because for my business we actually have different variations of our logo that I use in presentations but the core one is always with that pink up and we also have a version for a free support offering that we have called Shake It Hub so there is as you see on screen a version of the logo that represents that part of our brand. But what are your brand's primary colours? Make sure that they are set in stone, you're very consistent with those. What is your brand messaging and how will that be displayed? What type of food will you use across your brand assets? Will you have any supporting graphics to be used with certain messages messaging on social media or perhaps on your website? What feeding are you trying to convey with your branding? One of the main reasons to have a brand identity in the first place is to be memorable and identifiable. After it's in place consistency is extremely important it also inspires trust in the customers that you're trying to reach. The brand image that you're trying to create in your consumer's minds is achieved by the assets that make up your brand identity so in addition to your product or service quality and also your customer support it is ultimately defined by how you position your brand and how you differentiate your company. What does your brand offer that others don't? What will customers gain by paying attention to who you are and what you offer? What sets you apart from the competition in your industry? Brand colors, logos and matching images isn't enough if it isn't informed by what the brand is trying to achieve in the first place. It's important to decide how best to communicate the benefits of your product or service and how best to tell people about the features too and this is known as having a brand voice what your brand voice is. Now the benefit should always lead and this is where your USP also comes in and that is a unique selling proposition if you're not familiar with that term. So you'll want to go through the copy that you have and improve it make sure that it reflects your values make sure it's consistent in how you refer to yourself so are you a we or an I or an us? Look at the brand language that you already have in place or what you're going to be putting in place. You can decide what's acceptable so does your brand use emojis or jokes? Is it more formal corporate or is it informal? Is it fun or serious? Do check that you don't overuse words and look for synonyms. Check that you're not using jargon or insider industry language unintentionally. Is everything clear? If someone else read it and actually understand it very easily make sure that you simplify it down. You can always use A, B testing if you're not sure what's working. Have two different versions for webpage or an email and check which one gets the best results but overall just remember to be authentic. It's very very important especially with younger generation who will totally see through fake messages or you know over-dramastic messaging they do really really want that authenticity to build their trust in a brand. And here are some great examples of brand voice from Innocent Bodin and Leith Waite's wine and if you scroll through any of these brand social media feeds you'll see that they actually maintain it day and night and it's not inconsistent at all. They're all very different styles and thought it was quite a good example for you to see that you know we all think that everyone speaks to us in the same way that companies do that but actually it can be wildly different. So how do you develop a succinct brand story? So there are five main steps to this and the hero's journey approach by Joseph Campbell makes really good road maps for the customer to enter and become a participant in the story and this is why this approach is actually so good for brands. If the stories you tell reflect your brand values the hero's journey becomes your brand story and your customers become participants in your story. So your brand story might be on a much smaller scale where the events are less dramatic but they can still carry emotional weight even the simplest story can be deeply moving. Just think of the John Lewis efforts but actually it's a very simple story overall but we all get completely drawn in and moved by the stories that they tell. What is most important about beginning a story with a call to adventure is that it sets the scene and it gives a reason for the hero to embark. The reader then begins to feel tension from the anticipation of not knowing how this journey will turn out. Step two is where the first step sets the journey in motion and we need to hear about the hero's vulnerability about what lies ahead. So this might be about your business you know not being sure on how it can survive you know what what people are looking for it creates an empathetic empathic sorry connection with the reader as they identify with the emotions being expressed. So it might be fear, trepidation, confusion or upset the emotional connection created in this moment provides an invitation to readers to join the story and share the hero's perspective. Step three is about the challenge. Conflict is the essence of a good drama but it doesn't mean that your company needs to be fighting dragons to be compelling. In brown stories conflict is often framed as a challenge where the stakes are raised and the hero must dig a little deeper to overcome it. You get your reader's biggest emotional investment at this point as the hero's action reflects their own struggles and the desire for a resolution is high. Then comes the moment of transformation it's the moment where the hero's efforts pay off and it gives the greatest reward for the reader as it affirms that their investment in the hero's journey was worthwhile and they empathetically experienced the transformation themselves. Hearing about someone transformed in an authentic way gives us all hope that we can make great changes in our own lives or for our own businesses. The ending of course must have the hero returning home with a greater perspective than when they began. They must have got rid of their problems and had a wonderful experience. The transformation experience allows the person to live a better life