“What an old man sees sitting down, a young man cannot see standing up.”
This African proverb ideally means that learning from people who’ve been there and done that can be a great way to get ahead.
Your business cannot survive on sheer luck, meaning that learning effective lessons from famous brands should be your top priority.
These brands used to be exactly where you are.
Did you know that Larry Page and Sergey Brin started Google in a garage?
And Google isn’t the only famous brand with humble beginnings.
Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon also started small, and now, they occupy the top 4 spots in the Forbes 2020 ranking of the world’s most valuable brands.
| Rank | Brand | Brand Value | 1-Yr Value Change | Brand Revenue | Industry |
| 1 | Apple | $241.2 B | 17% | $260.2 B | Technology |
| 2 | $207.5 B | 24% | $145.6 B | Technology | |
| 3 | Microsoft | $162.9 B | 30% | $125.8 B | Technology |
| 4 | Amazon | $135.4 B | 40% | $260.5 B | Technology |
| 5 | $70.3 B | -21% | $49.7 B | Technology | |
| 6 | Coca-Cola | $64.4 B | 9% | $25.2 B | Beverages |
This means two things for your business.
First, you can achieve the same level of success as these brands.
Second, these businesses have faced what you’re facing, so they probably have a lot of tips they can offer.
But what tips are these?
Here are three lessons from famous brands to help you get more business.
Integrate User Experience Into Your Brand
When it comes to branding, many businesses focus on strategies that don’t consider user experience. For example, many businesses simply focus on usings memorable symbols or designs to market their products. While this can be effective, it doesn’t consider how you interact with a product on a personal level.
However, famous brands have learned how to blend user experience on that personal level into their marketing campaigns.
Just check out this video:
It shows the unboxing of the new purple iPhone 12.
When you search for “unboxing Apple” or “unboxing iPhone” on YouTube, you’ll get millions of results. This is because Apple has transformed the unboxing experience.
It even has a secret “unboxing room” where designers test packaging combinations to guarantee the best emotional response for users when unboxing their Apple gadgets.
So why does Apple focus so much on the unboxing experience?
Because they know how much user experience determines the success of a brand.
By focusing on the buyer’s experience, we associate these brands with comfort and satisfaction.
They come to mind first when people think of their products, and buyers are willing to pay more because they stand for more than just products.
Involve Your Users — People Support What They Helped Create
Famous brands know the value of involving their consumers. Coca-Cola is a great example.
It launched the “Share a Coke” campaign in Australia in 2011, which then rolled out in over 80 countries because of its huge success.
It used popular names in the countries where Coke was sold to replace its iconic brand name.
They encouraged consumers to find bottles with names that meant something to them, share with friends and family, and then tweet about it using the hashtag #ShareaCoke.
Results?
The “Share a Coke” campaign was a big hit. This happened for three reasons:
- Consumers felt they were at the heart of the narrative by sharing their personal experiences.
- It allowed people to share their personal stories while connecting with friends and family.
- It had an easy-to-remember and catchy call-to-action. It directed people to buy a bottle of Coke just to share it with another person.
When your customers feel involved in “creating” your brand, they’ll do everything possible to promote it—and the famous brands know this.
So involve your users when creating your products and offers. They’ll not only buy it but go out of their way to tell others about it. It’ll no longer be your product, but their creation.
Get People Talking About Your Brand
Perhaps the most important takeaway from these brands is that they’ve perfected the art of getting people to talk about them.
Here’s a little case study of this strategy in action. When Apple plans to launch a new device, “leaks” about the item’s design suddenly flood the media. People start talking, and their product releases are always a huge success.
While these leaks aren’t always intentional, they usually keep Apple in the news. They get people talking and speculating, resulting in a successful product launch.
So don’t let your brand slip into oblivion.
If necessary, bring up some controversy. Simply get others to talk about your brand.
Controversy may help your brand grow. It’ll get more people talking about you and provide you with lots of free marketing you wouldn’t have otherwise had.
Take Godaddy, for example. They intentionally design their ads to stir up a debate to get people talking about them, even though most of the talk is negative.
Even CNN couldn’t help compiling a list of their most controversial ads:
As a result, they’ve grown their brand and now rank as the world’s number one domain name registrar.
Why You Need to Follow Coca-Cola and Co’s Example
The way you position your brand can have a positive or negative impact on your business’s success.
In fact, all the way back in 1886 when Frank M. Robinson designed the Coca-Cola logo, he understood the importance of a distinctive logo in the company’s success. He even went as far as saying how well the “two Cs” would do in advertising. Robinson observed that a unique brand with a memorable logo is the primary way of differentiating one product from another.
If your brand name is forgettable, you’ll lose. If you want to influence people’s choices, they need to remember you.
Positioning your brand to be unforgettable is the first step to winning like these famous brands.
So….
Allow NameStormers to Brand Your Business to Fame
At NameStomers, we’re obsessed with discovering a name style (or a combination of styles) that’s perfect for your brand. Be it a descriptive name like CarMax or an evocative name like Angry Orchard.
NameStormers has worked with all manner of brands for nearly 30 years. With us, perfect-fit names are born expressing a brand’s values and offerings while resonating with the target audience.
We use a seven-step process to ensure that you get a list of tested, screened, and matched-name candidates.
We take time to learn about your brand, background, and goals. After we’ve compiled a list of potential names, we put them through a thorough audience testing process to ensure that you don’t get into any trademark or domain name issues.
Finally, for a flat fee, we’ll go back to the drawing board as many times as you need us to until you’re satisfied.
Still not convinced? Our awards speak for themselves.
We’re honored to have been recognized as a top naming/branding agency by the industry’s leading reviewers for many years in a row. Here are some of our awards:
- We were named a “Top Branding Agency” by DesignRush in January 2021.
- Expertise.com recognized us as one of the Best Branding Agencies in Austin.
- For three years in a row, Clutch and The Manifest voted us a “Top Naming Agency.”
- We won a Gold Muse Award in 2021 for our branding work with IntelliDent.
- We also won a 2021 Hermes Gold Award.
- And a 2021 NYX Marcom Gold Award.
Ready to get started? Check out our portfolio to see some of the brands we’ve worked with, and contact us today to get started on your journey to fame.
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Featured Image from: Freepik by Gpointstudio