than before. The reader is left inspired by the story and can now become the hero of his own situation. Now it sounds like a lot but this format can easily be applied to a brown story. You know you realize there was a gap in the market for this but oh you couldn't do it because this might be a problem but then this happened and you overcame it and then there was a moment of transformation and everything is brilliant and here we are providing these products or services to you as the customer. How do you communicate that story? Now according to the content marketing institutes 2019 B2C content marketing trends only half of marketers frequently use storytelling in their marketing. But storytelling is so powerful because it triggers a biological response. When you're invested in a good story your brain physically responds to it. Once you define your customer persona you can write your story using language that resonates with them. There are five steps to communicating your story. Explore the key messages and statements that you want people to know. Then identify the evidence that backs those statements up. They accompany each each message. Then identify your key stakeholders or customers and understand their communication channels and their customer journey. Next, agree who your spokespeople or champions are going to be. Who you pick to tell your story and how they tell it will tell a huge amount about your product or your brand. Then the fifth and final step is to develop a communication strategy which will help you convey your messages in the channels where your target audience will be able to discover it and I mean all of your stakeholders and your customers when I say tell the audience. So once you've completed a piece of content you obviously don't want to be the only one that's talking about it. Encourage people to share your story by making it easy for them to do so. Take on brand ambassadors if you can or if it's relevant. Publish your story to your blog, to your email list, share it on social media, include it in presentations. Optimize your web content for SEO. Make a video for it. There's a hundred ways. Internal branding is ensuring that your team or employees know about the brand in detail especially the company goals and external branding. Internal branding lets employees live the brand by understanding the brand identity so that they can also become brand advocates. An internal branding campaign connects employees with the external brand. Brand building efforts inside of the business work together with external brand building practices to achieve the best results for a company. In the absence of internal branding there is no knowledge within the employees or team about the brand. An employee can be a real game changer for brands. When they understand the brand value and they believe in it, they champion the company's good days, products and actions. The whole idea of internal branding lies in having the outcome of a positive reputation and the building of credibility. A Nielsen report says that 84% of people would trust recommendations from colleagues, friends and family over other marketing efforts. The staff on the screen was identified by a company called MSL Group and this is when it was compared to same messages shared by official brand social media channels. But actually they did so much better when they were shared by employees of the brand. Posters, newsletters and notice boards are simply not enough here. It takes some engaging and creative communications efforts delivered by company leaders at the right time to even start to resonate with employees. Talking with employees is the most effective way to know what they need, how they feel about the brand and what it is about the brand that they're actually proud of. Internal research and surveys are a good starting point and if you want to read a little bit more about internal branding there is a Harvard Business Review article which you'll get the link for and you can have a read of that at your leisure. Since your employees are your primary brand ambassadors they need to know and understand your brand better than everyone else. At all times they should be reflecting your brand beliefs and values. The more engaged with your brand your employees are, the better they will serve your customers and it's not just for big businesses either. They will attract better business and increase your profits whatever your size. First share your short and long-term plans with the business with the for the business with your team and then be sure that everyone is clearing on their role in that ambition and that they are willing to help achieve it. Make sure that you understand your employees, what motivates them, what dreams they personally have, what they might need help with, ensure that they are actively engaged and can be fulfilled at work. You need to be inclusive and foster good teamwork. Ask, are they proud to work for you and do they understand the business and its products? Next you need to make sure that they understand the customers and that they listen to them. Get their ideas on how to improve the customer service and how the company can further solve customer problems. Regular team activities with a focus on the company values are a great way to motivate people and share the vision further. Brands guidelines is the name for a document that essentially is a set of rules that explain how your brand works. So these guidelines typically include basic information such as an overview of your brand's history, vision, personality and key values, your brand messaging or your mission statement including examples of tone of voice. The logo usage will be in there where and how to use your logo including minimum sizes, spacing and what not to do with it. The color palette, so you show your primary and secondary color palette with color code breakdowns for print, screen and web. Also the type styles, so showing the specific font that you use or you might have a collection of fonts for your business and details of those font families and where to find them. Image style and photography, so examples of photographs that work really well for the brand and the style of images that you might pick for social media posts for example. Business card and letterhead design, so examples of how the logo and font are used for standard company literature and also editorial guidelines going back to the tone of voice. It's a really useful document for a freelance designer or a marketing agency to have and they will usually ask for it if you want any creative work done for your company. So once you've formalized all of your brand ideas and elements you can produce this document and have it as a point of reference for your team and for external people to do work for you as well. So I wanted to give you a good example of brand and positioning of a company that's you know started really small which is two people and has grown up considerably over the years. Has anyone heard of TOOL or maybe your user of TOOL? You can see their visual mark with their brand logo here on the screen. Now TOOL is actually the brand name of the product. The name of the company is the provenance company. Twine from Wool is not a new idea but 10 years ago down in rural Devon this company was born and it's very much part of its community and both its business operations. Remember all that inside brand stuff that we've talked about as well as the products, branding, communications are absolutely rooted in sustainability and consideration for the environment. In 2014 they won the RHS Chelsea Garden product of the year and they've done it several times again since. Now you don't win that by putting a great brand around a poor product. They've also extended their product range to include different colors along with ropes, twine holders, gardener soaps and table placemats as well. So let's have a little more detail. Here on the left is TOOL, twine made from wool and next is polypropylene twine, then jute and size of twines. Now jute and size of raw materials that have grown halfway around the world and are usually processed a lot in factories with questionable levels of standards of pay for workers and polypropylene twine is a petroleum based plastic. TOOL on the other hand is made from 100% natural British wool that supports the continuation of a rare breed of sheep, the white face. Wool is one of the oldest naturally occurring fibers around. It's a practical material that lasts and we grow it well in this company in this country. It's renewable, it's super sustainable and is currently an underused natural resource. So TOOL has a real true eco promise. Now TOOL products perform just as well, if not better than the competitor products. They look great, they feel great, they add nitrogen back into garden soil and they break down and they cost only about 50 pence more. The company uses low impact dye, which uses less water in the rinse process too. Plus TOOL I think is a brilliant name for this product. Their products do not fall into the horrible trap of green products equals poor products. Take a look at the TOOL packaging, even that alone suggests that this product is superior and important and on their website you'll find brilliant language such as legal gubbins and join our flock for their email signup. This is a great example of a small company's sustainability strategy combined with good design and brand and engaging honest communications. So that brings me to the end of the main part of the presentation. Do just want to tell you what's coming up next week. The customer session is all about understanding your different audiences and how to reach them mapping customer journeys and we've also got one on Thursday, which is search engine marketing both delivered by the Creative Bloom team and that's about site structuring, SEO, content backlinks and all of those things. So have a look on Eventbrite and sign up if you think that that is something you benefit from. Now I would like to just run that poll again and see how your understanding of grounding has improved. So just bear with me a second, relaunch that. If you can just complete that, that would be great, thank you. Brilliant, thank you very much and I'll just share those results. Great news, 85% for now competent. Thank you. So I want to tell you now about the other supports available with this series. I know that we've got a few of our digital champions here today. By coming on one of these sessions you have now got access to eight hours of free specialist support from one of seven digital and business experts. They are known as the digital champions. So you can take the knowledge that you've and the ideas that you've got from these webinars and then use them to help with implementation or finding the right tools for you. You can go to cdcbusiness.org.uk. The link is coming in the chat in a second to request that support if you think that it's something that you would like your company to benefit from. Now they are experts, they're seven experts and they range from being experts in consulting to technology to marketing but between us all I am one of these as well. We cover all aspects of digital adoption. So do take the opportunity and inquire if you would like those three eight hours of support. Again the link is there for you to look into and please do chat. I think we've got Malcolm, Lisa, there might be a couple of others that have come on today. Do catch them in a minute when we've got an opportunity to chat if you would like to ask any questions about that. The other business support programs that are currently available the business hot house which is partially match funding. So you would pay you would apply for a grant and then you would pay 60% of that and you would get 40% back which is a great offer. You do need to do some things like complete a business plan and some other bits of paperwork but again that's an offer to all of you your businesses at different levels. There's also the low case which is an EU funded project to help businesses adapt climate change and get moving towards being a low carbon company and then there's also rise as well. So that's all about innovation and you can apply for a research and innovation grant to be able to do innovation projects through rise. So I'm just going to stop sharing my screen now and come on to the webinar as a group. If anyone would like to ask any questions I would do my best to answer them. If you'd like to have a chat we want to do digital champions then please do in the messages and let's just have a bit of a mini network. Thank you so much for coming today. Hi Rachel I had a question. Hi. And firstly just so I thought that was a really excellent presentation thank you I've made loads of notes and I've learnt lots. Good. So a question I put in the chat box when you did the personality archetypes yes and they each had colours so you said for example yours is kind of sage wisdom. I've seen colours before connected with brands but I've never seen that kind of level of details and my question was are those kind of specific colours connected to those archetypes or is it just a colour wheel? No they're actually not the colours are just for the graphics so the archetypes are they it's actually sage as in not the colour they have all their names you know it's just to make you look pretty. So no but there is there are people that do specialise in you know colour association with branding but I don't know lots about that I'm afraid but no I think it's open to choice. Okay thank you. Madden do we have any other questions come in the chat? No I think Andrew's got his hand up. Yeah just to as a kind of fellow kind of digital marketer Rachel it's something that's always perplexed me really I really like what you've covered about storytelling which as you say unfortunately less than half marketers actually seem to do it effectively but I'm really intrigued with car adverts that you always see on the television the the messaging that goes along with them seems to be so woolly and vague and unusual but they don't seem to have anything to do with storytelling have you got a view on why they are so kind of oblique and strange in their messaging? I think because it's so easy for car brands to focus on features they're really trying to move as far away from that as possible they're trying to invoke a certain feeling in their customer so they want people to imagine that they're in this you know brilliant mountainous environment driving carefree down down the roads or whatever it is you know and just kind of inspire people and make that emotional connection and that's why I think they always feel a little bit woolly because it's not we've got this this this this it's more about an overall feel that'll be my my uh I had no answer either it really just it seems to I I think I agree with you but it just seems odd if you're selling something that's 20 30 40 000 pounds that the messaging isn't much sharper yeah some of them are very very vague aren't they? Indeed. Anyone else have anything they'd like to ask? Would yeah hi Rachel hi yeah um what I tend to find is um which uh I think um which would be quite good we would be um having humour in some of the adverts because uh obviously we're we're coming out for pandemic it's all doom and gloom you you put the the Sky News channel on or something every other advert is like oh give money to this charity or help say and and it it does get quite depressing um every advert being you know something pulling on the heartstrings where it's like I think I think with a a bit of comedy um you know there's that happy emotion that people like yay you know and um and don't mind having the adverts on because I'll just put the mute on you know. I think it's difficult because humour is not always appropriate for every brand um but certainly um there is room for that for more of that I'm sure if people got a bit more creative it would lift the advert breaks a lot wouldn't it? Definitely definitely yeah I mean can you I mean with your brand you know obviously you're a jewelry brand how would you see humour applying to to what you do? Well yeah I wasn't looking at my one I was quite chuffed with my video so I was sort of like I thought right I'm going to do something that other people aren't doing so you've got got to try and think of different things but right I definitely think um in these times with the pandemic and and everything else um I think happy happy emotions and and getting people you know and jewelry is happy because you know you're making yourself feel good and like you know you've got a party to go to or like you know family celebration and things like that so um and and not kind of pulling on the heartstrings of um of yeah certain things and I completely you know I'm I'm all for helping and and that sort of thing but when when it's sort of continue on on the news channels it just gets so draining this is it and then it's very hard for them to stand out isn't it? Yeah yeah definitely thank you yeah Rachel can I can ask about positioning it's an interesting one so you mentioned when you're doing your brand and positioning yeah um so you mentioned about price for example uh and you mentioned about quality um and interestingly the other one's sort of service but where where does the sort of technology bit come in and the innovation bit um is that an area of positioning that products can actually use as well? Yeah it can be as long as it's not feature led you know it's got to be um where it delivers benefit to the customer um I know that there are companies that are you know software very very tech focused companies that have um hats are sort of reposition because they're seen they were seen as one thing but actually the outcome is more aligned with with something else so the descriptions that they have to use and the way that they're they're portrayed has had to change in in line with that there's actually actually a brilliant book if you want to read more about positioning and understand it more um by April Dunford she's an expert in positioning um can I remember what it's called now um but look her up April Dunford and I'm sure you're I'm sure you'll find it it's really good can I answer anything else um or does anybody want to connect with digital champion once we're here I know there's a lot of them cameras not on I feel like I was through that but hopefully everyone here has got some benefit from it and if there's nothing else then we will sign off for today okay thank you so much for coming everyone and I hope to see you on some future sessions thank you very much Rachel nice to see everyone bye thanks Rachel